Hostile Witness?
Oh my and the defense has already said Cheney was going to be called as a witness. So does this mean that Cheney, a sitting VP, is going to be treated as a “hostile witness“? Now wouldn’t that be choice.
The perjury trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney, began explosively on Tuesday as his lawyers argued he was the victim of CIA incompetence and that the White House wanted to scapegoat him in order to protect Karl Rove, the strategist seen as key to keeping the Republican party in office.
Both legal teams used audio and visual props in their opening statements to the jury on how the name of a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame, was leaked to the press. Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, played tapes of Mr Libby’s soft-spoken testimony before the grand jury and charged that he had “knowingly and intentionally lied”.
Ted Wells, Mr Libby’s lawyer, trumped that by showing on a giant television screen the fragment of a memo written by Mr Cheney after a meeting with his former aide. It offers a voyeuristic insight into his pugnacious, combative character: “Sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck into the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.”
Mr Wells explained that Mr Libby had gone to Mr Cheney after the special prosecutor began his investigation in late 2003 to express concern that he was being made the fall guy to protect Mr Rove, the president’s chief political adviser. “Rove was the person most responsible for keeping the Republican party in office. His fate was important to be protected. The person who was to be sacrificed was Scooter Libby,” Mr Wells said. (more….)
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