Evidence that Bush Bought Libby's silence

Circumstantial evidence of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice can include evidence of motive and opportunity, especially the timing of particular acts.

So, for instance, if the government is prosecuting an individual for money laundering or tax evasion, evidence concerning the timing of money tranfers can be quite significant, even if there is no direct proof that the money was used for an illegal purpose.

An article in this morning's NY Times discusses the legal basis of Bush's communtation of Scooter Libby.  As one expert said, "there is none."  In fact, as the article notes, the SCOTUS just decided a case on very similar facts against Victor A. Rita and upheld the sentence (33 months to Libby's 30 months).  In other words, they found that Rita's sentence was NOT excessive.

The article also discusses the timing of Bush's commutation.  Why now?  I believe the timing of this decision is good evidence that Libby and Bush made a deal.

Follow me on the flip for some further thoughts on this.

The NY Times article got me thinking about how we would prove that the Libby pardon is part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice.  To my mind, one excellent way to do this would be to show that Bush and Libby made a deal during Libby's trial.  The timing of Bush's commutation may be strong evidence that such a deal was made, and that Bush had to act immediately in order to hold up his end of the bargain.

To my knowledge, the first person to hypothesize such a deal was Dan Froomkin at WaPO.  In an article entitled Did LIbby Make a Deal? published the day after Libby was convicted on four felony counts, Froomkin makes clear that Ted Wells, Libby's attorney, essentially declared war on the White House in his opening statement:

In pretrial hearing, Libby's defense team had indicated that they would call Vice President Cheney as a witness and that Libby himself would take the stand as well. Testimony from either of them, but in particular from Cheney, could very well have opened up an enormous can of worms for the White House. And the spectacle alone -- that of a vice president being cross-examined in a criminal case -- was something the administration wanted devoutly to avoid.

Then, in his opening statement, Libby defense lawyer Theodore V. Wells Jr. shocked pretty much everybody by promising jurors that he would show them evidence that his client felt scapegoated in favor of White House golden boy Karl Rove.

All of a sudden, it appeared Libby had declared war against the White House. It looked, at that point, like he had thrown any idea of getting a presidential pardon to the wind.

In fact, he had of course not thrown away such an idea, and was simply laying out his negotiating position.  For the next day:

Libby's defense team reached out to an intermediary after its opening statement to reassure the White House about its strategy, according to a source close to the situation."

Froomkin goes on to speculate about whether a deal was discussed during that "reassurance" outreach.

After Wells conducted this outreach with the White House, he and Libby chose not to call the Vice President.  In fact, they chose not to enter any evidence on this point.  And that decision, according to several jurors and commentators, sealed Libby's fate.

Why would Wells make such a deicsion if he had not lined up a deal for his client?  The answer is that he would not.  It would be malpractice.

Until now, the terms of the deal were thought to be a pardon.  However, what if the deal was simply "Libby does not do a day of jail time?"

Because of the timing of Bush's commutation, I think we can be pretty certain that such a term was part of the deal.  Bush had to move quickly and had to bypass the Justice Department if he was to live up to his end of the bargain.  As we know, Libby had alreday been assigned a number.  He was on his way to the slammer and had no chance of any Bush flunky on the 4th Circuit saving his ass.

Bush had to act quickly, and the fact that he did so is good evidence that there was a deal made.

Questions remain, however.  First, is it a crime for a President at the center of an investigation over the outing of a CIA operative to buy the silence of a indicted assistant, during that assistant's trial, with a promise of a pardon?  That is an interesting question which I do not know the answer to.  It would seem to me that even if it is not technically illegal, it is certainly grounds for impeachment.  Because in the end, how is that any different than what Nixon did?

Bush used the power of the President to coverup illegal activity.  It's that simple.

IMPEACH.