This will be a BIG WEEK in the Plamegate scandal: by the end of the week we’ll know whether there will be indictments — and in a development that should outrage ALL Americans, some GOPers are already putting out the new line that if it’s a “perjury technicality” it somehow doesn’t matter.
Didn’t it seem to matter a LOT — to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Republicans in the Senate and Congress and to many Democrats — when it turned out that President Bill Clinton lied under oath?
We seem to remember something about an impeachment, with lots of sordid testimony on TV – but perhaps it was all a dream.
So, if an indictment comes out that accuses a Republican of perjury, then it’s a technicality?
Read THIS and ask yourself whether principles in American politics have absolutely disappeared in the interest of circle-the-wagons-and-protect-our-guys expediency… and where “law” is now viewed as relative, depending on whether or not someone is on your “team”:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 – After a 22-month inquiry, the special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is expected to announce this week whether he will seek indictments against White House officials, a decision that is likely to be a defining moment of President Bush’s second term.
Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, have been advised that they are in serious legal jeopardy in a case that began as a minor irritant for the president’s aides but has grown into a raging conflagration for the White House.
It is not publicly known when Mr. Fitzgerald will take action, if any, but whatever he decides, the prosecutor is expected to make an announcement before Friday, the final day of the term of his grand jury. In the past, the grand jury has met on Wednesdays and Fridays.
As the White House braced for a decision by Mr. Fitzgerald, Republicans began suggesting that they would pursue a strategy of minimizing any charges as technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecution.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” compared the leak investigation to the case of Martha Stewart, “where they couldn’t find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn’t a crime.”
Senator Hutchison said she hoped “that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.”
So, let’s get this straight:
If it turns out that a close aide to President George Bush and/or Vice President Dick Cheney lied under oath, it’s just a “perjury techicality.”
How would that differ from going after Clinton due to a “technicality” that surfaced under oath in the course of another investigation? One, by the way, that was played on videotape and broadcast for the whole nation to see, then replayed over and over on conservative talk radio shows.
Oh, we’re sure the lawyerly spins will begin if it happens.
But spinning doesn’t make it true — especially in the case of principles…and in a perjury indictment.
FOOTNOTE: No one knows what’s going to happen later this week. There may be no indictments. But if there are and this becomes the official spin line, then look for the GOP to lose even MORE independent voters.
The big question is: Will many Republicans buy this line and whack their long-held and often-articulated principles by picking up this spin line if indictments come down?
UPDATE I: The New York Times now confirms this is part of a White House strategy: if there are indictments the idea that it’s somehow a trivial matter and that the prosecutor is on a jihad against George Bush will be the talking points.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 – With a decision expected this week on possible indictments in the C.I.A. leak case, allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor….
President Bush said several weeks ago that Mr. Fitzgerald had handled the case in “a very dignified way,” making it more difficult for Republicans to portray him negatively.
But allies of the White House have quietly been circulating talking points in recent days among Republicans sympathetic to the administration, seeking to help them make the case that bringing charges like perjury mean the prosecutor does not have a strong case, one Republican with close ties to the White House said Sunday. Other people sympathetic to Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have said that indicting them would amount to criminalizing politics and that Mr. Fitzgerald did not understand how Washington works.
Some Republicans have also been reprising a theme that was often sounded by Democrats during the investigations into President Bill Clinton, that special prosecutors and independent counsels lack accountability and too often pursue cases until they find someone to charge.
TMV notes: The teeny weenie problem here is that these Congressional Republicans were not saying that when they were after Bill Clinton on perjury charges. All the other charges that people now mention in the Clinton case were secondary to the MAIN CHARGE that Republicans in Congress, in newspaper columns and on talk shows hammered away at: that the President had p-e-r-j-u-r-e-d himself and therefore was not fit to remain in office.
Congressional Republicans have also been signaling that they want to put some distance between their agenda and the White House’s potential legal and political woes, seeking to cast the leak case as an inside-the-Beltway phenomenon of little interest to most voters.
If the “oh perjury is just a technicality” defense is used, reporters and news organizations can have a field day by just digging up the old GOP quotes and bits of video that quote outraged Republicans. Will Republicans who have PRINCIPLES that don’t bend to partisan concerns stand for it — or demand a higher standard that the perpetuation of a group of people in office at all costs?
UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin has A LOT TO SAY about Hutchison’s comments:
The Left had a field day over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s remarks on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning in which she downplayed possible perjury and obstruction of justice indictments this week in the Rove/Plame/Miller/Libby/God-knows-who-else leak case. I watched the rebroadcast of the show tonight and have to say that I found Hutchison’s pooh-poohing more than a bit disturbing….
The New York Times, for what it’s worth, reports that Sen. Hutchison’s tactics are part of a coordinated GOP strategy to “blunt leak charges.” If that is true (contrary to the unhinged Left, I’m not on the White House talking points e-mail list), I really object to that–and so should every other rule-of-law Republican. Perjury and obstruction of justice are serious crimes, whether committed by D’s, R’s, or otherwise. Period.
As Malkin’s comments attest, if this is indeed going to be the new line, then there will be some defections among Republicans: some Republicans are not going to indulge in demeaning and revealing acrobatics with their core values just to defend someone from their party. There still is a group of Americans (from both parties and independents) who believe core values are more important than defending The Cult of Personality or what for some (in each party) has become The Cult of The Party.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.