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By Josh Marshall
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Posted: 07/13/07 07:06 PM [ET] |
Right out of the gate Scooter Libby’s pals were making one simple and consistent argument: The prosecution and the whole case was political and therefore illegitimate. And thus a pardon was entirely in order — and a commutation, though not ideal, was at least a close second. Equal justice and sentencing requirements simply weren’t relevant because Scooter Libby wasn’t being sent to the slammer for fudging some details about Valerie Plame. The whole thing was a proxy for public discontent with the Iraq war.
Such a claim of obviously political prosecution was pretty obvious with the hyper-partisan and questionably ethical Ken Starr investigation of Bill Clinton. It may even have had some element of truth in Lawrence Walsh’s probe of Iran-Contra, though he was at least nominally a Republican.
(By the way, why is that that Republicans always investigate Democrats and they investigate Republicans too?)
But it’s just hilariously obvious that it ain’t the case with Scooter Libby. The case had profound political overtones. And certainly there is no end of people in the country who became deeply invested in this case who normally wouldn’t get overly bent out of shape about a run-of-the-mill perjury and obstruction case — which, at least narrowly speaking, this is.
But Libby never found his fate in one of those people’s hands. Not once. And there’s just no getting around that point.
Go down the list.
•Attorney General John Ashcroft. Decided a special prosecutor was needed and then recused himself from the decision because of his proximity to the probable targets of the investigation. Not exactly a partisan Democrat.
• James Comey. Yes, he’s the darling of the Dems now because he spilled the beans about the hospital standoff. But Comey is — dare we say it? — a REPUBLICAN. And not just any Republican, but a pretty tough law-and-order type who only months earlier had been appointed deputy attorney general by President Bush. He had it in for Scooter? He let his partisanship get in the way?
• Patrick Fitzgerald. Again, a darling of the Dems now for obvious reasons. But anyone who knows the guy’s history knows that while this registered independent may not lean ideologically right (in the way movement whacks might recognize) he certainly doesn’t lean to the left. It’s no accident that his appointments have come under Republicans.
• Judge Reggie Walton. Let’s start with this: He was appointed by George W. Bush. And if that doesn’t do it for you, he was appointed to previous judicial appointments by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
A mere calling of the roll like this throws into razor-sharp relief just how silly these claims are. At every step in the process Libby’s fate was in the hands of someone who was either himself a staunch Republican or had been repeatedly appointed by staunch Republicans. The only thing is that no one ever passed Scooter off into the safe embrace of a Bush loyalist. And that’s the key. Alberto Gonzales never got the hand-off. Whatever else you can claim about this case, it’s about as clear as it can be that partisan politics played no role in Libby’s fate.
Libby-ites themselves realize that only by undermining the integrity of the whole prosecution can his get-out-of-jail-free card be justified. And that’s the real reason why many of them are now belatedly recognizing the inconsistency of the president’s commutation.
The verdict on the verdict is really pretty clear. The actual investigation and prosecution was remarkably free of any partisan or political taint.
Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com . His column appears in The Hill each week. E-mail:
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