[ QUOTE ]
I thought I read that Armitage wasn't charged because Libby's actions rendered it basically impossible to charge him with a crime.
[/ QUOTE ]
No, Fitzgerald knew Armitage was the source of the leak before he asked Libby question uno. Why would it be impossible to charge him?
[ QUOTE ]
If this is correct, then your idea that this was nothing more than "a perjury trap" makes no sense (and I've never heard of a "perjury trap" to begin with).
[/ QUOTE ]
So what your saying is that since Fitzgerald knew that Armitage leaked Plame's name before he asked Libby one question about the case he decided that Libby was the person that needed investigation, not Armitage the one person that you apparently assert comitted a crime.
[ QUOTE ]
In addition, care to cite the source of that article? I trust it is from an unbiased source.
[/ QUOTE ]
Show me the specific statement where I claimed it was unbiased.
[ QUOTE ]
And the idea that this is all the work of some rogue US Attorney who had some vendetta against the government -- in an era when merely glancing wrong at the government got US Attorneys fired -- is preposterous.
[/ QUOTE ]
No he was appointed as a special prosecuter. He found out very early, basically in the initial stages of the investigation, that there was no crime committed in the leaking of the Plame's name. Not a good career move to be appointed a special prosecutor with a big budget and shut down the investigation almost immediately.
He knew the source of the leak from the earliest stages of the investigation and also determined that he had no case that he could prosecute for leaking the info. Yet the investigation continued into what? Whatever the special prosecuter wants to investigate, ask Kenneth Starr.
On a Perjury Trap
Other courts and noted scholarship have expressed similar concerns about the sinister misuse of the justice system. See United States v. Chen, 933 F.2d 793, 796-797 (9th Cir. 1986) (a perjury trap is created when the government calls a witness before the grand jury for the primary purpose of obtaining testimony from him in order to prosecute him later for perjury); United States v. Simone, 627 F. Supp. 1264, 1268 (D. N.J. 1986) (perjury trap involves "the deliberate use of a judicial proceeding to secure perjured testimony, a concept in itself abhorrent"); United States v. Crisconi, 520 F. Supp. 915, 920 (D. Del. 1981) (expressing concern over the government's use of its investigatory powers to secure a perjury indictment on matters which are neither material nor germane to a legitimate ongoing grand jury investigation). Some courts question whether such governmental conduct might violate a defendant's fifth amendment right to due process, Simone, 627 F. Supp. at 1267-72, or be an abuse of grand jury proceedings, Crisconi, 520 F. Supp. at 920. See generally, Gershman, The "Perjury Trap", 129 U. Pa. L. Rev. 624, 683 (1981).