Reply #42: Jane Hamsher: "I'm guessing she was playing Let's Make a Deal."

[understandinglife]

If Entous is right about the appearance in the July notes, and the second "Flame" source was already indicated by Bennett and dismissed by Fitzgerald as not being "meaningful" when he cut a deal for Judy to exclude any testimony that was not about Libby, Fitzgerald wouldn't be able to ask about that, right?

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred.

What's that? Why, that would be Patrick Fitzgerald asking questions at the time outside the scope of the deal to limit her testimony to Libby. Moreover, she did not refuse to answer. Which means that her original deal with Fitzgerald was, indeed, bustado.

So what was Judy doing in Fitzgerald's office all day Tuesday with her criminal -- not First Amendment -- lawyer Bob Bennett?

Much more at the link:
http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2005/10/judy-obscure.html

In some correspondence I had with Mark Kleiman a few days ago (that I posted here at DU), I suggested three reasons why Miller only spent ~ 75 min on Wed., in front of the GJ.

Seems more and more that reason # 2 is the likeliest:

Perhaps you will want to consider three aspects that are consistent with the "mouse trap" theory, Mark:

1. Judith Miller spent 75 min responding to every question with a 5th Amendment plea - he'd lift her contempt citation because she's headed to trial and he's more than willing to let her talk to reporters or whomever with the admonishment of really bad things to come if she makes any statements about anything he asked her that she used the 5th to shield herself from answering.

2. She did spend ~ 8 hours with him (and members of his staff), on Tuesday the 11th. If that produced a "script" of statements that he then went in front of the GJ, yesterday, and did the -- "You state, Ms Miller ....., true or false"; one could cover a bunch of territory in 75 min. It's not as if Fitzgerald and his team are just getting started in this investigation, so you can imagine they have some rather elaborate documentation that they could well have confronted Miller with on Tuesday (and, before -- i.e., we don't know if she has been spending time with Fitzgerald or/and his staff, at other times);

3. Someone(s) "rolled over" on Judith and he had her sit for 75 min, in front of the GJ, as he described to them exactly the sworn statement(s) he has obtained and basically asked Miller to confirm or deny. He'd have no reason to maintain her contempt citation at that point because she's going to be indicted for ..... (who knows how long the list could be).

Peace,

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5038953&mesg_id=5051908

I suspect Judy will be on the witness stand more than a few times in the next several years -- Bush, Cheney, Bolton, Libby & Rove (as well as a bunch of WHIGers) one can imagine have been spending lots of time with their respective criminal lawyers.


Peace.