Ladies and gentlemen, the fat lady has sung.
A federal jury today found Lewis "Scooter" Libby guilty on four counts.
Libby was convicted of:
1. obstruction of justice when he intentionally deceived a grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame;
2. making a false statement by intentionally lying to FBI agents about a conversation with NBC newsman Tim Russert;
3. perjury when he lied in court about his conversation with Russert;
4. a second count of perjury when he lied in court about conversations with other reporters.
He faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of $1 million.
Go check out CNN for more.
More like this
Tim Russert, most recently the host of Meet the Press and the Washington Bureau Chief for NBC died earlier today.
For reasons unknown to this observer, Tim Russert has in some parts a reputation as a serious journalist.
Now that I've crawled out of my grant writing burrow (although I expect a slight relapse soon), I realized I missed two great posts by driftglass.
A town full of crazy people in Louisanna got fed up with having their telephone exchange be "666" because of the link between this sequence of numbers and the devil. So they got their exchanged changed to 749. This is very funny.
What took them so long to decide?
He faces ~ 18 months in prison, until Bush pardons him before exiting office.
Or maybe they'll fake his death like Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay, and relocate him to a tropical island somewhere.
Shelley, can you say presidential pardon?
I knew you could!
I just want to know, is he gonna roll over and give us Cheney? And he'd better not get to Ginger and Mary Ann before I do...
How long before a presidential pardon?
Now it's the countdown to the pardon :P
He better hope he gets pardoned, he's on his way to federal prison and his name is "Scooter". :-)
This clip from Office Space is how I anticipate the sentencing hearing to go:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DafpaoyT0l8
So lemme get this straight, you guys think he's gonna be pardoned? :)
George W. Bush will say something to the effect that "Libby performed valuable service for his country" and "He's suffered enough."
Libby Question Turns to Pardon
I took the liberty of emphasizing a word there.
"What took them so long to decide?"
Apparently they spent most of the time being unusually anal, charting out all the evidence on big post-it easel pads. They didn't start deliberating until that was done, and the actual deliberations took about 3 days.