Libby indictment devastating for the White House.
The Libby indictment is just out. And though I’ve now read through it, it was necessarily a cursory read. So consider this a preliminary reaction subject to revision.
A few points.
It’s true that perjury charges can in some cases amount to ‘gotchas’, prosecutions brought for minor misstatements or possible lapses of memory.
This ain’t one of those cases.
An indictment is always the prosecutor’s case, unrebutted by the defense. But Fitzgerald seems to make a very powerful case that Libby repeatedly made claims under oath that he simply must have known were false. We’ll have time to go over the details as time goes on. But that’s my sense from a quick read.
Far more important, however, is the rest of the information included in the indictment. If you read the recitation of events which takes up, roughly, the first half of the indictment, one thing is made very clear: Libby was in communication about what he was doing with all sorts of people at the White House while he was doing it.
