The Left had a field day over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s remarks on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning in which she downplayed possible perjury and obstruction of justice indictments this week in the Rove/Plame/Miller/Libby/God-knows-who-else leak case. I watched the rebroadcast of the show tonight and have to say that I found Hutchison’s pooh-poohing more than a bit disturbing. Read for yourself (full transcript at MSNBC.com) how Sen. Hutchison responded to Russert’s question about whether White House denials of Rove and Libby’s involvement in 2003 are true:

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Hutchison, you think those comments from the White House are credible?

SEN. HUTCHISON: Tim, you know, I think we have to remember something here. An indictment of any kind is not a guilty verdict, and I do think we have in this country the right to go to court and have due process and be innocent until proven guilty. And secondly, I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars. So they go to something that trips someone up because they said something in the first grand jury and then maybe they found new information or they forgot something and they tried to correct that in a second grand jury.

I think we should be very careful here, especially as we are dealing with something very public and people’s lives in the public arena. I do not think we should prejudge. I think it is unfair to drag people through the newspapers week after week after week, and let’s just see what the charges are. Let’s tone down the rhetoric and let’s make sure that if there are indictments that we don’t prejudge.

MR. RUSSERT: But the fact is perjury or obstruction of justice is a very serious crime and Republicans certainly thought so when charges were placed against Bill Clinton before the United States Senate. Senator Hutchison.

SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, there were charges against Bill Clinton besides perjury and obstruction of justice. And I’m not saying that those are not crimes. They are. But I also think that we are seeing in the judicial process–and look at Martha Stewart, for instance, where they couldn’t find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn’t a crime. I think that it is important, of course, that we have a perjury and an obstruction of justice crime, but I also think we are seeing grand juries and U.S. attorneys and district attorneys that go for technicalities, sort of a gotcha mentality in this country. And I think we have to weigh both sides of this issue very carefully and not just jump to conclusions, because someone is in the public arena, that they are guilty without being able to put their case forward. I really object to that.

Um, has anyone suggested that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is a “gotcha” kind of guy who would throw away his good reputation by pursuing “technicalities” instead of “real” crimes? I haven’t heard anyone on our side suggest anything of the kind. Andrew McCarthy, a former U.S. attorney and NRO contributor whose opinion I have the highest respect for, said this about his former co-worker Fitzgerald (via MSNBC):

He’s a pit bull and he’s also the best and most honorable guy I know. I think that the country is in good hands having this particular investigation, in particular in his hands.

I’ll take McCarthy’s first-hand knowledge over Sen. Hutchison’s insinuations.

The New York Times, for what it’s worth, reports that Sen. Hutchison’s tactics are part of a coordinated GOP strategy to “blunt leak charges.” If that is true (contrary to the unhinged Left, I’m not on the White House talking points e-mail list), I really object to that–and so should every other rule-of-law Republican. Perjury and obstruction of justice are serious crimes, whether committed by D’s, R’s, or otherwise. Period.

Sen. Hutchison would have been better off adopting fellow Republican Sen. George Allen’s simple, candid answer to Russert’s question about what Rove and Libby did or didn’t discuss:

SEN. ALLEN: I don’t know. I know that’s rare from a politician. I don’t know. I’ve been more focused on Harriet Miers’ qualifications and reducing energy prices and others, and I’ll leave this to the prosecution and by the way, again, due process rather than a lot of speculation on what actually is known or not said in testimony in a very closed grand jury proceeding.

Sometimes, no spin is the most effective spin.

***

Speaking of things that make your head spin, The Political Teen highlights the insanely unhealthy obsession some in the MSM have with Rove and Libby.

Jeff Goldstein adds perspective.

So does the WSJ editorial page, which argues:

Let’s stipulate that the law is the law, and if Bush Administration officials lied to a grand jury in the clear and obvious way that Bill Clinton did, they should be prosecuted. If Mr. Fitzgerald has evidence of a malicious attempt to expose a CIA undercover agent, as defined by the relevant statute, the same applies. But the fact that the prosecutor has waited as long as he has–until the last days of his grand jury–suggests that he considers this a less than obvious case. A close call deserves to be a no call.

All the more so because this entire probe began and has continued as a kind of proxy for the larger political war about the Iraq War. In July 2003, Joseph Wilson used his insider status as a former CIA consultant to accuse the Bush Administration of lying about Iraq WMD as an excuse to go to war. A political furor erupted, and Mr. Wilson became an antiwar celebrity who joined the Kerry for President campaign.

Amid an election campaign and a war, Bush Administration officials understandably fought back. One way they did so was to tell reporters that Mr. Wilson’s wife, CIA analyst Valerie Plame, had been instrumental in getting him the CIA consulting job. This was true–though Mr. Wilson denied it at the time–as a bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee documented in 2004.

As it does many times each year following a press report with classified information, the CIA routinely referred this “leak” about Ms. Plame’s status to the Justice Department for investigation. Only after someone (probably at the CIA) leaked news of this referral to the media in September 2003 was there another political uproar and calls for a “special prosecutor.” Three months later, the panicky Bush Administration relented, and Mr. Fitzgerald was appointed.

***
Tom Maguire at Just One Minute has all the latest on this case.

comments (0)   trackbacks (17)