Thanks to BayStateLibrul for pointing out this provocative comment from Patrick Fitzgerald after yesterday’s Rezko verdict:

The White House Rasputin, Karl "The Architect" Rove, also was mentioned in the trial, as was former House Speaker Dennis "Don’t Ask Me About My Land Deal" Hastert, alleged to have been part of an effort by the bipartisan Illinois Combine to get rid of Fitzgerald. To demonstrate their kinship, Cellini and Rezko flew out to Washington on a play date and visited a White House reception with President Bush, where Kjellander joined them.

Later in the Rezko trial, two witnesses said that Rezko told them not to worry about the criminal investigation, because the Republicans—Rove and Kjellander—would get rid of Fitzgerald. Hastert would install a friendly federal puppy who wouldn’t bother the Combine, according to the testimony. "The federal prosecutor will no longer be the same federal prosecutor," testified Elie Maloof, a Rezko associate who is now a cooperating witness.

And a state pension board lawyer who has already pleaded guilty told grand jurors that Cellini told him "Bob Kjellander’s job is to take care of the U.S. attorney."

The Illinois Republican Party holds its own convention this week in Decatur. The party establishment, which has long been cozy with the Daley Democrats at City Hall, has done little or nothing to rid the Illinois GOP of Kjellander and Cellini influence.

"If I owe a response [about the putsch to remove him from his job], I owe it to Congress, first," Fitzgerald said when asked about all this after the verdict. [my emphasis]

Well, now that you mention it, Fitz, I seem to recall that Congress did ask you questions about this issue–questions that you obliquely passed on because of an ongoing criminal trial.

But that’s not the version of the "what if you got fired" question that I find most interesting. Rather, there’s a question that asks specifically if Fitzgerald became aware of efforts to fire him during the course of the CIA Leak investigation. Fizgerald refuses to answer … because of the ongoing Rezko case.

[snip]

During the CIA leak investigation, were you aware of any conversations that you might be asked to resign? If so please describe all such conversations, including the substance of the conversations, when they occurred, and the names of those who participated.

I do not know if the referenced account of events is correct or not.

As to whether I was aware during the relevant time period of the investigation that I might be asked to resign, I will respectfully decline to discuss matters currently at issue in a trial ongoing in the Northern District of Illinois.

Fitzgerald is referring, of course, to the multiple times during the Rezko trial when a witness has testified that Rezko and Bob Kjellander talked about having Rove fire Fitzgerald to scuttle the investigation into Chicago corruption. But that’s not, of course, what HJC asked him–they asked him about the CIA Leak case, and they made a reference specifically to coverage of the USA Purge.

Let’s see. Fitz "respectfully decline[s] to discuss matters currently at issue in a trial ongoing." The trial is over. And on the day the trial ends, Fitz says, "I owe Congress" a response about Kjellander’s and Rove’s efforts to get him fired???

I’m reading that message loud and clear, Chairman Conyers. Are you?

Via POGO, the Pentagon has made two key documents relating to the military’s use of torture available on its website: a March 2003 JAG Memo slamming a draft of the Working Group’s Report on Detainee Interrogation, and the Working Group’s Report which was published the following month. As POGO notes, these documents were declassified some time ago (Marty Lederman had posted the JAG one here and WaPo posted the report here), but they provide important context to the discussions surrounding John Yoo’s March 2003 Torture Memo.

I’ll come back to the Working Group Report (which lays out the potential risks for when the public discovers the US is using torture and has a nifty list of the ways our interrogation techniques would piss off our allies), but for now I just wanted to show how dubious the Judge Advocate general, General Thomas Romig, found John Yoo’s (and the Administration’s) Unitary Executive theories to be:

The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), Department of Justice (DOJ), provided DOD with its analysis of international and domestic law as it relates to the interrogation of detainees held by the United States Government. This analysis was incorporated into the subject draft Report and forms, almost exclusively, the legal framework for the Report’s Conclusions, Recommendations, and PowerPoint spreadsheet analysis of interrogation techniques in issue. I am concerned with several pivotal aspects of the OLC opinion.

While the OLC analysis speaks to a number of defenses that could be raised on behalf of those who engage in interrogation techniques later perceived to be illegal, the "bottom line" defense proffered by OLC is an exceptionally broad concept of "necessity." This defense is based on the premise that any existing federal statutory provision or international obligation is unconstitutional per se, where it otherwise prohibits conduct viewed by the President, acting in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, as essential to his capacity to wage war. I question whether this theory would ultimately prevail in either the U.S. courts or in any international forum. If such a defense is not available, soldiers ordered to use otherwise illegal techniques run a substantial risk of criminal prosecution or personal liability arising from a civil lawsuit.

The OLC opinion states further that customary international law cannot bind the U.S. Executive Branch as it is not part of the federal law. As such, any presidential decision made in the context of the ongoing war on terrorism constitutes a "controlling" Executive act; one that immediately and automatically displaces any contrary provision of customary international law. This view runs contrary to the historic position taken by the United States Government concerning such laws and, in our opinion, could adversely impact DOD interests worldwide. On the one hand, such a policy will open us to international criticism that the "U.S. is a law unto itself." On the other, implementation of questionable techniques will very likely establish a new baseline for acceptable practices in this area, putting our service personnel at far greater risk and vitiating many of the POW/detainee safeguards the U.S. has worked hard to establish over the past five decades. [bold my emphasis]

I guess this makes clear–as if we didn’t already know–why Cheney wanted to control the promotions process for JAGs. As Romig himself said of Cheney’s efforts,

Retired Major General Thomas Romig, the Army’s top JAG from 2001 to 2005, called the proposal an attempt "to control the military JAGs" by sending a message that if they want to be promoted, they should be "team players" who "bow to their political masters on legal advice."

It "would certainly have a chilling effect on the JAGs’ advice to commanders," Romig said. "The implication is clear: without [the administration’s] approval the officer will not be promoted."

As Marty and Scott Horton and Jane Mayer have reported extensively, this JAG memo (and the others at Marty’s link) show the degree to which DOD was warned against accepting John Yoo’s advice. Curious that the DOD is making this all more accessible now, just as we’re about to start the Gitmo Show Trials.

Update: opps, mistranscribed "broad."

Jeebus. First we confirm that the British defense company BAE was funneling bribe money into Soviet covert ops. And now we learn (h/t scribe) that DOD has a jet fuel contract with Gaith Pharaon.

Pharaon is best known for his central role in the BCCI scandal. As a seemingly wealthy Saudi, he served as a perfect front for BCCI, which wanted to purchase an American bank to make it easier to get money in and out of the US. So Pharaon schmoozed all the right people in Georgia (including a number of high level Democrats with ties to Jimmy Carter) and got BCCI its approval for the bank.

Well, now we’re back in business with him, to the tune of $80 million.

The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.

The Saudi businessman was also named in a 2002 French parliamentary report as having links to informal money transfer networks called hawala, known to be used by traders and terrorists, including Al Qaeda.

Interestingly, Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush’s first business venture, Arbusto Energy.

[snip]

An official at Attock, who did not wish to be named, confirmed the refinery was supplying thousands of tons of jet fuel to the US base at Bagram Air Base every month.

Is it just me, or does anyone else doubt that the money for a contract in Afghanistan with a known money-launderer with ties to hawala is really going to jet fuel? I mean, c’mon, really. This guy’s in the business of laundering money for the rich and powerful, and apparently his clients now include the Pentagon.

You’ve probably heard that McCain’s campaign challenged Obama to do a series of town hall debates starting next week. It’s an interesting idea, down to McCain’s suggestion they fly together to the first one (but I gotta warn McCain–I don’t think Michelle will let Obama fly on the SugarMomma Express, not even if McCain proposes it in the interest of civility).

What’s more interesting to me is the imagery both campaigns are appealing to with their competing proposals. McCain pitched the town halls as a repeat of town halls that Goldwater and Kennedy planned to do–no doubt appealing to Obama’s self-conscious appropriation of the Kennedy legacy, not to mention McCain’s fanciful notion that he inherited the Goldwater legacy, and not just his seat.

In 1963, Senator Barry Goldwater and President John F. Kennedy agreed to make presidential campaign history by flying together from town to town and debating each other face-to-face on the same stage. In Goldwater’s words, those debates "would have done the country a lot of good." Unfortunately, with President Kennedy’s untimely death, Americans lost the rare opportunity of witnessing candidates for the highest office in the land discuss civilly and extensively the great issues at stake in the election. What a welcome change it would be were presidential candidates in our time to treat each other and the people they seek to lead with respect and courtesy as they discussed the great issues of the day, without the empty sound bites and media-filtered exchanges that dominate our elections. It is in the spirit of President Kennedy’s and Senator Goldwater’s agreement, in the spirit of the politics of change, and to do our country good, that I invite you to join me in participating in town hall meetings across the country to discuss the most important issues facing Americans. I also suggest we fly together to the first town hall meeting as a symbolically important act embracing the politics of civility.

(Incidentally, no one, thus far, has created a media firestorm suggesting that McCain has wished ill on Obama by referring to JFK’s assassination.)

McCain’s pitch for a town hall format, of course, is an attempt to get Obama on his–McCain’s–preferred turf. Small venues, pollsters pick the audience, unscripted exchanges. It’s an attempt to avoid the disaster of the green ghoul speech from last night.

Obama might like unscripted exchanges, but he was not about to allow McCain to push such preferential terms for himself. So in response, they proposed the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

As Barack Obama has said before, the idea of joint town halls is appealing and one that would allow a great conversation to take place about the need to change the direction of this country. We would recommend a format that is less structured and lengthier than the McCain campaign suggests, one that more closely resembles the historic debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. But, having just secured our party’s nomination, this is one of the many items we will be addressing in the coming days and look forward to discussing it with the McCain campaign,

Of course, Abraham Lincoln is the other president Obama self-consciously fashions himself after, going back to his campaign kick-off in Springfield. Also note–the Hillary campaign tried to goad Obama into additional debates in April by pitching a Lincoln-Douglas debate, a format that would have served her well.

But a Lincoln-Douglas debate, a public celebration of policy discussion, a chance to orate with large audiences, that would seem to favor Obama (particularly if McCain continues to forget the difference between Sunni and Shia).

This could get mighty interesting.

Isn’t that nice? The Siegelman prosecutors have decided maybe it isn’t so important to jail Don Siegelman for 30 years after all.

Federal prosecutors are no longer seeking stiffer prison sentences for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy. 

Prosecutors filed a motion this week with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asking that their appeals of the sentences be dropped. Their appeal had called for a longer prison term than Siegelman’s more than seven-year sentence and Scrushy’s almost seven-year sentence.

The latest filing does not say why prosecutors want to drop their appeal.

I can’t imagine why, when everyone in the country is close to concluding that the entire prosecution was a big political witch hunt, they don’t want to go argue for more prison time for Siegelman. Can you?

Perhaps this means we’ll see prosecutors making a motion in a few weeks saying, "golly, maybe we didn’t really want to prosecute Siegelman after all."

Man, if you had to choose whom to believe between John Yoo or Alice Fisher and Michael Chertoff who would it be? John Yoo is a hack–but he’s an unashamed hack, proud of his accomplishments. Alice Fisher? Michael Chertoff? They’re more of the dishonest hack type.

The reason I ask is that there’s a seeming contradiction between what Yoo claims in his March 2003 torture memo regarding DOD practices and Alice Fisher and Michael Chertoff’s statements to DOJ’s OIG regarding related events. At issue is whether the Criminal Division of DOJ–Fisher was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in 2003, and just resigned from Criminal Division Chief; Chertoff was head of the Criminal Division when the Administration was developing its torture policies–told OLC how they would treat certain actions criminally. The Yoo Torture Memo claims that OLC had consulted with the Criminal Division about which statutes would not apply to the military during the conduct of war:

The Criminal Division concurs in our conclusion that these canons of construction preclude the application of the assault, maiming, interstate stalking, and torture statutes to the military during the conduct of a war.

But the DOJ OIG report on torture records Alice Fisher stating that the Criminal Division did not give advice–at least not on the techniques themselves.

Fisher stated that at some point she became aware that the CIA requested advice regarding specific interrogation techniques and that OLC had conducted a legal analysis. She also said she was aware of two OLC memoranda on that topic, but they did not relate to the FBI. Fisher also told the OIG that Chertoff was very clear that the Criminal Division was not giving advice on which interrogation techniques were permissible and was not "signing off" in advance on any techniques. (page 70fn; 113/438)

And Chertoff claims that he was asked–but refused to give–sign off on particular techniques.

Chertoff said that the Criminal Division was asked to provide an "advance declination" in connection with the CIA’s use of some techniques, but that he had refused to provide it.  (page 100-101; 143-4/438)

In the sentence immediately following the description of Chertoff’s denial, it also describes Chertoff admitting that he reviewed the memo.

In testimony before the U.S. Senate on February 2, 2005, Chertoff stated that he was asked to review a draft of an OLC memorandum that eventually became the August 1, 2002, OLC memorandum regarding "Standards of Conduct for Interrogation," which is sometimes referred to as the "Yoo memorandum." Chertoff stated in his Senate testimony and his OIG interview that at least some of the CIA "techniques" were described to him at the time.

And then in a footnote, it reminds that the memo Chertoff reviewed did specifically address whether torture would or would not be charged.

This general opinion did not describe any specific interrogation techniques, but did include an examination of "possible defenses that would negate any claim that certain interrogation methods violate the statute" prohibiting torture. A separate DOJ opinion issued the same day stated that the specific techniques approved …

The reason this matters is because if Chertoff did sign off on what would and would not be charged, then the memos basically become attempts to make the illegal legal. Marty Lederman explains,

From all that appears, John was not acting entirely on his own with respect to the March 14th Opinion. Section II of the memo is where much of the most astounding legal analysis appears. In that section, John concludes that the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming, and stalking (i.e., threats) simply do not apply to the military in the conduct of war, by virtue of four "canons of construction": (i) that criminal statutes should not be construed to apply to the military during war; (ii) that they should not be construed to apply to the sovereign more broadly; (iii) that they are superseded as to the military by the Uniform Code of Military Justice; and (iv) of course, that if Congress did mean for them to apply in this context, it would be a violation of the Commander in Chief’s prerogatives.

The memo’s application of these canons to these statues (especially the torture statute) is, in my opinion, fairly outrageous, for reasons I’ll discuss in further posts. And this section is the heart of the Opinion — the belts and suspenders in support of the basic conclusion that the military need not worry itself about all of these (and other) criminal laws in interrogation of al Qaeda suspects.

Here’s the remarkable thing: Page 11 of the Opinion states that "[t]he Criminal Division concurs in our conclusion that these canons of construction preclude the application of the assault, maiming, interstate stalking, and torture statutes to the military during the conduct of a war."

In other words, John Yoo checked with the Criminal Division as to whether the military could torture and maim detainees in a war, and that Division, which ordinarily strongly resists narrowing constructions of criminal statutes, agreed that the torture and maiming (and other) statutes were inapplicable.

Now, as I said upthread, this is a seeming contradiction. What Fisher and Chertoff appear to be denying is that they bought off on any specific torture techniques. That’s different, of course, than buying off on the concept that the Criminal Division would not prosecute torture per se during wartime.

So actually, with their carefully parsed responses, Fisher and Chertoff are probably not lying. They’re just trying to distract from the fact that Chertoff bought off on the larger concept that DOJ would not prosecute torture in time of war–and then gave Yoo the leeway to decide for himself what kinds of torture he wanted to authorize. 

I wanted to add one detail to my earlier post about Waxman asking for more materials from Mukasey. They imply that Condi had a conversation with Bush or Cheney about Rove and/or Libby’s so-called innocence.

Waxman’s letter asks for the following:

I am writing now to renew the Committee’s request for the interview reports with President Bush and Vice President Cheney and to request unredacted versions of the interviews with Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Scott McClellan, and Cathie Martin. I also request that the Department provide all other responsive documents that were approved for release to the Committee by Mr. Fitzgerald.

[snip]

I therefore urge you to follow Justice Department precedents and provide the records of the FBI interviews with President Bush and Vice President Cheney to the Committee by June 10. I also ask that you provide to the Committee, at the same time, the unredacted interviews with Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Scott McClellan, and Cathie Martin, as well as the other responsive records requested by the Committee.

In other words, his letter written specifically in response to Scottie McC’s revelations asks for unredacted copies of Scottie’s interview, but also Rove’s, Libby’s, Condi’s, and Cathie Martin’s interviews. Mind you, Waxman has seen redacted copies of these, but Scottie’s revelations lead him to demand unredacted interview reports.

Waxman tells us what is redacted in Scottie’s interview report.

In his FBI interview, Mr. McClellan told the FBI about discussions he had with the President and the Vice President. These passages, however, were redacted from the copies made available to the Committee.

And he implies that that’s what was redacted from the other interviews, as well.

Similar passages were also redacted from other interviews.

There are no sound reasons for you to withhold the interviews with the President and the Vice President from the Committee or to redact passages like Mr. McClellan’s discussions with the President and the Vice President.

From which we might conclude that those redacted passages in the Rove, Libby, Cathie Martin, and Condi interview reports are, at the very least, about conversations with Bush or Cheney, and possibly, discussions specifically about the exoneration of Rove and Libby.

We know Rove could have testified about this–Scottie McC’s book tells us that Rove told Bush directly that he was "innocent." Similarly, we know that Libby had such conversations with Cheney–in fact, passages describing those conversations appear, totally unredacted, in the grand jury testimony.

I’m not surprised that Cathie Martin had a conversation with (probably) Cheney about the leak. After all, the one email that had been destroyed and was subsequently turned over to prosecutors shows Martin and Jenny Mayfield closely watching for Scottie’s exoneration of Libby. So we know that Mayfield and Martin were following that exoneration.

But Condi? We know almost nothing about Condi’s testimony.

Now I’m just guessing from the context that that testimony might pertain to a conversation between Rice and Bush about which of Bush’s top aides had claimed to be innocent of the leak. Wouldn’t it be interesting if Bush went out of his way to tell Condi that Rove didn’t leak Plame’s name?

Though there is one more possibility.

In one of the pages of Libby’s notes, he records Stephen Hadley passing on Condi’s assurances that the President is comfortable.

The notation appears in a meeting in which Libby, Cheney, and Hadley were discussing their response to Joe Wilson. The meeting included discussions of "Wilson" being declassified, and the NIE not yet being declassified.

And then there’s that "CP" in the margin. Which Libby has been known to use as shorthand for Colin Powell. As well as shorthand for Counterproliferation Department, the part of the CIA in which Plame worked.

We know, from this note, that Condi had a conversation with Bush contemporaneously (well, before the Novak column, though not before the bulk of the leaking). That conversation pertained to precisely those documents that Bush authorized to be leak–or at least the NIE (though remember–supposedly Bush and Cheney and Libby kept their NIE leaking secret from everyone else in the Administration).

You think maybe Waxman wants to know what the content of that conversation between Rice and Bush was, right in the middle of leak week?

Henry Waxman noted the same thing that I did about Scottie McClellan’s book. He noticed that Scottie McC’s book sure came close to saying Dick Cheney and George Bush were personally involved in the outing of Valerie Wilson.

New revelations by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan raise additional questions about the actions of the President and the Vice President. Mr. McClellan has stated that "[t]he President and Vice President directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby." He has also asserted that "the top White House officials who knew the truth – including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney – allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie." It would be a major breach of trust if the Vice President personally directed Mr. McClellan to mislead the public.

Now, I’ve been quietly trying to find out whether or not Michael Muksaey had handed over Bush and Cheney’s interview transcripts to Henry Waxman. Seeing as how he’s asking again, I’d say the answer’s no.

On December 3, 2007, I wrote to request that you arrange for the production of documents relating to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of the covert identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson, including copies of FBI interview reports of White House officials. I appreciate that you have since made redacted versions of the interview reports of Karl Rove, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and other senior White House officials available to the Committee.

I am writing now to renew the Committee’s request for the interview reports with President Bush and Vice President Cheney and to request unredacted versions of the interviews with Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Scott McClellan, and Cathie Martin. I also request that the Department provide all other responsive documents that were approved for release to the Committee by Mr. Fitzgerald. [my emphasis]

And in the remainder of Waxman’s letter, he makes it clear that doing anything less than turning this information over to Waxman’s committee is a deliberate attempt to cover up the fact that Dick Cheney outed Valerie Plame, with Bush’s involvement.

In his interview with the FBI, Mr. Libby stated that it was "possible" that Vice President Cheney instructed him to disseminate information about Ambassador Wilson’s wife to the press. This is a significant revelation and, if true, a serious matter. It cannot be responsibly investigated without access to the Vice President’s FBI interview.

The interviews with senior White House officials also raise other questions about the involvement of the Vice President. It appears from the interview reports that Vice President Cheney personally may have been the source of the information that Ms. Wilson worked for the CIA. Mr. Libby specifically identified the Vice President as the source of his information about Ms. Wilson. None of the other White House officials could remember how they learned this information.

[snip]

In his FBI interview, Mr. McClellan told the FBI about discussions he had with the President and the Vice President. These passages, however, were redacted from the copies made available to the Committee. Similar passages were also redacted from other interviews.

There are no sound reasons for you to withhold the interviews with the President and the Vice President from the Committee or to redact passages like Mr. McClellan’s discussions with the President and the Vice President. Mr. Fitzgerald’s investigation is closed and he has indicated that it would be appropriate to share these records with the Committee. There has been no assertion of executive privilege.

Moreover, withholding these documents would create an unfortunate double standard. During the Clinton Administration, the Committee requested the records of FBI interviews with President Clinton and Vice President Gore in 1997 and 1998 as part of the Committee’s campaign finance investigation. These records were turned over to the Committee by the Justice Department without any consultation with the White House.

The Committee is conducting an important investigation to answer questions that Mr. Fitzgerald’s criminal inquiry did not address. As I explained at the Committee’s hearing last year, the purpose of the Committee’s investigation is to examine:

(1) How did such a serious violation of our national security occur? (2) Did the White House take appropriate investigative and disciplinary steps after the breach occurred? And (3) what changes in White House security procedures are necessary to prevent future violations of our national security from occurring?

The information that you are withholding may hold answers to these questions. The FBI interview reports that you have shared with the Committee raise the possibility that Vice President Cheney may be implicated in the release of Ms. Wilson’s identity. Mr. McClellan’s recent disclosures indicate that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney played a role in directing the White House response. The Committee cannot complete its inquiry into these matters without receiving the reports of their FBI interviews. [my emphasis]

Does anyone think that I’ve been crazy anymore, for arguing for the last two years that Dick Cheney ordered Scooter Libby to out Valerie Wilson? Because it sure seems like even Libby cedes that argument. And it sure seems like Waxman is intent to find out–or expose Mukasey for covering up the involvement of Bush and Cheney.

As several of you have pointed out, Geoffrey Fieger and his law partner, Ven Johnson, were acquitted yesterday of all charges against them. While there was no question that Fieger and Johnson had reimbursed their employees for donations to John Edwards in 2004, the government did not prove that Fieger and Johnson intended to evade campaign finance laws, and therefore did not prove that they had broken the law.

I think the government lost this case for a number of reasons. First, Fieger’s team made a reasonable argument that the law in question doesn’t explicitly forbid reimbursement of employees; it only forbids giving in another person’s name. This made Fieger’s claim that he had researched the law and determined he could do what he did–reimburse employees–without believing he was evading the law.

Just as importantly, the government repeatedly put witnesses on the stand that severely damaged its case. For example, it put Jeffrey Danzig on the stand only to have him testify about how common reimbursed donations are in the legal community.

“I’ve done exactly what I’ve done at the Fieger firm that’s the subject of this litigation on numerous occasions through my legal career at another firm,” Jeffrey Danzig testified on direct examination.

Fieger and partner Vernon (Ven) Johnson are charged with breaking campaign finance laws. Money was collected from employees, friends, relatives and other for the 2004 John Edwards presidential bid and the donations were then reimbursed by law firm checks.

The times he’d done the same thing while at the Lopatin-Miller law office were “too many to count,” Danzing said in later cross-examination.

Danzig also discredited the government’s key witness, Jay Humphrey.

Finally, though he’s a blowhard, Fieger did not botch his own testimony, and apparently convincingly argued that he would never do anything that might ruin his career. Which seems to be why the jurors voted not to convict.

“I think it was the lack of evidence that got us to our decision,” said juror Krista First 24, an accountant from Adrian.

Juror Maria Kruger, 42, a college student from Clinton Township, said there was no logical explanation for why Fieger and Johnson would commit career suicide over political contributions.

“I can’t imagine you would intentionally destroy your lives and the lives of the people around you,” she said.

Scott Horton reminds us that this is one of many cases that raised questions about selective prosecution. Now, frankly, if John Conyers thought there was an easy way to make hayout of a case in his own city, I suspect he would have made it. Sure, there is no doubt that the AG, one Supreme Court Judge, and the US Attorney have reasons to gun for Fieger. Sure, they went way overboard in sending 80 agents–in a city with significant terrorism investigations that never muster 80 agent stings–to question Fieger’s employees. Fieger is so notorious in the this town, though, it’s hard to separate an average FBI aegnt’s desire to take on a big legal blowhard from the AG’s desire to do so.

Mostly, though, I suspect that Republicans found Jay Humphrey while conducting a state-level investigation, and coached him to walk in the FBI’s front door to launch this case. Humphrey got fired from Fieger’s firm long after he complained about the donation scheme; after the charges were filed, Humphrey sued Fieger for wrongful termination (his attorney is one of the guys who fights the Republicans’ anti-affirmative action battles in the state), so he’s the classic disgruntled employee getting his revenge using something that–temporally at least–seems entirely unconnected. Sending Humphrey through to the FBI apparently of his own accord would have been a way for the state’s obviously personalized and politicized witch hunts against Fieger to try again at the federal level in a way that was, on the surface, clean from political taint. (This is precisely how Republicans inserted Linda Tripp–and with her, Monica Lewinsky–into Ken Starr’s investigation of Bill Clinton.)

And frankly, I think it was due more to the fact that the FBI agent and the AUSA investigating the case got so excited about taking down Fieger–therefore got really really sloppy–than any proper exercise of justice that the government didn’t win its case.

I’m really fascinated that–after Dana Pig Missile got asked whether Bush authorized the leak of Valerie Wilson’s identity–Bob Novak has decided to wade into the Scottie McC attack industry to try to distract attention away from that near-confirmation in Scottie McC’s book that Bush authorized the leak of Valerie Wilson’s identity (h/t dakine).

In Scott McClellan’s purported tell-all memoir of his trials as President Bush’s press secretary, he virtually ignores Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s role leaking to me Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA employee. That fits the partisan Democratic version of the Plame affair, in keeping with the overall tenor of the book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception."

[snip]

In claiming he was misled about the Plame affair, McClellan mentions Armitage only twice. Armitage being the leaker undermines the Democratic theory, now accepted by McClellan, that Bush, Vice President Cheney and political adviser Karl Rove aimed to delegitimize Wilson as a war critic. The way that McClellan handles the leak leads former colleagues to suggest he could not have written this book by himself.

Thanks Novak! I’ve been wondering what these checks from Scottie’s publisher are for! Come to find out I’ve secretly ghost-written Scottie’s book without even knowing about it. But why is it, I wonder, that you neglect to mention one of the villains of our "conspiracy theory," convicted felon Scooter Libby?

Novak is explicitly pissed that Scottie’s book undercuts the narrative (some might call it a cover story) that Novak, Rove, Libby, Cheney, and Bush have cultivated about the leak: that it was all about Richard Armitage.

On Page 173, McClellan first mentions my Plame leak, but he does not identify Armitage as the leaker until Page 306 of the 323-page book — and then only in passing. Armitage, who was antiwar and anti-Cheney, does not fit the conspiracy theory that McClellan now buys into. When, after two years, Armitage publicly admitted that he was my source, the life went out of Wilson’s campaign. In "What Happened," McClellan dwells on Rove’s alleged deceptions as if the real leaker were still unknown.

Of course, Novak knows well that the Armitage story was always only a shiny object, one that distracted from the classified information–almost certainly Valerie Wilson’s identity–that Cheney ordered Libby to leak to Judy Miller. It distracts from the curious conversation that Novak had with Libby during leak week, one they both apparently tried to hide, and a conversation that was still early enough for Libby to pass on the news that Valerie was a covert operative. And it distracts from the fact that the first thing Libby did on the morning that OVP went into hyper-drive researching Joe and, eventually, Valerie Wilson was to listen to Bush explain that he was concerned about the Kristoff story.

You get the feeling Novak’s trying to restore the power of the shiny object that has been fading over time?