FITZ SAYS: Remaining Investigation is to DETERMINE INTENT

[berni_mccoy]

AND EXTENT OF LEAK!

The rainbow ranges between Negligence to Maliciousness!!

[berni_mccoy]

1. He used a BEAUTIFUL BASEBALL ANALOGY

This guy is a GENIUS!

[Luminous Animal]

3. I don't suppose we could actually be privy to this analogy.

Some of us are at work, you know.

[trof]

6. I'll try.

Intent/Motive: Likened it to a batter hit by a pitched ball.
Was it intentional or just a wild pitch?
What went on or was said in the dugout beforehand?
What happened the last innings?
Intent goes to whether the crime was malicious or just inadvertent.

Obstruction of justice: Throwing sand in the umpire's eyes so he can't see what happened.

That's all I can remember.

[kurth]

9. From transcript:

"I've been trying to think about how to explain this, so let me try. I know baseball analogies are the fad these days. Let me try something. If you saw a baseball game and you saw a pitcher wind up and throw a fastball and hit a batter right smack in the head, and it really, really hurt them, you'd want to know why the pitcher did that. And you'd wonder whether or not the person just reared back and decided, I've got bad blood with this batter. He hit two home runs off me. I'm just going to hit him in the head as hard as I can.

You also might wonder whether or not the pitcher just let go of the ball or his foot slipped, and he had no idea to throw the ball anywhere near the batter's head. And there's lots of shades of gray in between. You might learn that you wanted to hit the batter in the back and it hit him in the head because he moved. You might want to throw it under his chin, but it ended up hitting him on the head. And what you'd want to do is have as much information as you could. You'd want to know: What happened in the dugout? Was this guy complaining about the person he threw at? Did he talk to anyone else? What was he thinking? How does he react? All those things you'd want to know.

And then you'd make a decision as to whether this person should be banned from baseball, whether they should be suspended, whether you should do nothing at all and just say, Hey, the person threw a bad pitch. Get over it.

In this case, it's a lot more serious than baseball. And the damage wasn't to one person. It wasn't just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us. And as you sit back, you want to learn: Why was this information going out? Why were people taking this information about Valerie Wilson and giving it to reporters? Why did Mr. Libby say what he did? Why did he tell Judith Miller three times? Why did he tell the press secretary on Monday? Why did he tell Mr. Cooper? And was this something where he intended to cause whatever damage was caused? Or did they intend to do something else and where are the shades of gray?

And what we have when someone charges obstruction of justice, the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He's trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked their view. As you sit here now, if you're asking me what his motives were, I can't tell you; we haven't charged it.

So what you were saying is the harm in an obstruction investigation is it prevents us from making the fine judgments we want to make. I also want to take away from the notion that somehow we should take an obstruction charge less seriously than a leak charge. This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter. But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important. We need to know the truth. And anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime.I will say this: Mr. Libby is presumed innocent. He would not be guilty unless and until a jury of 12 people came back and returned a verdict saying so. But if what we allege in the indictment is true, then what is charged is a very, very serious crime that will vindicate the public interest in finding out what happened here."

[RevolutionStartsNow]

13. And what if the coach told him to throw at the guy's head?

That's the real thing I'd like to after.

Also, did he throw at the guy's head to knock him out of the game? Or make him forget what he knew about forged documents about uranium?

[A-Possum]

15. So does fitz want perjury conviction BEFORE moving to leak indictment

If Libby is convicted of lying, then doesn't that establish a much stronger evidence of a cover up, which points to a =malicious= exposure of an national security asset?

It's obvious that there's no reason to cover up something that wasn't illegal. So getting a conviction for perjury FIRST, before you even indict for the leak, gives you a MUCH stronger case on the leak, no?

That is, if you interview the pitcher and catch him lying about what he was saying about the batter, and the pitcher is convicted of lying on that point--then doesn't that STRONGLY support the next step in which you show that the pitcher was acting maliciously?

Am I just re-stating what everyone else is thinking?

[liveoaktx]

7. He said, basically

that it's like a baseball game where the pitcher throws a ball at the batter really hard and it smashes into the batter. You have to get all the facts about this, like, did the pitcher intentionally throw the ball, was he talking about the batter before the game in the dugout, or could it have been an accident where the ball just got loose? The problem with Scooter is that he's like the guy who throws sand in the face of the umpire so that nobody really can know exactly what happened with the pitcher. Therefore you can't really get to the truth when someone lies to the grand jury.

VIDEOs on CanOFun

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Won't talk about any other names than Libby

Can't talk about what he's working on-can only talk of the one indicted. But won't end investigation until they have fulfilled their responsibility.

[goodhue]

4. Yes, important to theory of case at trial will be motive

Why did Libby lie? Jury will need to be told of reason for lie.

[mmonk]

5. that's right

He was only answering questions involving this specific indictment. Libby's lies got in the way of the criminal investigation and have to be dealt with in that they are a crime in themselves.

[goodhue]

8. Why did Libby lie?

[goodhue]

18. .

[goodhue]

10. Kick for more motive musings

[Loonman]

11. Intent and extent

Hmmmm......this could be long and hard.....

[goodhue]

12. yes

Complicated stuff no doubt

[goodhue]

14. Remaining investigation is about Libby

[gemlake]

16. This part makes me wonder

if Fitz is trying to explain why Liddy's conduct will prevent Fitz from ever seeking an indictment against Liddy for leaking classified information:

"But let's assume, for the moment, that the allegations in the indictment are true. If that is true, you cannot figure out the right judgment to make, whether or not you should charge someone with a serious national security crime or walk away from it or recommend any other course of action, if you don't know the truth."

[goodhue]

17. Indeed, he is explaining why he could not indict for an illegal outing

The judgment on whether to indict for possible illegal outing would turn on targets frame of mind -- did they know they were blowing covert agent's cover, and did they do so intentionally. But Libby denied outing her altogether, throwing sand in Fitz's face. No possible way for Fitz to make judgment as to whether facts fit element of the crime. In contrast, if someone else, say Rove, explained that yes indeed they told the press that Wilson's wife is CIA, but by golly they surely never meant to blow a covert agent's cover, and surely they were chagrined to learn that was the case, they are not likely going to be indicted for illegal outing, IMHO.