Precedent Clinton
Gina Keating writes for Reuters that the hand that fed the Republicans may now bite them, the poor dears:
A lawyer plans to use a legal precedent that allowed President Bill Clinton to be sued while in office to force Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential adviser Karl Rove to testify in a lawsuit brought by former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband.
California attorney Joseph Cotchett said he will ask a federal court to order Cheney, his ex-chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Rove to testify in depositions about their role in disclosing her classified status.
The civil lawsuit accuses them and others of conspiring to publicly identify Plame as a CIA agent to punish her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for writing in an op-ed piece that the Bush administration twisted intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Cotchett, who took over as trial counsel in Plame's case on Tuesday, said legal precedent for whether Cheney and the others could claim legal immunity in the case comes, in part, from Paula Jones' sexual harassment case against Clinton.
In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a unanimous ruling that neither Clinton "or any other official has an immunity that extends beyond the scope of any action taken in an official capacity." In order to be dismissed from the case or avoid testifying, Cotchett said, lawyers for Cheney and the other men would have to argue that they were acting on government business if they are found to have leaked Plame's name to the media.
Federal law makes it a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert agent.
> Federal law makes it a crime to knowingly
> reveal the identity of a covert agent.
Maybe we should hire a special prosecutor, and give him umpteen millions of dollars over a three-year period to investigate whether Rove and Cheney would likely be convicted of such charges.
Oh, wait.
Crid at August 18, 2006 2:47 AM
Maybe we should recall who invented the idea of a special prosecutor - whose office would still run up expensive charges while the Administration stonewalls.
Oh, wait.
Radwaste at August 18, 2006 5:16 AM
That's silly, self-abnegating, and presumptive, in that order.
Crid at August 18, 2006 10:57 AM
Don't you just love it when republican's shit comes back around to bite them in the ass?
lujlp at August 20, 2006 4:39 AM
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