http://www.lastchancedemocracycafe.com/?p=804If Dick Cheney really does testify in the Libby trial, God would I love to be the one cross-examining him....You see, I know this guy — not personally, but the personality type. As a medical malpractice defense lawyer (back in my pre-café days), I cross-examined guys like this many times — expert witnesses who somehow managed to bring together in one explosive package most of the worst possible attributes a witness can have.
And God be my witness, Dick Cheney has every one of them — an arrogance that exceeds the reality of his abilities, contempt for “lesser people,” a hair-trigger temper when challenged and a willingness to play fast and loose with the truth, confident that no one else is smart enough to catch him....Let’s just say that when witnesses like that go up against competent opposing council, it usually ends badly for them (or at least for the party calling them as a witness).
Personally, I doubt Patrick Fitzgerald has deliberately set out to spring a perjury trap on the VP; that’s more of a Kenneth Starr kind of deal. But the potential for Cheney stumbling into a perjury rap is, I think, very real. Extreme arrogance combined with a willingness to be untruthful tends to be a particularly toxic mixture in a courtroom.
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If the defense strategy really is, as advertised, to cast Libby in the role of the fall guy, setting Cheney up as the real bad guy might prove damn effective. Juries don’t like it when they think the little guy is being picked on while the big cheese is walking free. Selling Scooter Libby as a little guy would obviously take some doing, but if they could succeed, using the Dickster as a foil would make a lot of sense.
It should be an interesting few weeks in the courtroom.
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