There is one other giant difference between the Libby and the Blagojevich matters besides that arrest, of course: The Blagojevich matter has resulted in near-instantaneous impeachment. Now we see clearly how readily a public official can be impeached, when the political will is found to do so. And arrest—however dubious, ill-founded, and bizarre—is clearly the disgrace to a public official that a just arrest should be. So we see by these presents that impeachment—of Bush and Cheney--might well have been a viable path forward, had arrest been a factor in the CIA leak investigation.
Regrettably, the Bush White House ended up exempted—legally, though not politically—from the investigation into the CIA leak, which never became an impeachment inquiry. The best historical parallel here might be the Marc Rich investigation, also conducted by Fitzgerald, back in the eighties. Fugitive financier Marc Rich, involved up to his ears in Iran-Contra, was indicted on numerous counts of tax fraud and fled the country; one of his attorneys was Scooter Libby. But the fraud investigation never became part of full-fledged investigation into Iran-Contra and never reached the Reagan White House.
The arrest of Blagojevich is at least shedding some illumination in retrospect.
Margie Burns is a journalist in Washington, D.C., with a blog at www.margieburns.com. She covered the spring 2007 trial of I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby.
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