J$P Instant Transcripts! Reaction to the Libby indictment from Greta van Susteren, Fred Barnes, Mort Kondracke, Chris Wallace, and the Judge.

From Dayside, October 28 2005:

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO [FOX NEWS SENIOR JUDICIAL ANALYST]: I am absolutely jolted, because we were expecting one count of perjury. Instead, the grand jury has charged him with five counts.... Obstruction of Justice is the most serious charge. That means that the prosecutors, the FBI agents, and the grand jurors believe that he intentionally sent them on a wild goose chase, that he intentionally gave them wrong answers so that they would not discover the truth. That is the most serious of these charges.... This is the age old lesson of: the alleged crime comes from the coverup, not from the underlying activity itself.... Lying is usually born of arrogance; you usually think you can pull one over on someone, and as a result it will go away. He perhaps also felt that he wanted to protect his boss, and didn't want his boss's name in this. The conversation between the Vice-President and Lewis Libby, as alleged in here, is absolutely a lawful conversation. They both have maximum top security clearances, they both can discuss classified secret government information. It's taking it out of that context, giving it to a reporter, and claiming you got it from the reporter rather than you gave it to the reporter, that is the essence of the criminal charge here.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN [FOX NEWS]: These are five very serious counts. Everyone's looking at it and analyzing from sort of the political impact on the President of the United States. I look at it as a lawyer. If I were his lawyer I'd be extremely worried... He'd better be shopping for a very good criminal defense lawyer. But let me remind everybody: an indictment is a piece of paper. That's all it is. It's a very serious piece of paper, because it starts proceedings against you.... In this instance apparently, either Mr Libby did commit perjury, or he went in there with a set of facts that the grand jury and the prosecutor simply didn't believe.

FRED BARNES: He had to resign; there was no question about that.... It is important that the underlying incident, the underlying charge of a CIA undercover agent getting outed, there was no charge there. That would really have made this case much, much bigger.

MORT KONDRACKE: I've talked to him many times about foreign policy issues, and it never occurred to me to call about Joe Wilson, because I thought Joe Wilson and that whole issue of uranium and nuclear weapons and all that was such a minor part of the whole reason for going to war, that I never thought it was such a big deal.... What is the lie about? That is what everybody's going to be watching for. What is this alleged perjury to cover up? Is it to cover up some huge conspiracy that was going on, which was not charged in this thing? Why did he do it? What more will come out? That's what's interesting.

NAPOLITANO: There is enough basis in this document for the prosecutor to have charged that Libby, along with others, intended to deceive the grand jury, and one of those others could have been the Vice-President. But the prosecutor and the grand jurors elected not to do that.

CHRIS WALLACE [FOX NEWS]: It is a very strong case that the special prosecutor has made here.... You read the charges, and it seems, if it's true, to have been a remarkably foolish series of acts by a very smart man, in this case Lewis Libby. Because basically what the prosecutor is saying is that Libby was in a fever...to find out about this..... Then Libby goes to talk to investigators and to the grand jury that he was hearing about this from Tim Russert of NBC.... The reporters all denied what Libby had said, and when they went to see various people evidently in the government...they all told them no, no, we told Libby in the first place. So you wonder how he ever thought, again it's an allegation, how he ever could have possibly thought he could get away with this deception.

VAN SUSTEREN: We all think this is not particularly good news for a defendant to be assigned to a case with Judge [Reggie] Walton. He has for years done what everybody calls hits a long ball. He sentences for as long as he possibly can and that's not particularly good for any accused.