March 23, 2005: Lawyers File Brief Challenging Reporters’ Forcible Testimony

Victoria Toensing. [Source: CNN via Media Matters]Lawyers for 36 media organizations file an amici curiae brief with the US Court of Appeals in Washington asking that it overturn a decision to compel reporters Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller to testify before a grand jury hearing evidence in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see February 15, 2005). The brief argues in part that neither Miller nor Cooper should be jailed because “the circumstances necessary to prove” a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) “seem not to be present here,” and therefore the trial court should be ordered to hold a hearing “to determine whether specific elements of the [IIPA]… have been met.” The request will be denied. One of the authors of the brief is Washington lawyer Victoria Toensing, who with her husband Joseph diGenova heads a law firm with deep ties to the Republican Party. (Toensing was a Justice Department official during the Reagan administration and helped write the IIPA.) Toensing will write numerous op-eds and make frequent television appearances denouncing the investigation (see November 3, 2005, February 18, 2007, February 18, 2007, and March 16, 2007), usually without revealing her ties to the case. [US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Court, 3/23/2005 ; Media Matters, 3/6/2007]