May 24, 2006: Fitzgerald May Call Cheney to Testify

Vice President Dick Cheney may be called to testify for the prosecution in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial, says special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in a brief filed with the court. Libby once served as Cheney’s chief of staff and Cheney could authenticate handwritten notes he wrote on a copy of an op-ed written by war critic Joseph Wilson (see May 14, 2006). Furthermore, Fitzgerald says, Cheney’s “state of mind” is directly relevant to the question of Libby’s alleged lying to FBI agents (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and a grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) about leaking the identity of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson. Libby “shared the interests of his superior and was subject to his direction,” Fitzgerald writes in court documents. “Therefore, the state of mind of the vice president as communicated to [the] defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether [the] defendant knowingly made false statements to federal agents and the grand jury regarding when and how he learned about [Plame Wilson’s] employment and what he said to reporters regarding this issue.” Libby’s lawyers have asserted that Fitzgerald would not subpoena Cheney’s testimony, an assertion that Fitzgerald says is premature. “To the best of government’s counsel’s recollection, the government has not commented on whether it intends to call the vice president as a witness.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/24/2006 ; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/24/2006 ; Associated Press, 5/25/2006] Criminal defense lawyer Jeralyn Merritt, covering the Libby prosecution at the progressive blog TalkLeft, explains that Fitzgerald is more concerned with authenticating the handwritten notes Cheney made on Wilson’s op-ed than he is in putting Cheney on the stand. Merritt writes, “Fitz believes this blows a big hole in Libby’s testimony that he learned of Wilson’s wife working for the CIA from Tim Russert on July 10 or 11th” (see 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003, 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003, 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003, (June 12, 2003), and July 10 or 11, 2003). [Jeralyn Merritt, 5/24/2006] Salon reporter Tim Grieve believes that Fitzgerald may well be planning on having Cheney take the stand. In his column, Grieve writes that according to his interpretation of Fitzgerald’s brief, “Fitzgerald makes it clear—without saying so explicitly—that he’d like to put Cheney on the stand [t]o question him about the conversations he had with Libby about Wilson’s column, and in the process to undercut Libby’s claim that those conversations didn’t involve the identity of Wilson’s wife.” [Salon, 5/24/2006]