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June 05, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - June 5

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VICTORIA TOENSING, FMR DPY ASST ATTORNEY GENERAL: Throughout the whole trial, Fitzgerald said that the status of Valerie Plame was not relevant and refused to give the defense any information of her status.

At sentencing, he comes up with the theory that the judge should sentence Scooter Libby as if he has violated a statute saying (INAUDIBLE)...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, their you got a sense from Victoria Toensing of some of the issues in the case and as well, you got a sense of the atmosphere at the courthouse as Scooter Libby emerged after been sentenced to two-and-a- half years in jail plus a big fine in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Some thoughts on all this now from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard; Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call; and Nina Easton, Washington bureau chief of Fortune magazine -- FOX NEWS contributors all three.

Just to review quickly, Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in an investigation into how the CIA operative, Valerie Plame's name got leaked. He was not convicted of having leaked the name, nor was the -- and we know who did, and it wasn't Libby. But, the defense argued that they were trying to impute that to him in the sentencing, anyway. Well, all that -- neither her nor there, the judge found that this as a serious offense, the guy was a lawyer, should have known better and despite a long and distinguished public career, deserved what he got, which was a stiff sentence. Did he get more than he deserved? Less than he deserved? About what he deserved? What -- Mort.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: I think he got more than he deserved. He -- 30 months is beyond the guidelines -- what the guidelines call for, for the offenses for which he was convicted, namely perjury and obstruction of justice. Twenty-one months is the outside edge of the sentencing guidelines, he got nine more months than that.

This was a famously tough judge, so presumably he would have given him the max, but he bought the Patrick Fitzgerald argument that he had committed the underlying offense, which Fitzgerald never claimed in court. So, I think he was over sentenced, in this case, for what he did.

NINA EASTON, FORTUNE: That's right. I think Fitzgerald, to going back to this, because this is really key. In the course of arguing that he should have a stiff punishment, Fitzgerald made the case that a CIA operative's name was leaked. And you know, first of all, she's never been proven to be covert under the law that he's talking about.

HUME: He has argued that, though.

EASTON: Right, but that is never proven in this case. That's not what this case was about. That's not what Scooter Libby, you know, that -- was charged with.

And secondly, he said that Libby was not showing remorse. Well, friends of Libby say that he really believes he didn't do anything wrong. So, why should he be expected to show remorse? It was a -- to me, it was a shocking sentence, but not surprising, given the politics that have surrounded this case.

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: Yeah, that's pretty good, shocking but not surprising, I agree with that. The -- look, Scooter Libby is a scapegoat. He's a scapegoat for a crime that wasn't committed. There was no crime; at least Patrick Fitzgerald didn't find a crime about the leaking of Valerie Plame's name. That's what he was assigned to do, that's what he was looking for and since he didn't find it, what happens is -- and special prosecutors have done this before, you indict somebody on a lesser charge. Look...

HUME: Or a lesser charge relating to what happened during the investigation, not what happened ahead of time?

BARNES: Yeah. But, had he found a conspiracy, had he been able to indict some White House official or State Department official, or something, for illegally leaking her name, he wouldn't have bothered with Scooter Libby. There wouldn't have been perjury charges. He'd a done the big case. But because he's all they have -- Fitzgerald and the judge, as well -- they've socked it to him.

HUME: OK, this poses an interesting dilemma for President Bush. He has absolute authority to pardon Libby, whether the process of -- the pardon process, which is sometimes invoked -- is been gone through, or not. Will he, should he?

KONDRACKE: Well, you know, I -- look, Scooter Libby was convicted of perjury. It is a serious offense. I don't know why he committed perjury, but a jury found that he committed perjury. I think he should serve some time. Now, and I think the president could pardon him. When he chooses to pardon him, I don't know, but it seems to me that if justice is to be...

HUME: So you don't believe he was a scapegoat?

KONDRACKE: I don't think he was a scapegoat...

HUME: OK...

KONDRACKE: No, I mean he, as I say, I don't know why he committed perjury, but he did.

EASTON: Well, I think if the president was going to pardon him, it would be politically expedient to do it now rather than after an appeal, which I'm told by legal experts, he's probably going to lose, which is going to be midway through the 2008 election, politically danger zone for the president and Republicans...

HUME: Well, the president's not up in '08, he's gone.

EASTON: No, but it raises the issue again and I think if you're going to do it, it makes sense for him to do it now. There's lot of heat coming from conservative saying, you know, you should do this. He could buy some favorable ratings -- much-need favorable ratings with the conservative base. But, I think if he was going to do it now -- the other question is, if Scooter Libby has to go to jail right away. That will put added pressure...

HUME: Yeah, what about that? What do you think -- Fred.

BARNES: (INAUDIBLE) next Thursday. I think the president's inclination is to let the appeal play out and then...

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: ...if he's in the cooler during the appeal...

BARNES: Well, then that may change his mind. These are very personal decisions on pardons by presidents, and I think the president -- what he wants to do if he can get away with that is put it off until January 20, 2009, his last day in office and pardon him then.

HUME: When we come back with the panel, President Bush gets in the face of a Vladimir Putin at a distance, he'll be doing it face to face soon, let's talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): The new missile defense system will be deployed in Europe, then we need to warn you today that we will come with a response. We have to ensure our security and we are not the initiator of this process.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And my message will be, you know, Vladimir -- I call him Vladimir -- that you shouldn't fear a missile defense system. As a matter of fact, why don't you cooperate with us on a missile defense system?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Indeed, says the president, he's offered and Putin has previously expressed interest in participating in such a system which would protect not only Eastern Europe, but Russia, as well.

In addition, of course, the president was critical of Putin on what he sees as -- what the president sees as a retreat on democratic reform in that country. He will be meeting Putin in a couple days and Putin will be a part, of course, of the annual G-8 Summit, which is where the president - - why the president is in Europe. So, what about this? This is getting interesting.

BARNES: I like the cautious way you said that about the retreat on democracy, you said that the president sees as a retreat on democracy -- it been a total retreat on democracy. There just isn't any left in the Soviet Union -- it sounds like the Soviet Union, now, it is getting in that direction.

They've taken over the economy, Putin and all of his buddies; they've taken over all of the energy companies and jailed some of the people who have headed them. There's no free market, they've taken over companies -- what'd they take? Shell, you know, I mean, they go to a foreign company and say, here's the price, or else, you get this, or nothing. And of course, it's a low price.

They've taken over the television stations. The fear, of course, in Russia is that, though Putin denies it, that he'll change the constitution and run for a third term where he'll win, you know, the way Saddam Hussein used to win those elections in Iraq.

And he's become a menace. He knows perfectly well that those anti- missile systems aren't aimed at the Soviet -- at Russia. They're aimed at the Iranians or some rogue power that may have a missile and might fire it.

But the scary thing that he has done, the scariest thing, is to become -- have a stranglehold of gas and oil energy going to Western Europe and no telling what he will do with that. In the past, Bush has sort of held out hope for him that he would help with the Iranians, in other words, to help stop them from becoming a nuclear power. But, he hadn't done much there, either, so, Bush needs to lead the opposition to him now.

KONDRACKE: Well, Bush has invited him to Kennebunkport, for heaven sakes, in the beginning of July, so I guess he still hopes to woo Vladimir to better ways.

But look, I think that the assistant -- deputy assistant secretary of state for European Affairs, David Kramer, said correctly, the other day, that what Putin's all about is bullying his neighbors. And I think what he wants to do is to use this missile defense system, which Fred's right, it represents no threat to the Russians at all, there are only 10 U.S. interceptors that would be in Czechoslovakia. The Russians have a 7,000 nuclear warheads, so it clearly could not stop an attack of theirs if wanted to launch one. It's not there. But what he wants to do is to force the Czechs and the Poles to back down to not follow the United States...

HUME: Well, why would he bother with that if it poses -- if he doesn't believe...

KONDRACKE: Because he's a bully -- because he's a bully and he...

HUME: He wants to bully for the sake of bullying them?

KONDRACKE: No, no, no. He wants to enhance the power of Russia.

HUME: He wants Russia's missiles to be meaningful again?

KONDRACKE: Well, we wants to back the United States down. And I think he thinks that Bush is in a weak position and so he's going to gain stature for Russia at Bush's expense.

EASTON: I think Fred hit the nail on the head. Why is he acting like this? It has a lot to do with the fact that his term expires next year. The regime fears losing hold on power. A lot of this is the domestically directed and I think you've gone from dealing with one person called a "determined modernizer to an anti-western autocrat." So he's -- the president's in a difficult position. He's under pressure, for good reason, to push back at Putin, but they also have to work with him on issues like Iran's nuclear program and they're having -- so he's trying to do this delicate dance. And I think the challenge for Bush in the next couple of days is not to let this overtake the summit, which I don't think it will, because summits' don't -- these G-8 Summits don't tend to move in that direction.

(LAUGHTER)

HUME: Somebody once said to me many years ago that the G-8 Summit produced the same document every year, it said: "Yay growth, boo inflation."

BARNES: Yeah right. Well, the great news is, we're here and not there.

HUME: Yeah.

BARNES: But, you know, for guys like Chavez in Venezuela and Putin in Russia, the bad news is going to come. And you know what that is? Oil prices are not going to stay this high forever. They're going to come down and probably sooner rather than later, because that's what happens, you know, the price goes up, more supplies are developed, the price goes down and they're in trouble.

HUME: And so will the president prevail on this with Putin or not? Will he get the system in to Eastern Europe or not?

KONDRACKE: I think he can because the Czechs and the Poles want it and they're afraid of the Soviet Union -- the reconstitute Soviet Union, so I think he'll get his way.

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