Jurors Clamor for Pardon

RUSH: By the way, did you hear that two jurors have called for Libby to be pardoned? Both of them appeared last night on PMSNBC’s Hard to Take. Ann Redington and this other guy, Denis Collins, both think Libby should be pardoned. They just felt sorry for him. He’s such a nice guy. They heard him in eight hours of grand jury testimony and Ann Redington said, “It’s just a shame that we didn’t get to decide about the original crime.” By the way, Matthews and Howard Fineman last night were falling all over themselves. She’s a nice woman. They were doing everything but lick her last night! I have to say, “Ann, there wasn’t a crime here.” That’s what’s so absurd about this. The thing about this whole trial was that there wasn’t a crime. The trial was not about that crime that you keep referring to. There was no crime in leaking the name Valerie Plame, otherwise somebody would have been charged with it. There’s no crime! It was a pure process crime, so you had no chance of being able to be a juror on that trial.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: One of the jurors — juror number ten, as it turns out — Ann Redington, was on Hardball with Chris Matthews last night. Matthews said, (Matthews impression) “You’re for a pardon? You’re for a pardon! You’re for a pardon out of sympathy, out of sympathy! Out of sympathy, you want a pardon? You want a pardon, out of sympathy for the defendant?”

REDINGTON: Yeah. In the big picture it kind of bothers me that, you know, there was this whole big crime being investigated, and he got caught up in the investigation as opposed to in the actual crime that was supposedly committed.

MATTHEWS: Which is the leaking of a CIA agent’s [sic] name?

REDINGTON: Exactly.

RUSH: I’m not criticizing the juror. This is actually a great example of how the media were great accomplices of Patrick Fitzfong in creating this illusion. She says, “It kind of bothers me that there was this whole big crime being investigated.” There wasn’t a big crime being investigated, Ann! There was not. There was an investigation hoping to find a crime. It’s called a process investigation, because who had leaked the name of Valerie Plame was already known by Mr. Fitzfong. It was Richard Armitage! A whole bunch of people knew that she was Wilson’s wife and worked at the CIA. This investigation was begun not for that reason. It was begun to find a crime. This investigation was done for the express purpose of creating a crime. Let me put it better and say it that way.

This investigation started for the purposes of creating a crime.

You bring somebody into the grand jury for eight hours, especially somebody who knows he didn’t do what this whole thing is about. He did not leak her name. What does Libby have to be afraid of? Libby had a little naïveté, not understanding what’s going on here, but he’s not afraid to say what he said in there, obviously. Eight hours? You try it! You try being grilled for eight hours with no lawyer in there, and being asked the same question four or five times in eight hours in different ways. I wonder how many people could escape a broad umbrella like obstruction of justice under such circumstances — and here is this juror who thinks this big crime is being investigated when it wasn’t. But all along that’s what Fitzfong wanted people to think he was investigating, and the Drive-Bys fell right in with it. In fact, she said, “Libby gets caught up in the investigation as opposed to actual crime that was supposedly committed.” Matthews says: “Which is the leaking of a CIA agent.” Chris, do you understand how (personal aside to Chris Matthews) wrong that is?

It wasn’t a crime to leak her name. If it were, we’d be talking about Richard Armitage and what his sentence is going to be. There wasn’t a crime here, Chris. He doesn’t get this. They get so caught up in the inertia of all this themselves that there was a crime. Now, get this next question. I’m just going to tell you that I read a review of this question on The Corner, one of the blogs at National Review Online. When I read what they said, it was Kathryn Jean Lopez, I had to go watch this. Kathryn Jean Lopez said that Matthews asked this juror, Ann Redington, a question — and she looked at him like he was literally insane. Here’s the question.

MATTHEWS: What did you think of the prosecutor, Fitzgerald? Almost virginal, right? Didn’t he seem like a real straight arrow to you, like he’d never been married, never had a date, never had a hangover —

REDINGTON: No. No.

RUSH: Now, you can’t see it, because this is radio, but her face during that question was indescribable. She was looking at him like he was insane. Now, where does this come from? I’ll tell you where this comes from. There was a profile of Fitzgerald in New York Times Sunday Magazine, and this profile talked about how he’s a bachelor, never been married, orders in pizza and Chinese and his little apartment is a mess. He doesn’t go to the dishwasher much and so forth, doesn’t date and so forth. Obviously Matthews read that and he’s asking this juror if she had that impression of Fitzgerald while the trial was going on. Virginal, straight arrow, never been married, never had a date, never had a hangover, never had anything — and she said, no. He asked another question about Fitzgerald’s closing argument. He asked her, “Well, what did you think about the vice president’s name coming up where Fitzgerald said that there’s a cloud over the vice president?” She said it’s just rhetoric. Just rhetoric. Didn’t mean anything. She said, (paraphrasing) “We decided on the evidence. We didn’t care what the lawyers said in the opening or closing statements. That was just rhetoric to us.”

That’s when Matthews basically started trying to lick her, “You’re just fabulous!”

Howard Fineman came in at the end of the program and I swear that these guys wanted to take her to dinner after the show somewhere, and who knows wherever else.

‘Yeah, let me show you virginal.’ (Laughing.)

It was amazing to watch.