“There is a cloud over the Vice President”: climactic moments from the Libby trial

[with excerpts, some of them edited, from Marcy Wheeler's liveblogging at firedoglake.]

In the first hour of the defense’s closing argument, Ted Wells claimed that only a crazy person would bring charges against poor little Scooter:

There’s a madness, even putting the question, the notion that someone would get charged with this… Scooter Libby’s innocent. He didn’t do it. He didn’t leak to anyone…and you’re going to charge him for perjury, false statements? There’s some craziness to this case.

Later, while trying to explain away Libby’s 2-hour clandestine rendezvous with Judy Miller in the St. Regis Hotel, Wells declared that it was ‘outrageous’ for the prosecution to imply that anything untoward was going on:

It’s basically a secret mission that only the Vice President and Libby know about. Somehow they try to make something bad out of that? It is outrageous!

In response, Fitzgerald began his rebuttal with an imitation of Ted’s melodramatic style:

Madness! Madness! Outrageous! The government brought a case about two phone calls. And they just want you to speculate.

The defense wishes that were so. Saying it, saying it loudly, pounding the table, doesn’t change the facts.

Is this a case about two reporters, that’s it? [imitating again] This is about a one-on-one ‘he said, she said.’

No, it’s a ‘he said, he said, he said, he said, she said, she said, she said, he said.’ [shows a chart of who told what to whom when, not that different from mine]

Wells’s final plea to the jury brought a tear to his own eye:

Don’t sacrifice Scooter Libby for how you may feel about the war in Iraq or the Bush Administration. Treat him the way he deserves to be treated. He worked every day for this country. Analyze it fairly. Fight any temptation for your views if you’re a Democrat or whatever party. This is a man who has a wife and kid. He’s been under my protection for the last month. I give him to you. Just give him back! Give him back to me! Give him back! [he chokes up]

Fitzgerald, on the other hand, urged the jury to ‘give’ the truth ‘back’ to the American people:

There is a cloud over the Vice President. [earlier, Wells claimed that the prosecution had "tried to put a cloud over Vice President Cheney"] He wrote on those columns, he had those meetings. He sent Libby off to the meeting with Judy, where Plame was discussed. That cloud remains because the defendant obstructed justice. That cloud was there. That cloud is not something that we can just pretend isn’t there…

Don’t you think the American people are entitled to answers? People want to find out was a law broken, people want to know who did it. What role did Libby play? What role did the Vice President play? He told you he might have discussed this with the Vice President. Don’t you think the FBI deserves straight answers? When you go into that jury room, your common sense will tell you that he made a gamble. He threw sand in the eyes of the FBI. He stole the truth from the judicial system. If you return “guilty,” you give truth back.

All I can say is, wow. And Merry Fitzmas, everybody.