Fitzgerald Slices and Dices a Libby Pre-Trial "Expert" Witness

October 27, 2006

Pitty the "expert witness" that Libby's lawyers brought in to the lay the groundwork for his "lapsed memory" Ronald Reaganesque defense.

After Fitzgerald got through with "questioning" her during pre-Trial testimony, her credentials and credibility had gone through a shredder.

So says the Washington Post:

"With withering and methodical dispatch, White House nemesis and prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald yesterday sliced up the first person called to the stand on behalf of the vice president's former chief of staff.

If I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was not afraid of the special counsel before, the former Cheney aide, who will face Fitzgerald in a trial beginning Jan. 11, had ample reason to start quaking after yesterday's Ginsu-like legal performance."

Ouch, but we object calling Fitzgerald a "White House nemesis," unless enforcing the law makes you a "nemesis."

But there's more, "But when Fitzgerald got his chance to cross-examine Loftus about her findings, he had her stuttering to explain her own writings and backpedaling from her earlier assertions. Citing several of her publications, footnotes and the work of her peers, Fitzgerald got Loftus to acknowledge that the methodology she had used at times in her long academic career was not that scientific, that her conclusions about memory were conflicting, and that she had exaggerated a figure and a statement from her survey of D.C. jurors that favored the defense."

And more, "There were several moments when Loftus was completely caught off guard by Fitzgerald, creating some very awkward silences in the courtroom.

One of those moments came when Loftus insisted that she had never met Fitzgerald. He then reminded her that he had cross-examined her before, when she was an expert defense witness and he was a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in New York."

Man, Fitzgerald is the prosecutorial version of a Thanksgiving carving knife.

Read the whole article by clicking here.

For ongoing updates on the PlameGate investigation, please read http://www.buzzflash.com.