Libby Trial - Day One

FDL is the goto place for info and live blogging. Here's Christy's Day One synopsis. It would seem that Libby thinks there is no pardon in the works for him and his defense will involve an interesting gambit.

But it will certainly be interesting to see them try to repeatedly throw Karl Rove under a bus in open court, nonetheless.

[...]

Wells concentrated on a particular meme of threes in hisopening – that I think will likely get repeated in his closing at the end of the trial: three calls, three reporters, three months later. Unfortunately for Wells, these aren't supported by the facts in the way that he wants the jury to believe them to be — and it will be very interesting to see how the jury reacts to this as the evidence is presented.

Finally, a note about evidence. Testimony is evidence, the same as some documentary or physical/forensic sample is evidence. Wells attempted to shuffle around this fact today, but expect Fitzgerald's team of attorneys to chip away at this by pointing out every inconsistency in Libby's statements to the FBI and to the Grand Jury. This is going to be a very interesting trial to watch.

Personally, I found Fitzgerald's very straightforward and methodically organized style more appealing today. I felt that Wells went on too long, in a disjointed and freewheeling style, and that he was not only losing members of the public and the press, but that he started losing members of the jury with too much repetition and attempts to muddy the evidentiary waters with some confusion and counterspin.

The cross-examination of Marc Grossman, the first witness called in this case, will continue tomorrow, along with the testimony of many more witnesses to come. All this, and we haven't even gotten to Judy Miller yet…