WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - Lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former White House official indicted on perjury charges, plan to seek testimony from journalists beyond those cited in the indictment and will probably challenge government agreements limiting their grand jury testimony, people involved in the case said Tuesday.
"That's clearly going to be part of the strategy - to get access to all the relevant records and determine what did the media really know," said a lawyer close to the defense who spoke on condition of anonymity.
At Mr. Libby's arraignment this month, his lawyers alluded to using a First Amendment defense in fighting the charges, but they have declined to say what that strategy might entail.
In interviews, lawyers close to the case made clear that the defense team plans to pursue aggressively access to reporters' notes beyond the material cited in the indictment and plans to go to the trial judge, Reggie B. Walton of United States District Court, to compel disclosure as one of their first steps.
Lucy Dalglish gets stupid as usual:
The prospect of another legal battle over access to reporters' records "could be worse for the media" than the Miller showdown, said Lucy Dalglish, head of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "You now have a situation where you have a government investigation hung completely on testimony from journalists, with journalists turned into witnesses, and that is a scary notion."
Yes, but notice now that we're talking about journalists being called as witnesses for the defense which is something else entirely. But, more to the point, the fact that you have a cute little button which says "kiss me I'm a journalist!" does not make you immune from ever having to testify about anything. I'm sympathetic to genuine confidential source relationships, but there's nothing we've heard yet which tells us that this is what is at stake. There's nothing inherently "scary" about a journalist testifying for the defense at a criminal trial.
This could be a hell of a lot of fun.