COACH LIBBY, COACH MATALIN. Patrick Fitzgerald has given his strongest indication to date that he believes that Libby was trying to coach Judith Miller's testimony before the grand jury when he sent her the famous "aspens" letter (PDF) -- the letter that helped open the way to her release from jail to testify before the grand jury -- back in October 2005. Fitzgerald wanted to enter some of the letter into evidence, and the judge questioned its relevance since there's no indication the letter in fact got Miller to change her testimony. In response, Fitzgerald suggested he did not believe the letter worked -- that is, it failed in its intention to collude with Miller or to coach her testimony. The judge did not let Fitzgerald enter the letter into evidence at this point, but left open the possibility of doing so at a later point.
The other bit of news is that after the jury broke for lunch, the lawyers in the case tussled over some potential evidence, in the course of which Mary Matalin made her first substantive appearance in the case. The prosecution wants to introduce Libby's notes of a call he made to Matalin on July 10 2003, in which Matalin offered him strategic advice on responding to Wilson, whom she called a snake.
Among other things, it appears Matalin told Libby that they needed to address Wilson's motivation; that they needed to get out the CIA cable summarizing Wilson's trip; that the president should wave his wand -- perhaps a suggestion that Bush should insta-declassify the trip report; and that Libby should call Tim Russert, who hates Chris Matthews, who had been pushing assertively the notion that the vice president had been directly involved and directly apprised of Wilson's mission to Niger. The prosecution will evidently try to show that Libby took up Matalin's suggestion and called Russert on that very day to complain about Matthews -- and did not learn from Russert that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, as Libby claimed in his testimony under oath in the investigation.
But it looks like the prosecution will have to show that without this note - the judge was very skeptical about allowing it in, on account of its prejudice to Libby, since it reflected Matalin's and not necessarily Libby's personal animosity toward Wilson.
--Jeff Lomonaco
