I am extremely psyched about this:
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ruled Monday morning that those tapes must be made public. In a victory for the news media, the judge said he had little choice under the law as applied in the federal court system in Washington, D.C, even though Walton also said he has concerns about releasing the recordings while the case is under way.
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald successfully fought to enter the tapes into evidence, and he planned to play about eight hours of Libby’s closed-door testimony.
Although segments of Libby’s testimony would be widely distributed by reporters who are monitoring the trial, Libby’s lawyers had argued that the audio itself was too sensitive to be released until the trial ends.
One of Libby’s lawyers, William Jeffress, said that playing sound bites of the defendant’s grand jury appearances in a public setting “seriously threatens Mr. Libby’s right to a fair trial.”
From the news media’s perspective, “it’s great stuff,” Jeffress told the judge in asking that the recordings not be released during the trial.
Media attorney Nathan Siegel said publicly releasing the grand jury recordings during the trial is hardly “some novel proposition.”
Siegel, representing The Associated Press and more than a dozen other news organizations, argued that Libby’s own words are far less prejudicial than evidence that has been released in other cases, including 911 calls from inside the World Trade Center, the FBI tapes in the Abscam investigation and mob wiretap tapes.
Jeffress argued that the news media will undoubtedly issue commentary to accompany any excerpts it plays from the audio recordings of Libby’s grand jury testimony.
Libby’s lawyer pointed to the potential for jurors to be exposed to the recordings outside the courtroom, since they are away from the court three days a week and ride back and forth to the courthouse.
“I have my concerns,” Walton said, adding that cases in the federal judicial circuit covering Washington, D.C., point to disclosure of the material rather than waiting until the trial is over…
The tapes would almost certainly be played on television, radio and the Internet.
I can’t wait to hear the dirty details in audio. It’ll be just like we had been serving on Libby’s grand jury. We’ll get it in unadulterated form. For a Plame junkie this is great stuff. It’s great that we don’t have to wait for it too.
