I'm leaving Sunday to go back to Washington for week one of the Defense case in the Scooter Libby trial. Thanks to Arianna and Huffington Post, I have a media room pass and will be live-blogging the testimony at Huffpo and providing analysis there and here, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

I'm excited to be going back. Covering the trial from Denver this past week just wasn't the same as being there. I'm also scheduled to return Feb. 20 - 22 for MediaBloggers, if the trial is still going on.

The only downside is the expense, particularly staying in a hotel this trip as the Plame House is full. If you passed on contributing to my first trip, but liked my coverage, it would be great if you'd throw a few dollars in the pot. Here's how.

If you'd rather donate anonymously, please use Amazon here.

T.Chris is in New York this weekend but will be back blogging on other topics next week, and Big Tent Democrat and some diarists may be around, so we won't be all Libby, all the time.

This post will stay on top for a day, but scroll down, there's lots of new posts.

Thanks to Tom Maguire for pointing this out. After Judith Miller's testimony, Libby lawyer Ted Wells told the judge he would be moving for a judgment of acquittal on a count pertaining to her. He didn't explain it at the time. Neil Lewis of the New York Times writes:

The Libby defense won a victory of sorts when Judge Reggie B. Walton agreed to exclude part of one of the five felony counts against Mr. Libby. But it remained unclear whether the change, which was not contested by the prosecutors, would matter in jury deliberations.

Tom picks out the part that will be deleted:

Graphics love to Politics TV.

After hours of more cross-examination of Tim Russert, the prosecution rested today in the Scooter Libby trial. Firedoglake has all the details.

It's hard to know where the defense plans to go — at times they seem to be claiming that Russert had a bad memory, at others that he was lying to cover his ass, and then at still others that he was lying because of malice toward Libby. But it never seemed to come together in some kind of consistent, cohesive view of what happened, and unless they can shake the jury's faith in Russert it's going to be tough to get them to believe Libby's story. The jurors seemed restless and uninterested throughout Wells' cross-examination of Russert, and aside from coming off as a bit of a scum for his First Amendment hypocrisy and his opacity with regard to how easily he gave up Libby's "confidentiality" to FBI agent Jack Eckenrode, he came off as credible.

Team Libby didn't manage to find any chinks in his armor that really seemed to cast much doubt on his really quite simple story about his conversation with Libby.

I guess Wells reverted back to his lumbering style of cross-examination that I witnessed last week. I'm sorry to hear that, not because I'm rooting for Libby but because I like a good,evenly matched trial and I like to see defense lawyers shine.

More....

Via Crooks and Liars:

Mary Matalin tries to talk her way out of her Russert-Hates-Matthews comment in Scooter Libby's notes. Nice try, no cigar. Video here.

Christy at Firedoglake has more of The Trouble With Mary.

Imus: Mary Matalin Is A Liar:  Imus, “None of you can tell the truth, it’s insane. It’s like a disease you guys have.”

Atrios has the transcript from the first call…..And the second call.

I have an op-ed in the Washington Examiner on why Libby wants to call Cheney as a witness, particularly if Libby doesn't testify.

Tim Russert is still on the witness stand and there was lots of legal wrangling over Andrea Mitchell's statements going on. The Judge ruled this morning Russert can't be questioned about her statements.

The defense wants to call her as a witness and Fitz has filed this brief (pdf) seeking to preclude them "from eliciting testimony regarding her knowledge, prior to July 14, 2003, that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA, for the purpose of attempting to impeach her with a prior statement that would otherwise be inadmissible." Fitz argues such impeachment is improper and should be excluded.

The other fight coming up is over the defense plan to call Jill Abramson of the New York Times to impeach Judy Miller. Fitz' brief is here, Libby's is here.

Firedoglake is live-blogging the proceedings. Tom Maguire has background.

Jane Hamsher, Arianna Huffington and Swopa discuss today's Tim Russert Testimony.

There's more at Firedoglake and Huffington Post.

For MSM reporting, there's the Washington Post and the New York Times.

And, if you have a spare seven hours, you can listen to Libby's grand jury transcripts:

• March 5, 2004 Grand Jury Testimony
• March 24, 2004 Grand Jury Testimony

The transcripts are here and here.

Tim Russert, walking with a crutch under his arm, has arrived at the D.C. Courthouse to testify in the Scooter Libby trial. The judge took lunch late to finish the 40 minutes left of Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony. Then, the jury will hear from Mr. Russert who will deny discussing Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, with Mr. Libby on July 10, 2003. (Background here.)

Swopa at Firedoglake and Media Bloggers will live blog the testimony.

Update: Fitz's direct examination took 11 minutes, Maine Web Report has the details.

Contrary to my earlier speculation, Wells, not Jeffress is conducting the cross-examination.

Update: From the Firedoglake and Maine Web Report live-blogging, it seems like Wells did a very good job of crossing Russert. I'm glad to hear that because I think he's an excellent lawyer but had the impression in the trial segments I watched that his crosses were too lumbering.

Now we'll see what the MSM and cable news has to say. I'm headed to the gym where I'll watch it on the treadmill. Russert will be back for more cross-examination and redirect by Fitz tomorrow.

Eric Boehlert has a terrific article up at Media Matters on the larger context of the media coverage of the Valerie Plame leak and the Scooter Libby trial:

So as the facts of the White House cover-up now tumble out into open court, it's important to remember that if it hadn't been for Fitzgerald's work, there's little doubt the Plame story would have simply faded into oblivion like so many other disturbing suggestions of Bush administration misdeeds. And it would have faded away because lots of high-profile journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, and NBC wanted it to.

In a sense, it was Watergate in reverse. Instead of digging for the truth, lots of journalists tried to bury it. The sad fact remains the press was deeply involved in the cover-up, as journalists reported White House denials regarding the Plame leak despite the fact scores of them received the leak and knew the White House was spreading rampant misinformation about an unfolding criminal case.

And that's why the Plame investigation then, and the Libby perjury trial now, so perfectly capture what went wrong with the timorous press corps during the Bush years as it routinely walked away from its responsibility of holding people in power accountable and ferreting out the facts.

Here's a bit more on the "timorous press corps."

The Government will call its final witness today in the Scooter Libby trial. It's NBC's Tim Russert.

For other takes, be sure to check in with Firedoglake, Empty Wheel, Just One Minute and Media Bloggers. Here's mine:

Fitzgerald wants to end his case on a high note. That's why even today, he wasn't sure he was going to call "the mystery witness," a low-level DOJ employee. He'd rather end with Russert, who he thinks will be the final linchpin, the one who will put his case over the top and bring it home.

I suspect Jeffress will do the cross-examination since he has crossed all the journalists so far, if I'm not mistaken.

Jeffress may try to hammer home that Russert didn't have to go before the grand jury but got interviewed in his lawyer's office. Jeffress took this route with Matt Cooper (although I thought that line of questioning went nowhere.)

There is another wrinkle with Russert the defense may try to exploit, that Russert and Fitz had a deal whereby Russert was only asked questions about Russert'ss side of the conversation. In other words, he was questioned about what he told Libby, not what Libby told him.

The jury continues to hear tapes of Scooter Libby's grand jury testimony today. Swopa at Firedoglake and the Media Bloggers' Association's bloggers are live-blogging.

I can't draw conclusions until I've read transcripts of all of his testimony. But, as to what Libby's lawyers will argue to the jury, here is the "Theory of Defense Instruction" (pdf) they have asked Judge Walton to read to the jurors as part of his instructions at the end of the case.

A defendant is entitled to a "theory of defense" instruction, but there has to be evidence presented during the trial to support it. I don't think Judge Walton will give it exactly as written, but it's revealing in showing where Team Libby is headed.

It's official. Scooter Libby may not testify at his trial. His lawyers filed a brief tonight (pdf) in connection with yet another sealed request for classified materials, trying to convince the court that Libby's memory failure defense -- the part that is based on how busy he was due to the urgent national security matters he was involved in -- should come into evidence even if he doesn't take the stand. They say that making him testify in order to present his memory defense would force him to choose between his 5th Amendment right to remain silent and his 6th Amendment right to counsel.

They state in a footnote that on September 27, 2006, in connection with the fight over classified materials, Team Libby told the court it was "very likely" Libby would testify but did not promise he would. They point out that other courts have ruled that both sides can present circumstantial evidence as to a defendant's state of mind. They argue that Fitz has repeatedly presented circumstantial evidence at trial of Libby's state of mind.

They want to introduce three categories of national security evidence to show Libby was confused or mistaken, but did not intentionally lie:

Why isn't Patrick Fitzgerald calling WaPo reporter Walter Pincus as a witness in the Scooter Libby trial?

We now know from the grand jury testimony and briefs (pdf) that Scooter Libby was a source for Walter Pincus's June 12, 2003 article on Wilson's trip to Africa. On October 12, 2003, Pincus wrote:

On July 12, two days before Novak’s column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador’s CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction. Plame’s name was never mentioned and the purpose of the disclosure did not appear to be to generate an article, but rather to undermine Wilson’s report.

Fitz writes in a footnote to his brief filed Sunday,

Defendant testified before the grand jury that he could have been a source for Walter Pincus’s June 12, 2003 article, and that it was during preparation for providing information to Mr. Pincus that the Vice President informed him that former Ambassador Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. 3/5/04 GJ Tr. at 60-63.

Pincus expanded on what the Administration official told him in this July, 2005 article.