From my past law enforcement experience I must say after listening to Tim Russert on the stand yesterday that Patrick Fitzgerald must have lost some sleep last night. Clarice Feldman, my guest on the MacRanger Show on Blogtalk Radio Saturday, live blogged the preceedings. (correction: see notes from Clarice, sorry for the error).

Read the transcripts and you can begin to see that far from Libby being the one with memory problems and unable to get his story straight it appears that Russert has both and an even greater problem - perjury.

However, the overall testimony was helpful to the defense as just about everyone who has read it thinks it places that all important “reasonable doubt” into the jurors minds.

Clarice:

“I cannot believe that tonight is a good night for Russert or for his colleagues Andrea Mitchell and David Gregory, whom I also expect to be on the stand.

The prosecution filed a motion to block Libby from calling her to the stand. I’d be surprised if that succeeds. The prosecution has also signaled it intends to argue that all reporters were treated gingerly because of the constraints of the Department of Justice regulations. In fact, many reporters who clearly were aware of the Wilson/Plame connection were - like Andrea Mitchell (Russert’s colleague who famously indicated they all knew) - never questioned by the prosecution or the investigators.

I’ll be very surprised if in a case risibly claiming the defendant obstructed the investigation, the defense is precluded from showing that, blinded by his nonsensical view of what happened, the special prosecutor obstructed the investigation himself. We know he granted immunity to the two people who admitted they deliberately leaked Plame’s identity (Ari Fleischer and Richard Armitage) and steered clear of so many journalists who obviously knew more about the Mission to Niger and its participants than anyone in the White House did.

I predicted at the outset, the media would regret what they asked for. I was right. In Spades.”

UPDATE: According to AJ Strata, Russert’s head is exploding on the cross this afternoon. He’ll probably blame it on the pain medication. Hugh damage to Fitzgerald’s case at this point, the all important reasonable doubt. Unless of course the jury is unreasonable (it is Washington after all).