The Martha Stewart brand has something for seemingly every time of the year, from Thanksgiving morning, to Christmas eve to, apparently, that festive time of the year unique to Washington, D.C. — Scandal Week.
Thus, to judge by the recent media coverage of Lewis Libby’s indictment, in addition to Martha Stewart wedding cakes, Martha Stewart Halloween costumes and Martha Stewart roast turkey recipes, we now have something else: Specifically, the Martha Stewart legal reference.
Talk of the Martha Stewart-style conviction and the Martha Stewart-style defense got started eight days ago when Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I also think that we are seeing in the judicial process — and look at Martha Stewart, for instance, where they couldn’t find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn’t a crime,” said Hutchison.
Afterwards, Hutchison received a swift kick in the pantsuit courtesy of bloggers who pointed out Hutchison’s apparent hypocrisy on the subject of perjury, a charge she was awfully fond of when it resulted in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Her comparison between Libby and Stewart, on the other hand, has become all the rage.
“It [the Libby indictment] sounds a lot like Martha Stewart, and it’s very disconcerting to me, because it almost — it sounds like a — overzealous in my view,” said Sean Hannity on Fox’s “Hannity & Colmes.”
“I think this is a — quite common, as the classic example is Martha Stewart who was investigated for insider trading but charged with false statements,” Joseph DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
“We see this very serious charge,” CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen reported on a CBS News Special Report. “It’s a charge, as we’ve talked about before, Bob, that Martha Stewart, for example, went to jail on, almost exactly in the same situation.”
“[Fitzgerald’s] got to prove intention and he’s got to prove some motive,” Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Clinton, noted on CNBC’s “Kudlow & Company.” “And I do find a hard time, on any false statement, obstruction case, if there is no motive, if what he did as the underlying issue, wasn’t illegal. The Martha Stewart case is my favorite example.”
“What do I. Lewis Libby, the White House aide who was indicted on Friday in a case involving the leak of a CIA officer’s identity, and Martha Stewart, the lifestyle guru specializing in pies and pillows, have in common?” wrote an editorial on the front page of today’s New York Sun. “Both were charged under a federal statute that is dangerously broad. There’s a popular misconception that Stewart was involved in insider trading and that Mr. Libby was involved in leaking the name of Valerie Plame. But neither Mr. Libby nor Stewart were charged with those underlying crimes.”
“It is also similar to the insider-trading case that snared Martha Stewart,” noted the Los Angeles Times on Saturday. “She was not charged with insider trading, but with telling a false story to investigators.”
Of course, just like Martha Stewart wedding cakes, the Martha Stewart-style conviction isn’t a new genre at all, just an old standby gussied up with some celebrity sheen — a fact recently pointed out by the St. Petersburg Times.
“Federal prosecutors frequently end long, complicated investigations with charges that have occurred over the course of the inquiry — lying, withholding documents, manipulating witnesses – instead of the crime they initially set out to examine,” noted the Times.
“In the Whitewater case examining the Clintons’ involvement in a failed Arkansas real estate deal, 14 people faced charges, most of which were not related directly to the Clintons or the land deal,” the Times added. “In the Iran-Contra case examining the Reagan administration’s secret deal to sell arms to Iran, officials were charged with misleading Congress and making false statements to investigators.”
In other words, if legal analysts wanted to do some comparative shopping, they could easily find other brand-name court cases to compare with Libby’s. Perhaps a Webster Hubbell reference, here. Or a Caspar Weinberger reference, there. Or Ollie North. Or, to go way back, Haldeman and Ehrlichman.
But let’s face it: serving up a Martha Stewart legal reference on your talk show or political column — like serving up a batch of Martha Stewart Halloween “creepcakes” — just feels like the right thing to do at this time of the year.
–Felix Gillette
Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.