The notion of a “perjury trap” has been gaining some currency and exposure lately. What a baleful sign of our times!
I’m not a lawyer, but I believe that while “perjury trap” is an accepted legal concept, it is (as is quite often the case) interpreted far more narrowly by lawyers and judges than by the general public.
…a perjury indictment against a person must be dismissed if the prosecution secures it by calling that person as a grand-jury witness in an effort to obtain evidence for a perjury charge especially when the person’s testimony does not relate to issues material to the ongoing grand-jury investigation.
This is in part because a grand-jury witness has almost no rights. Grand jury witnesses can’t refuse to answer questions, can’t refuse to testify, and don’t have access to counsel. One cannot plead the fifth before a grand jury. This makes the grand jury system kind of ripe for exactly this kind of abuse.
A person being interviewed by law enforcement, on the other hand, can make all sorts of hedges, can refuse to answer specific questions, and usually has counsel present.
If you read in the news that Prosecutor X is attempting to interview Subject Y, and you hear Subject Y’s cheerleaders crying foul about a “perjury trap,” you should know that Subject Y’s cheerleaders are attempting to deceive you. A perjury trap involves a grand jury. There’s no grand jury in an interview with law enforcement or a prosecutor. That’s not a perjury trap.
If we were having a discussion about running away from bears it would hardly be fair to point out that Usain Bolt got away from a bear once.
I don’t think Libby was unfairly prosecuted. I think the former chief of staff to the vice president would be able to find some competent legal representation. I just wanted to note that Clinton’s Benghazi hearing performance was some olympic-level shit and not something many people can aspire to.
I think it is fair to use “perjury trap” metaphorically to talk about FBI questioning. It’s not a perjury trap, it’s a “lying to the FBI” trap. But I think some of the other text you quoted was very important, that a perjury trap is “call that person [as a witness] in an effort to obtain evidence for a [lying to the FBI] charge.”
If they questioned Scooter Libby for the purpose of getting him to lie so they could charge him with lying, I’d say that’s a violation of his rights for the same reason a perjury trap is. But to make that case, you’d have to present good reason to believe that they had no reason to think Libby had anything to say that was of interest to their investigation. That, of course, is absurd. It obviously made sense to question Libby as part of the investigation.
