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A comment on FTC to Crack Down on Paid Celebrity Posts That Aren’t Clear Ads. Parent comment

Re:FTC to Crack Down on Paid Celebrity Posts That Aren’t Cle... by nickff on Friday August 05, 2016 @04:15PM (#12235447)
Libby was not guilty of the disclosure, and the prosecutor knew it from the beginning, but kept going after him, possibly in the hope of getting some dirt on the Vice President.[1] They questioned Libby repeatedly on a subject that the prosecutor already had good information on (which vindicated Libby), until Libby said something incorrect, which contradicted a previous statement, then went after him for that. At least one of the lead witnesses has come out against the prosecution and conviction, which has been described as one of the worst cases of prosecutorial overreach in recent memory.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_Libby#Criticism_of_inv...

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Re:FTC to Crack Down on Paid Celebrity Posts That Aren’t Cle... by dragonwriter on Friday August 05, 2016 @04:24PM (#12235501)
> At least one of the lead witnesses has come out against the prosecution and conviction, which has been described as one of the worst cases of prosecutorial overreach in recent memory.

That description has got to be one of the worst politically-motivated distortions of reality in recent memory. At worst, the Libby prosecution was one of the worst cases of prosecutorial overreach targeting a wealthy and politically-connected white male by a prosecutor of the same political party in recent memory. Without all those restrictions, its a pretty routine display of how prosecutors go after suspected participants in organized criminal activity who they believe are protecting bigger targets.

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Re:FTC to Crack Down on Paid Celebrity Posts That Aren’t Cle... by nickff on Friday August 05, 2016 @04:26PM (#12235512)
What made this especially bad was that the prosecutor knew from the start that Libby was innocent (of disclosing Plame's identity). If that had not been the case, I might agree with you that this was comparable to a prosecutor going for leverage against a low-level criminal.
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