During Tony Snow’s White House Press Briefing on Tuesday, June 3rd, he fielded 43 questions related to President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby and he failed to answer over 75% of them. What a dismal level of openness that the White House is displaying. How did Tony Snow manage to not answer 33 different questions?

Some of the time he tried make false assertions to undermine the basis of the question.

MR. SNOW: …I think if you took a look at the trial record, at what the parole commission recommended, that what the parole commission recommended was highly consistent with what the President thought was an appropriate punishment here.

Q: Well, no, they talked about 16-plus months.

MR. SNOW: No, that is — there’s a range of — what you’re taking a look — this gets very complicated.

Actually it isn’t very complicated at all. As you can see above, Tony Snow tried to give the impression that Judge Walton ignored the recommendation of probation officials and sentenced Libby to prison. According to the Associated Press,

That isn’t what happened. Probation officers recommended Libby serve 15-21 months. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald recommended more than 30 months. Libby’s attorneys asked for probation.

Tony actually made that same assertion a few more times as if he hadn’t already been proven wrong.

Tony Snow also tried to assert that there was some question about Joe Wilson’s truthfulness and when he was asked to specify what was under question, he failed to address it. He also tried to say President Bush had previously apologized for the leak, but when asked when that occurred, he stammered a little bit and just let the subject die without any further mention. Tony made seven demonstrably false assertions in the briefing as a way of avoiding answering questions.

Tony’s favorite tactic, by far, was misdirection. At least 15 times he avoided answering questions by trying to speak about something that wasn’t asked yet making sound as if it was.

Q: Tony, does the President believe that prison time for perjury is excessive, per se? And if he does not believe that, what is it about this case, beyond the fact that Scooter Libby worked for this administration, that led him to commute the sentence? What are the factors here?

MR. SNOW: Again, we are not going to get you into the — I’m not going to delve you into the deep considerations, other than to tell you the President considered it excessive –

Q: Does he think prison for perjury is excessive?

MR. SNOW: — as did a parole board. As did the parole board. So I’m simply telling you that — what you’re trying to do is to set up a false distinction here as — acting as if this were not the sort of punishment that would be meted out in a perjury case. It is.

Rather than answer the question, “Does the President think prison for perjury is excessive, per se”, Tony tries say that parole is what would normally be handed down. Nobody asked that question.

Sometimes he would just ignore the question.

Q: But how could it not be extraordinary to grant (commutation) to someone who didn’t even ask for it?
MR. SNOW: I just think that’s the President, again, using his commutation power to do what he thought was necessary to address what he thought was an excessive punishment.

And if ignoring it doesn’t work, try a little more misdirection.

Q: But absent a request, he wouldn’t even have known about this case if it didn’t involve his former aide.
MR. SNOW: Well, no, I think you probably would have reminded him of it. The fact — you talk about, if it had not involved a former aide — this is a thing that has been in the headlines for quite a while.

The reporter was referring to a formal request for commutation and Tony answered about the President’s general awareness of the Libby trial.

So given all the questions Tony Snow didn’t want to answer, which ones did he answer?

Q: Was the President scared that if Scooter Libby went to jail that he might then talk about some secrets in the White House that would damage the President?
MR. SNOW: No, he thought it was an improper punishment…
Q: So politics did not play into this decision at all?
MR. SNOW: That is correct.
…
Q: Won’t this encourage other members of his administration to obstruct justice?
MR. SNOW: No.

It appears he has no problem answering questions about his talking points for the briefing.