We are about to conclude month one of a three-month jury trial in the matter of SwiftBoatVets v. Kerry, and John O’Neill is emerging as counsel for the winning side.

Even the mainstream media can’t help but be impressed by John O’Neill, author of Unfit for Command, and key figure in Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Ridiculed and abused on Crossfire and Hardball, O’Neill has always kept his cool. His meticulous and logical recitation of Kerry’s lies, and the evidence establishing them as lies, shows a command of detail which I have observed only in men who were at the very top of their professions.

I wondered how John O’Neill could keep his cool while being badgered by Carville, or Lanny Davis, or Chris Matthews (via FrontPageMag). Now I know the answer. John O’Neill is one of the most talented and successful litigators in the United States. He is a plaintiff’s lawyer, by and large, and he has approached his campaign against John Kerry with all the care and focus that an outstanding lawyer puts into preparation for a jury trial.

Even the MSM have now figured out that O’Neill’s mission is the personal mission of a serious man whose honor, and that of his comrades, has been impugned. O’Neill’s patience and steadfastness are even beginning to work on that part of the jury that is the elite media. If the treatement he receives is not enthsiastic, he is certainly no longer the GOP cardboard cut-out hit man of earlier portrayals.

Michael Dobbs, who is practicing journalism at the WaPo, includes this in his long, interesting article on 1971 and today:

After a cameo role at the 1972 Republican National Convention, when he was one of several Democrats nominating Nixon for president, O’Neill dropped out of politics, attending law school and then clerking for then-Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist at the Supreme Court. He later became a successful lawyer in Houston.

So perhaps O’Neill is not a hayseed after all. But it falls to Scott Gold at the LA Times(!) to tell us just how successful a lawyer O’Neill became:

Although O’Neill’s firm has close to ties to the oil and gas industries, he has worked largely as a plaintiff’s lawyer — taking cases on behalf of people allegedly wronged by big companies.

He once represented a group of elderly and disabled hot dog vendors — in a company called Hot Diggity Dog — who said they had been wrongfully shut down by superstores. In 2001, he won a $429-million judgment on behalf of investors who fell victim to an elaborate securities fraud.

Unbelievable. O’Neill, a Democrat and supreme court law clerk as a young man, goes on to become one of the most successful trial lawyers in the country. Now it is true that we learn these impressive facts about O’Neill in paragraphs 32 of the Post’s story, and 21 of the LAT’s, but we do learn them. More importantly, the MSM are learning them.

Month one of the trial has been mixed, but on balance a win for the plaintiffs. O’Neill led with slam-dunk evidence of Kerry’s brazen lying, Christmas in Cambodia, and those on the jury from the NYT and WaPo slept (via Last in the WS), while opposing counsels Matthews and Carville banged the table and shouted, trying out multiple lines of defense. You know the list.

The banging the table phase is far from over, but it will begin to ring hollow, as more evidence of Combat V’s, phony Purple Heart One, the Sampan Incident, and the dozen other fantasies of defendant Kerry continue to unravel. An interesting side-note is that the elite media, in their reluctance to cover the many Kerry untruths and wild stories (eg, VC the Wonder Dog), are actually giving even greater legs to the stories as it is left to a blogosphere-gone-supernova to cover them, publicize them, and watch as the major papers waddle in a few weeks later.

Importantly as well, the expert trial attorney has kept his cool in the face of wild accusations from opposing counsels. Early in a trial, counsel needs to develop the respect of the jury, and hopefully rapport, since he stands in the place of his clients before them. John O’Neill appears to be getting a little respect from the MSM.

Finally, we note, the NYT has the same O’Neill article today, but its reporting, while fair enough, lacks the useful detail of the oher pieces. The Times piece is snide in part (O’Neill “says he graduated first in his class” — couldn’t they check if they doubted him?), but even reporters Ralph Blumenthal and Robert Worth are not immune to recognizing a human heart within O’Neill, since they mention his donation of his kidney to his wife.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 28th, 2004 at 8:53 am and is filed under General, New Media, Red Shift, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.