AG candidate backs prosecution of President Bush for murder

September 19, 2008
By DANIEL BARLOW Vermont Press Bureau

BURLINGTON — Charlotte Dennett, the Progressive Party candidate for Vermont attorney general, said Thursday that if elected she would prosecute President Bush for murder.

Dennett, an attorney from Cambridge challenging incumbent Democrat William Sorrell, was joined by Vincent Bugliosi, a famed prosecutor who took on Charles Manson in the early 1970s, at a press conference in downtown Burlington.

As Vermont attorney general, Dennett said she would appoint Bugliosi, who published a book this year called "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder," as a special prosecutor to hold Bush accountable for deaths stemming from the Iraq war.

Dennett said Vermont is the ideal state to bring murder charges against Bush, since the state has carried the country's highest per capita deaths of soldiers in the war. It is also home to nearly 40 communities that moved to impeach the president last year.

"Lots of Vermonters feel very frustrated that the impeachment efforts did not go anywhere," she said. "This is another avenue for us."

Bugliosi, a 74-year-old Los Angeles resident and author of the famed "Helter Skelter" book about his prosecution of Manson, called Dennett a "valiant and patriotic woman" willing to put her reputation on the line to bring to justice what he sees as one of the worst criminal acts in recent history.

He told a small crowd gathered in downtown Burlington on Thursday morning that his book clearly lays out evidence showing that Bush and his administration misled the American people and the U.S. Congress into war in 2003.

"George Bush and his people have gotten away with thousands and thousands of murders," Bugliosi said, citing both American and Iraqi deaths in the five-year-old war. "We, the American people, cannot let him get away with this."

Bugliosi said any state attorney general or local district attorney can bring criminal charges against Bush once he leaves office early next year. He said Vermont could take on the soon-to-be ex-president by bringing conspiracy to murder charges against him, using his own public statements during the build-up to the Iraq war as evidence.

"Bush and his administration deliberately told lies to deceive people and get the support of the country behind the war," he said. "That information went out through the media and was heard by residents of the state of Vermont."

Sorrell said Thursday that promises to prosecute Bush for murder makes "good political sound bites," but said he does not believe he — or any other local or state prosecutor — has that authority.

To bring about a murder or conspiracy to murder charge against Bush, the actual crime — the death of an individual — would need to take place within his jurisdiction, Sorrell said, which in this case is the Green Mountain State.