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The man who made Obama possible September 7, 2008 Barack Obama probably would not be running as the agent of change if not for one of the most conservative Republican senators in Illinois history. As this presidential campaign continues to focus on whether Republican John McCain or Democrat Obama would be most likely to reform the federal government, I can't help thinking about the political fate of former U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was a wealthy banker when he ran for the Senate against incumbent Democrat Carol Moseley Braun in 1999. He bought the Republican nomination by spending $7 million...

Eight members of the RNC Welcoming Committee, a self-described anarchist organization, each one faces four charges for their alleged plans to disrupt the convention. Each individual was charged Wednesday with second-degree furtherance of terrorism, conspiracy to riot, conspiracy to commit civil disorder and conspiracy to damage property. Those arrested were Robert Joseph Czernik, Monica Rachel Bicking, Erik Charles Oseland, Garrett Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanial David Secor, Max Jacob Speckton, Luce Guillen-Givens, and Eryn Trimmer. The eight were arrested after Ramsey County Sheriff’s deputies raided four homes in Minneapolis and St. Paul on Aug. 30 and 31. They are all being held...

Joe Rasch and his two daughters, Emily and Elizabeth, were looking for agates on the Lake Superior coastline last Friday. Instead, they found a piece of history - a life ring from the Edmund Fitzgerald. Rasch admits he didn't realize what he found when he first saw the orange ring lying under a with pine tree that had fallen. Only when his daughter Emily read the words on the ring, it hit him. "It was pretty hard to read," Emily said. "I saw the Ed pretty good, then Fitz, so." They made the discovery near the Keweenau Peninsula, about 200 miles...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman warned Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Tuesday to turn over a copy of a FBI interview with Vice President Dick Cheney or face contempt charges. The document in question is an interview Cheney gave to the FBI in the investigation of the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA agent. “The arguments you have raised for withholding the interview report are not tenable,” Waxman wrote in a letter to Mukasey. “When the FBI interview with the Vice President was conducted, the Vice President knew that the information...

Corruption trial hears of plot to fire prosecutor By Andrew Stern Reuters CHICAGO A witness at the trial of political fundraiser Antoin Rezko testified on Thursday that then-White House aide Karl Rove was asked to replace the federal prosecutor in Chicago to abort a probe of Illinois corruption. Rove has denied knowledge of any discussion to replace Patrick Fitzgerald, the widely respected U.S. attorney in Chicago, when Rove was one of President George W. Bush's top advisers. Rove, who left the White House last year, could not immediately be reached on Thursday. A spokesman for Fitzgerald, who was appointed in...

Antoin "Tony" Rezko was arrested early Monday at his Wilmette home by federal agents on an alleged bond violation, the Tribune has learned. Investigators had in recent weeks become concerned about the movement of some of his finances, a source said. Rezko, who is scheduled to stand trial on corruption charges in less than a month at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, was taken into custody due to an alleged bond violation, a source confirmed.

WASHINGTON (AP) - An American accused in court papers of having ties to Osama bin Laden is now working for the Iraqi government's Foreign Ministry, U.S. officials and a former CIA counterterrorism chief say. Iraqi-born Tarik A. Hamdi was the ``American contact'' for one of bin Laden's front organizations and gave a satellite telephone battery to a bin Laden aide in Afghanistan for a phone used by the terrorist leader, according to an affidavit from Customs Agent David Kane.The affidavit was unsealed this week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., along with a federal indictment charging Hamdi with lying...

Mitt Romney’s problem isn’t that he’s a Mormon; his problem, in the eyes of the crowd now nipping at his heels, is that he’s serious about it. That makes him dangerous because it makes them uncomfortable. When you know what you believe and why, and you’re not ashamed to have it known, faith is not a position you take on an issue; it’s a position you bring to an issue, reflecting values and beliefs that have stood the test of time because you’ve discovered they’ll work when nothing else will. Americans, from the founding of this nation, have always understood...

Columnist Robert Novak said Saturday Ambassador Joe Wilson did not forcefully object to the naming of his CIA operative wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, when Novak spoke to him prior to the publication of a column that sparked a federal investigation and sent White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to jail. “He was not terribly exercised about it,” Novak said. Instead, Wilson focused on not being portrayed as simply an opponent of the Iraq war. Wilson also stressed that his wife went by his last name, Wilson, rather than Plame, Novak said. Novak forcefully defended his handling of the column...

Link references article which can't be posted here. ~~~~~ As always in the liberal Beltway, no one's ever questioned Fitzgerald's unsupervised free ride and tenure as Special Prosecutor in the Plame/Libby case by his college summer roommate, James Comey, now legal counsel for the giant, Lockheed Martin.

Imagine you are running a business and you suspect something has gone drastically wrong. Let’s say it appears that some money is missing. Your reaction, of course, is to call in an investigator with sweeping powers. Let’s say that after two years, and millions of dollars spent on the investigation, the investigator comes to you with some preliminary conclusions. One of your staff – let’s call him Jones – has tried to disrupt the investigation. This is pretty serious, you agree. Jones needs to be disciplined. But your principal concern is with the original investigation. Where’s the money? “What money?”...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court said Friday it would release some of the documents it reviewed when deciding to force journalists to testify in the CIA leak investigation. The ruling followed a request by The Associated Press and Dow Jones, which asked for the release of the sworn statements Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald gave to justify subpoenas for New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in 2005. Fitzgerald wanted the reporters' help in his investigation of the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to syndicated columnist Robert Novak. The news organizations argued...

I find myself in unusual company, and I am always so careful about the company I keep. Nonetheless, here I am arguing on the same side as Washington Post columnist and ritualistic liberal Richard Cohen and Christopher Hitchens. At least Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair and Slate, is an independent man of the left. Yet here I am on their side arguing for leniency for Vice President Richard Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby. Having been found guilty of lying under oath, he is about to be sent to prison before his appeal is considered. In fact his...

Mike Nifong is punished, but Patrick Fitzgerald isn't. This week the Duke-Nifong drama oozed to its finale, with a payout to the victims, a confidentiality agreement, the usual salutes to the healing process, and plans on the part of the principals to begin putting the case behind them. Missing from these declamations was the core reality that had brought this day to pass. No one expected participants in this peace-and-resolution ceremony to find a moment to recall the rightful fury and amazement this case engendered across the nation and outside of it--but such a moment would not have been out...

The attorney general called a meeting. He assembled all the U.S. attorneys in the Great Hall of the Justice Department and told them, in essence, that their chief responsibility was to decide whom not to prosecute. They should limit themselves to cases "in which the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest" and play no role in political vendettas. The speaker, of course, was not the lamentable Alberto Gonzales but the estimable Robert H. Jackson, who went on to the Supreme Court. This was 1940, but Jackson could have been talking to Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Whatever the...

WASHINGTON - Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald urged a federal judge Tuesday not to delay former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's 2 1/2-year prison sentence in the CIA leak case. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has argued that he has a good chance of winning an appeal and should be allowed to remain free until that challenge has run its course. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, who sentenced Libby to prison for lying to authorities and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, has said he...

So Fitzgerald signed an affidavit for which he lacked authority, suggesting he was either inadequately supervised or improperly appointed. The judge wonders why the defense didn't appeal this issue at the time. To which the defense responds, well, it was filed exclusively with the judge under seal, so we only saw it in May.

June 08, 2007 Prominent Law Professors Question Fitzgerald Appointment (updated) Clarice Feldman Early on in this case I described the Libby challenge to the constitutionality of the extra-statutory appointment of Fitzgerald. Now a number of prominent legal scholars have joined in on his side of the issue. They are doing so as the Judge must decide if Libby's appellate issues pose significant possibility of success to allow him to remain free pending his appeal. AP via SFGate.com: A dozen prominent law professors are questioning whether Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald had constitutional authority in the CIA leak trial that this week...

What happens when a dozen prominent law professors from across the legal spectrum - from Robert Bork to Alan Dershowitz - petition the judge in the Libby case to give credence to the concept that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's constitutional authority in prosecuting the case is in question? U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton will have to address the issue next week when he has been asked by Libby's attorneys to consider releasing their client on bond pending appeal of his conviction for perjury and obstruction of an FBI investigation of the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to reporters....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A dozen prominent law professors are questioning whether Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald had constitutional authority in the CIA leak trial that this week sentenced former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to prison. The push comes as Libby's lawyers, who are making the same argument, prepare to appeal his 2 1/2-year sentence. "The constitutional issue to be raised on appeal is substantial," conservative Robert Bork, liberal Alan Dershowitz and 10 other professors wrote in their nine-page brief, filed Thursday at U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. "To our knowledge, the special counsel appears to...

Tomorrow, June 5, after some four years of an unenviable ordeal, I. Lewis Libby, a brilliant man, a dedicated public servant and the father of two young children, will stand in the dock before U.S. District Court judge Reggie Walton to be sentenced for what a jury found constituted perjury, obstruction and false statements to government investigators and a grand jury. -SNIP- The only thing this filing shows to a certainty is that Fitzgerald demonstrates here, as he does in the Conrad Black case in Chicago, a too-eager jumping into cases without adequate research, a snipping the edges off the...

WASHINGTON - I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, will be sentenced Tuesday morning in federal court before U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who presided over his trial. The sentencing begins at 9:30 a.m. The judge will inform Libby of his fate, the term of his prison time, if any, and whether he will be remanded immediately to a federal facility. Libby has appealed his conviction and may be allowed to remain free until that appeal is resolved.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is due to be sentenced next week, and--just in time--Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has decided this was a leak case after all. Last week he filed a brief with the court arguing that Mr. Libby should receive a prison sentence in line with crimes that neither he nor anyone else was ever accused of committing. If the court accepts Mr. Fitzgerald's logic, the sentence meted out in this fantastic case would at least double, to a minimum of 30 months. So it goes in a case brought by an unaccountable prosecutor now requesting an unreasonable penalty...

During the perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis Libby, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald never charged, and never presented evidence, that Libby illegally disclosed the name of a covert CIA agent. But now, Fitzgerald wants Libby to be sentenced as if he had been guilty of that crime.

So much for Conrad Black as a suit-wearing bank robber. After 10 weeks of testimony and five key witnesses, prosecutors have yet to put one victim on the stand who would tell of being defrauded by this one-time press baron. This, after the government promised the jury in its opening statement to prove Black was nothing more than a bank robber who wore a suit. Prosecutors charged that he and his three co-defendants "betrayed the trust of thousands of public shareholders." Yet the jury hasn't seen a smoking gun - no explicit evidence that Black and his work pals conspired...

If there's a smarter guy in Washington right now than Sen. Chuck Schumer, Republicans haven't noticed. The New York Democrat is doggedly working to dismantle what's left of the Bush presidency, with barely an ounce of pushback from the other side. Mr. Schumer was the instigator of the Democrats' probe into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, although note that the question of who fired which prosecutor is already yesterday's news. The attorneys mess was just an opening, a hook that is now allowing Mr. Schumer to escalate into an assault on the wider administration, as well as presidential authority...

History of untruths By Peter Worthington Toronto Sun May 10, 2007 CHICAGO -- It was a packed and hushed courtroom at the Conrad Black trial when lawyer Eddie Greenspan started cross-examining David Radler yesterday afternoon, launching a savage attack on his truthfulness. Radler, Black's ex-friend and partner in the Hollinger empire for some 35 years, was obviously warned of Greenspan's legendary courtroom skills of taking no prisoners, and at first was chippy, argumentative, defiant and claiming he didn't understand what Greenspan was asking. Greenspan reminded him of his testimony under oath at a trial in B.C. where he swore...

The closest he came to being animated during our discussion came as he discussed the chain of events that led to the prosecution of Libby. His comments are worth quoting at length: ~~~~~~ "I know what he's undergoing now. I know what it costs him. I know what's happening to him and his family, I've seen it before. And he's suffering from the fact that he is in Washington, D.C., as an employee of the Bush administration and especially as someone who is working for Dick Cheney. It was obvious to me that no crime had been committed, that Valerie...

Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to reopen his investigation of Karl Rove's role in disclosing Valerie Plame Wilson's status as a covert CIA operative in light of recent revelations about missing White House emails. Press reports indicate that Mr. Rove uses a Republican National Committee (RNC) email account for 95% of his communications. In addition, the RNC's counsel has admitted that all of Mr. Rove's emails prior to 2005 have been destroyed. Moreover, the White House has admitted that -- as CREW reported yesterday -- five million emails are missing from...

Far From CIA Scandal, Wilsons Settle In By DEBORAH BAKER SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - In this liberal-leaning tourist town known for its handmade turquoise- and-silver jewelry, Joseph Wilson has just bought his wife something special in a downtown shop: a red-and-blue pin that reads, "I'm not anti-Bush. I'm pro-intelligence." Wilson and his wife, outed CIA spy Valerie Plame, are finally getting a chance to unwind. Three weeks ago, they arrived at their new 4,600- square-foot hilltop adobe home and have traded in their Jaguar for a pickup truck. Their 7-year-old twins already have found new friends and spotted three...

It is well past time for the public to know what Patrick Fitzgerald told the Court. I , for one, have every reason to believe he was as disingenuous and loose with the facts with that Court as he was with the public when he announced the indictment and with the jury in his rebuttal argument at the closing of the Libby trial.And I am not shy about saying what the Wall Street Journal hints at: The only conceivable reason Fitzgerald is fighting public disclosure of the redacted portions of the affidavit and opinion is to cover up his own...

Fitzgerald's Cover-Up It's time to hold the special prosecutor accountable. Wednesday, April 4, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT For a prosecutor who claims to be a truth-seeker, Patrick Fitzgerald sure can be secretive. Even now that the Scooter Libby trial is over and his "leak" investigation is all but closed, the unaccountable special counsel wants to keep his arguments for creating a Constitutional showdown over reporters and their sources under lock and key. Mr. Fitzgerald is fighting release of the affidavits he filed with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to justify compelling two reporters to testify about their conversations with...

Gonzales Aide Will Invoke 5th Amendment Republicans Back Away From Embattled Attorney General POSTED: 9:54 am EDT March 26, 2007 UPDATED: 4:02 pm EDT March 26, 2007 WASHINGTON -- Monica Goodling, a Justice Department official involved in the firings of federal prosecutors, will refuse to answer questions at upcoming Senate hearings, citing Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, her lawyer said Monday. "The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real," said the lawyer, John Dowd. He said that members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees seem...

Wrong Arm Of The Law Rogue Prosecutors: Mike Nifong, the poster child for misusing the justice system for a personal agenda, may soon get his comeuppance, his targets freed. Sadly, the same can't yet be said of Patrick Fitzgerald and Johnny Sutton. Paul Caulfield, a writer for Inside Lacrosse Magazine, told Fox News last week that several sources had told him the three Duke lacrosse players charged with rape, assault and kidnapping charges will soon be freed with all charges dropped. We welcome the result and are not surprised by it. We also won't be surprised or disappointed if the...

Democrats unable to frog-march Rove out of the White House think the "political" firings of eight U.S. attorneys might do the trick. But what about their blocking of Bush judicial nominations for political reasons? The pattern was set in Plamegate: Investigate a noncrime, issue subpoenas, get testimony under oath, find inconsistencies and — voila! — you have perjury faster than you can say Scooter Libby. It got no further up the food chain than Libby, but that sound you hear is Bush's enemies, and Karl Rove's, reloading. Democrats are charging that the firings were based not on merit, but on...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/site/premium/access-registered.intercept Gonzales aide rated Fitzgerald mediocre Prosecutor's ranking same as 2 others who were fired Advertisement By Dan Eggen and John Solomon, The Washington Post; Post staff writer Michael Abramowitz contributed to this report March 20, 2007 WASHINGTON -- U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago was ranked among prosecutors who had "not distinguished themselves" on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was leading a CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a former vice presidential aide, administration officials said Monday. The ranking placed Fitzgerald below "strong U.S. Attorneys...

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had "not distinguished themselves" on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading the CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said yesterday. The ranking placed Fitzgerald below "strong U.S. Attorneys . . . who exhibited loyalty" to the administration but above "weak U.S. Attorneys who . . . chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.," according to Justice documents. The chart was the first step in an effort to identify...

His health is rough; he has been the most disastrous vice-president in history; he has lost two wars; he has lost every ally; he is despised in much of the country; he is now going to be the center of all the questions that the Libby guilty verdict raise. Why did he get so exercized about a two-bit critic during a critical time in the Iraq war? Why would he risk losing his most trusted aide by coordinating a media sting on a minor political opponent? Why would he risk committing a crime to pursue Wilson unless he had something...

WASHINGTON - Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who spent years investigating the 2003 leak of a CIA operative's identity, told lawmakers Wednesday that he could offer little help during congressional hearings on the leak. Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., asked Fitzgerald last week to meet with members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which will hold hearings on the Bush administration's handling of CIA operative Valerie Plame's classified employment status. Plame's identity was leaked to reporters after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, began criticizing the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq. In a letter to...

Chairman Henry A. Waxman announced a hearing on whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. At the hearing, the Committee will receive testimony from Ms. Wilson and other experts regarding the disclosure and internal White House security procedures for protecting her identity from disclosure and responding to the leak after it occurred. The hearing is scheduled for Friday, March 16. In addition, the Committee today sent a letter to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald commending him for his investigation and requesting a meeting to discuss testimony by Mr. Fitzgerald before the...

...When a prosecutor speaks about "a cloud over the Vice-President's office" and "a cloud over the White House," he is speaking politically. There is no law about the amount of cumulus permitted over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The prosecutor is speculating on political capital — reputation, credibility, the currency of politics. Once damaged, they're hard to recover. So, even if it's not within the purview of the jury, his question is relevant to the wider world: How did this cloud get there and stay there even though it had no meaningful rainfall? Answer: Patrick Fitzgerald.... As for Scooter Libby, he faces...

The verdict is in: Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, should be pardoned. At least according to two of the jurors who found him guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice. Asked about the possibility of a pardon, juror Ann Redington said, "I would like him to get one," and added, "I don't want him to go to jail." Asked how he would feel if Libby were pardoned, the ubiquitous juror Denis Collins said, "I would really not care." The jarring spectacle of jurors expressing support for, or at least indifference toward, an executive act...

The whole Scooter Libby case, from start to finish, has been based on the left's depraved obsession with substantiating the lie that President Bush and Vice President Cheney lied us into war. Though I won't presume to substitute myself as a juror and will never downplay the actual commission of perjury, I have serious doubts that Mr. Libby lied -- as opposed to having an imperfect memory over matters not that critically important -- because he had no motive to lie. He had no motive because the administration had nothing to hide concerning its decision to attack Iraq and particularly...

One of the jurors who convicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby now wants President Bush to pardon him. "I don't want him to go to jail," Ann Redington, said of the former senior White House aide who faces up to 25 years in prison for lying and obstructing justice in the CIA leak case.

No hard evidence was produced that Libby was ever told she was undercover. Fitzgerald had argued that whether or not she was covert was not material to this trial, and U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton had so ruled. Yet in his closing argument, Fitzgerald referred to Mrs. Wilson's secret status, and in answer to a reporter's question after the verdict, he said she was "classified." In fact, her being classified -- that is, that her work was a government secret -- did not in itself meet the standard required for prosecution of the leaker (former deputy secretary of state...

In November of 1991, I was in my third year of law school. I was on the hunt for a job, and one afternoon a representative from Florida’s Dade County Prosecutors Office visited our campus. I was one of his last interviews of the day. After a bit of initial chit-chat, he hit me with a hypothetical that he had already bounced off a couple dozen of my fellow job-seeking classmates: “A potential case comes to you. You’re not sure whether the alleged perpetrator is guilty or not. What do you do? Do you bring the case to trial?” I...

Did anyone catch BOR last night. I know, I know - a lot of you do not watch him anymore. His talking points and his first segment was about Scooter Libby. If you came from another planet and listened to him, you would hear something totally different than what has been reported. BOR actually stated that Libby leaked Plame's name to get revenge. That Cheney did send Wilson to Africa. It was just totally bizarre.

The Libby Trial is now an American tragedy. Compare the treatment and potential penalties to the treatment of Bill Clinton's self-serving and conscious lies. or Sandy Berger's destruction of evidence in the 9/11 commission report (and for all posterity). Clarice Feldman just made an appearance on the Dennis Prager Show, discussing the case. She stated that an appeal for a new trial has already been filed, and although she has not seen it yet, there are grounds for such an appeal. Until AT is able to post an analysis, readers are invited to read the comments on Just One Minute,...

Breaking on MSNBC

Today the jury in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is in day nine of deliberations, with no end in sight. There was a lot of haggling in the courtroom this morning between prosecution and defense over how to answer a couple of questions from the jury. Jurors seem confused, or troubled, or something, over the charge that is based on Libby's testimony about a single conversation he had with Matthew Cooper, then of Time magazine. At times, the jury has seemed to be confused about whether Libby was charged with lying to Cooper or with lying to the...