U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is corrupt as the crooks he goes after

[NNN0LHI]

Never thought I would say that. But after reading the reports of the interview his office had with Cheney that has become painfully obvious. They had Cheney dead to rights. If you or I would have had that same interview with the FBI agents we would be making little ones out of big ones right now.

I hope President Obama fires him first chance he gets.

Don

[spanone]

1. yep, they looked the other way as cheney lied 72 times....fitzgerald let him go free

[tabatha]

7. How could he prove the lies?

[Changenow]

10. Let a jury decide

whether or not "I don't know" is a lie.

[harkadog]

21. It is a violation of prosecution ethics to "let a jury decide".

Before charging a defendant with a crime a prosecutor must believe that he/she has evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant has committed that crime.

[msanthrope]

39. Don't let facts enter into this discussion.....

Seriously.

Welcome to DU!!!!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. I always believed that his "oh so careful" delaying tactics were just that.

A dead snail in a midwinter deep freeze moved faster.

He made it impossible to go after Rove, Cheney, or Bush. In other words, he protected their asses.

[saracat]

3. but did he have "proof"? I really don't know. I would be hesitent to trash

Fitzgerald over hearsay.

[bobbolink]

19. John Nichols has a convincing argument. Yes, it's hard to see our heros fall.

We have so few of them to begin with.

Nichols talked about his own interview with Cheeeeney, and how DICK has an amazing memory. To believe he couldn't remember all of that is an unbelievable stretch.

The whole thing makes me ILL.

[NoPasaran]

4. Another DU Messiah fallen from grace

[joeybee12]

5. God forbid a prosecutor sould be cautious and throrough. n/t

[pocoloco]

11. Gotta keep your powder dry!!

If you don't have any balls.

[leveymg]

13. That's good. I'll remember that one.

Too bad it took so long for some of us to catch on to that principle of musketry.

[bobbolink]

24. I really do wonder what the hell we are going to do with all that dry powder.

Is it for powdering Vitter's ample butt before putting it into a diaper?

[marmar]

6. I was NEVER in the Fitzgerald fan camp......

..... The fawning adoration he enjoyed here at DU made me a little queasy.

[leveymg]

14. I was, sorta, and this is NO surprise, So, I guess I still am, sorta.

It's not easy to go after the crimes of state of any sitting Prez and Veep, even when the Joint Chiefs and CIA mandarins ordered you to go after them.

I wouldn't hold this against Fitz. He had a difficult job and did it pretty well. The problem is, the whole system needed indictment for allowing the Iraq invasion to happen against everyone's best judgment. Cluster f-ck.

[Captain Hilts]

8. What can he do to put the squeeze on a Vice Prez, who keeps saying "I forgot."

The Poindexter defense is legal.

It totally sucks.

[leveymg]

12. Normally, "I forgot" is no defense. It's just another ground for a Perjury charge.

If you tell the Judge or an FBI agent that you can't recall an event that any reasonable person should remember, you're going to get charged with Perj or OOJ. Unless, you're Dick Cheney and you're carrying out a crime of state. Crimes of state get different treatment, or hasn't anybody noticed?

[Captain Hilts]

15. Adm. Poindexter wasn't charged with perjury. Maybe it works only for Republicans. nt

[leveymg]

17. He got off because Lee Hamilton gave him immunity for his limited Congressional testimony.

Lee Hamilton was also the 9/11 Commission Co-Chair. He's proved his skills as wall painter in one color several times.

[Orsino]

25. It doesn't have to be a defense...

...when there are no charges--and he said "I can't recall" enough to ensure that there could never be charges.

It's not Fitzgerald's fault, I don't believe. "I can't recall" isn't clever, but it's clever enough to stymie an investigation when no one else talks.

[NNN0LHI]

16. That was the same defense Scooter used at his trial and the jury convicted him

[leveymg]

9. Going after Cheney wasn't in his brief. His job was limited to fact-finding and finding a lower end

figure to take the heat. As with the '93 WTC and '98 East Africa Embassy bombings, he did his job without stirring up too much collateral damage to the institutions of US Gov't which had failed to protect us.

Simple as that.

[Sinti]

33. I'm afraid this may be entirely correct. When I saw the other cases, I expected nothing more n/t

[AntiFascist]

48. What about the FBI's role in the '93 WTC bombing...

Fitzgerald seems awfully protective of these institutions, and there are also internet rumors that he has enabled ATC corruption in Chicago.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a1097mohameddinner#a1097mohameddinner

In 2003, Fitzgerald will testify before a Senate committee and claim that when he had to make the decision after the embassy bombings whether or not to arrest Mohamed (see September 10, 1998), the “decision to arrest was made partly in the dark” because prosecutors could “not learn what information had gathered” on Mohamed. Fitzgerald will fail to mention that he was sitting with FBI agents when Mohamed gave this startling confession. (US Congress 10/21/2003)

[bobbolink]

18. John Nichols talked about this on Ed Schultz today.

Another hero bites the dust.

Damn him! :nuke:

[jgraz]

20. At best, he was incredibly timid. At worst, he was a co-conspirator.

At the time, a lot of people were appalled that he didn't indict Cheney. Now it looks like the fix was in from the start.

[cherokeeprogressive]

22. No Fitzmas? Ever?

[MajorChode]

23. No way he had Cheney "dead to rights"

"I don't remember" will never get anyone "dead to rights" because you simply can never prove what someone does or does not remember. The only way they would have ever gotten Cheney "dead to rights" was if someone fingered him, he confessed, or they could have caught him lying as they did with Scooter and that never happened. Guilt only matters in a court of law if you can prove it. Knowing they are guilty is not enough. If it were, Raygun and Bush, Sr would have been convicted of their crimes instead of their underlings also. When the underlings are given guarantees of no jail time via the presidential pardon, it's virtually impossible to get them to roll. Even if Ronnie Earle had been the special counsel, I doubt if the outcome would have been any different.

[Ghost in the Machine]

26. People expected Fitzmas.. and all they got was Fizzlemas... n/t

[Missy Vixen]

27. Oh, you know it, don't you?

Tell me: How was Patrick Fitzgerald going to be able to mount a trial with the greymail issues, let alone the fact that he needed Libby's testimony to convict Cheney, and that's not going to happen? Ever?

I love the armchair federal prosecutors here, especially the ones who don't have the balls to step up to the plate and take a swing.

[bemildred]

28. I thought that was clear some time ago, but OK. nt

[The Wizard]

29. As long as Bush was President

justice was an afterthought. The power to pardon and commute in the hands of the Bush cartel gave them the power to scoff at the law. They could have murdered children on national TV and no one was going to jail.

[Freddie Stubbs]

35. Bush is no longer President

What is stopping Holder from indicting Cheney?

[spanone]

30. obstruction of justice= dick cheney

[undeterred]

31. Yeah, and he was screwing Rielle Hunter too.

[Algorem]

32. the whole thing was about fooling people into liking a CIA agent

[Freddie Stubbs]

34. If the evidence is so overwhelming, why hasn't Holder indicted him?

Is he waiting 24 business hours?

[Kingofalldems]

36. I knew that was coming

More taunting from the republican in our midst.

[Freddie Stubbs]

42. Logical questions based on facts do not equal taunting

Are you afraid of the truth, regardless of where it leads?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

40. Now that the interview is public, I wonder how other prosecutors look at it

and what kind of an example it sets.

I personally can't imagine saying "I don't remember" 72 times to the FBI.

I can imagine someone saying "on advice of counsel . . . 5th Amendment . . etc.

Did Cheney have an attorney sitting by him during the interview?

[Major Hogwash]

47. 72 times in just 3 hours of the interview. He sounds more like Sgt Schultz from Hogans' Heroes

"I know nuffin'".

John Dean said that Haldeman said "I don't remember" 50 times over a 3 day period.
But, Cheney, he was ready - 72 times in 3 hours.

That's once every 2½ minutes.

That's a pretty good sign of obstruction of justice.

[Kingofalldems]

37. I see someone doesn't like this thread-he loves Bush/Cheney so much

Don't you dare say bad things about them or he'll bring up the Truthout story for the 1,000 time.

[TexasObserver]

38. Worse.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

41. I remember thinking with the "sand inthe umpire's face" comment

don't they ALL try to throw sand in the umpire's face? Are the umpires helpless against that? Isn't that what an obstruction charge is for?

[Peace Patriot]

43. There were a couple of other things going that may have created the context

for Fitzgerald backing off from Cheney--although I think we should remember what Fitzgerald actually said in public, which was that he COULDN'T find out WHY this crime--the outing of Plame--was committed (i.e., who did it) BECAUSE OF Libby's obstruction of justice and perjury, and that there was "a cloud over the vice president."

He went about as far as he could to say that "Cheney did it"--but he was obstructed.

You may not believe him--or think he had ulterior motives in not prosecuting Cheney--but he couldn't have laid the thing out more clearly, and he said a lot more than I ever thought he would (or ever heard a prosecutor say about a major political figure).

Something else he said--it's now up to the political system--or something like that.

2005-2006 are pretty interesting years for what may have been going on behind the scenes, in our political establishment and in the White House. The background to Katrina--the utter catastrophic failure of the Bush-Cheney White House--I think was an all-out internal battle between Bush/Rove and Cheney/Libby on who was going to take the fall for the Plame outing. You may recall how stranded Junior looked during Katrina--caught playing a guitar and eating birthday cake with McCain, while disaster struck New Orleans. Where were his handlers? I think they were slugging it out over the Fitzgerald investigation. Rove won, possibly because he really didn't do it--he was merely responsible for touting the political vengeance story--a cover story. The Plame outing had to do with crippling the CIA's counter-proliferation capabilities, so that a war with Iran could be manufactured. Wilson's op-ed was not the reason for the outing. That could have easily been washed down the corporate 'news' monopoly river of forgetfulness. But something like planting WMDs in Iraq that were trackable to Iran may have been the real object of these events--and the CIA counter-proliferation unit may have been in the way. (David Kelly, who was found dead near his home in England, under highly suspicious circumstances, four days after Plame was outed, may have also been in the way of such a plot.)

From 2005 through 2006, there were many indications that Cheney-Rumsfeld were going to nuke Iran. Then two things happened: (November 06) the Democrats won the 2006 elections (and were soon funding the "surge," giving the Bushwhacks everything they asked for, for Iraq), and (December 06) Rumsfeld resigned. To the voters, the elections were about Iraq, but not to the people who somehow got elected to Congress. There was to be no change of policy in Iraq. The Democrats made that very clear, early on. So, why did Rumsfeld resign? And, why, apropos of nothing, did Pelosi say, in that same period, just after the elections, that impeachment was "off the table"?

The answer may be that Cheney-Rumsfeld's plan to attack Iran was insane, and they were curtailed. Another development during this period was Daddy Bush's formation of the "Iraq Study Group" and I think what that group was really about was rescuing Junior from Cheney-Rumsfeld's insane plan to attack Iran. The military brass were in rebellion against it. Possibly nuclear powers China and Russia threatened to come in, on Iran's side. And Iran was a lot better defended than Iraq was. And, within three months of Rumsfeld's resignation, and Pelosi's "off the table" remark, nuking Iran simply went away. There has been no talk of it since. I think that at some point in circa late 2006, a delegation comprised of top military brass, Daddy Bush, CIA (Leon Panetta, member of the ISG, and, in my opinion, long time, deep cover CIA) and other powerful players offered a deal to Bush-Cheney: no nuking of Iran, no impeachment/prosecution, and Rumsfeld has to go.

This is how it was all handled--in secrecy. After this point, Bush-Cheney were essentially no longer in charge of US foreign policy or war policy. And if I'm right, how could a prosecutor oppose "the deal" of such powerful players? It was not an ideal political settlement of the matter, by any means. But it WAS a settlement of the matter. Cheney was curtailed. Rumsfeld was out (his plan for attacking Iran being the true reason for the Plame outing). What could a prosecutor do, if the political establishment had guaranteed no impeachment/prosecution in exchange for not perpetrating Armageddon?

I think this is pretty much what happened, and that Fitzgerald was clued in that Cheney had been de-fanged. WE may consider it an entirely undemocratic, mafia-like event (this power delegation putting it to Bush-Cheney) but HE (Fitzgerald) may have considered it a political solution. Fitzgerald is an establishment figure. He's a player, as they say--but is not on a par with those who curtailed Cheney-Rumsfeld. He wasn't even AG, just a prosecutor (and had to fight like hell to retain what power he had). Matter settled, in his view. Cheney's equals in power and ruthlessness had taken care of the problem.

One more thing: How come Junior didn't pardon Libby? I think the answer to that is that Cheney/Rumsfeld had gotten Junior into such deep trouble, with their insane plan to nuke Iran, and riling up the CIA, such that the whole edifice of Bush's life (his father, the CIA, the military and major politicos and corpos) had turned against his presidency, that he refused to pardon Libby just to spite Cheney. (Possibly the powers that took charge of his presidency wouldn't let him pardon Libby, but I like the spite reason better.)

[bertman]

44. The deck was stacked against Fitzgerald from the git-go. Even if he could have proved

that Cheney lied I'm pretty sure the DEMOCRATS in Congress would have done something stupid to let Cheney off the hook. Pelosi, the I-will-not-impeach-the-President Speaker of the House had already signaled that the Dems were going to let the Imperial Executive Branch off the hook.

And if you don't believe that, just remember that our President Obama is the one who's obstructing the justice now, with his look-forward-not-back philosophy of Imperial Executive Review.

It's times like this that I wish there really was a god who condemned people like Cheney and Bush to eternal hellfire, 'cause they surely ain't gonna have to deal with anything like that in this life.

[MrMickeysMom]

45. If he were to be fired, who would we put in there?

Really.

[Missy Vixen]

46. Fired for what?

Singlehandedly cleaning up Chicago?

Some of you need to spend some time talking to the folks who live in the Chicago area about Patrick Fitzgerald. They seem pretty damn happy with him and his staff.