Patrick Fitzgerald does his job

Columnist Robert Novak was on Fox News Channel, an hour after a Washington D.C. jury found Scooter Libby guilty on four of five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, criticizing the idea of independent prosecutors.

Independent prosecutors have no supervision, Novak said, and they run wild. No law was broken when CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson's identity was leaked to the press, and the investigation should have ended there, instead of proceeding for years and eventually catching vice presidential aide Scooter Libby in a lie, for which he was prosecuted.

Novak said this is the kind of thing that led Congress to abolish the Independent Counsel act.

There's just one thing wrong with his analysis.

Patrick Fitzgerald wasn't appointed by the Justice Department to find out if a law had been broken. He was appointed so the Bush administration, the Congress, and the Senate could all refuse to talk about or investigate the possible mischaracterization of pre-war intelligence by saying, "I'm sorry, but there's an ongoing criminal investigation and I simply can't comment."

Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to push the issue past the 2004 election.

Which he did.

Nice job.

Too bad about Scooter. Nice guy.

Today White House spokeswoman Dana Perino had trouble keeping a straight face as she told the press that the administration still will not comment on any aspect of the case because it is still an ongoing criminal matter. She cited the intention of Libby's lawyers to ask for a new trial and file an appeal.

If the Republicans still ran the House and Senate, they'd probably echo that.

We'll see if the Democrats do. It's not an easy call, because if they begin to investigate the use of pre-war intelligence, they may find evidence that the vice president, and perhaps the president, deliberately misled the U.S. Congress in order to obtain an authorization for an invasion of Iraq.

And if that happens, they will have to start impeachment proceedings.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "The secret of the energy task force records."


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