Rove is safe for now, but maybe not for long.
Peter Fitzgerald's day job is U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois. He has been rooting out political corruption in Illinois for a few years now and has been spectacularly successful. In the "Safe Roads" scandal, he started out with a truck driver and a entry-level clerk in a Secretary of State's Drivers facility in 1997. Sixty seven indictments and 59 convictions later (so far, that is), he has the ex-Governor of Illinois in the dock for racketeering and conspiracy. It's blown up the Illinois Reflublican party and is a major factor in why Barak Obama sits in the Senate.
More recently, he's started out with a few low level people and contractors in the City of Chicago, and is climbing the ladder. Daley is visibly sweating, saying he knew nothing about how people who supported his administration got sweetheart deals leasing trucks to the City. But more and more of his people are finding themselves answering subpoenas and looking at indictments. Stay tuned.
Fitzgerald is no hack. He is doing a fabulous job of cleaning the Augean stables of Illinois politics. He is feared in Springfield (the state capital) and in Chicago. I was against his appointment for this job because I was afraid it would interfere with his efforts in Illinois. didn't want him taken out of Illinois. Fitzgerald gets the bottom people first, convicts them, and them offers them a break if they turn in their bosses. You've seen it a million times on Law and Order, NYPD Blue, etc., etc. But he gets the documentation to back it up and make the witnesses credible. He gets convictions. Rove's legal troubles aren't over; they may be just beginning. Indicting, trying, and convicting someone like Libby first and going after the higher ups later is exactly his MO. It may take him 3 or 4 years to get to Rove's level, but he's go the patience.
If you want to look up what Peter Fitzgerald has been doing in Illinois, search on "Fitzgerald Safe Roads Illinois" and "Fitzgerald Hired Truck Illinois".
Thanks for the very detailed insight. I say put criminals in jail. But I sure as hell hope Rove is not a criminal. I hope the Bush White House is not a cesspool like Illinois politics.
Re#70 Yep. Andrew McCarthy is on with Hugh Hewitt. AM spoke very highly of Fitz as also taking on terror, including the blind Sheik prosecutions, embassy bombings and indictment of Osama bin Laden. The guy is thorough and good. That said, Fitz's presser today was a bit over the top on the 'national security' angle. I'm still wondering why. Could he really give the CIA that much credence with all that is known about Wilson. Just doesn't figure...
Don 't you mean Patrick Fitzgerald, not Peter?
Thanks for your Illinois perspective. People are slamming Fitz hard here, and I'm no lawyer, but I found him today to be quite cogent... which is not something I'd expect from a partisan hack prosecutor.
People seem to be quibbling over the fact that there is no prosecution for the leak itself, but I said it during Clinton's Paula Jones deposition testimony and I agree with it here that if you lie to a grand jury, you deserve to get nailed. I don't like the us/them double standard... leave that to the Democrats.
Maybe Scooter leaked the story to stop Wilson's machinations at the source, knowing that he was taking a bullet for the administration. It just took that bullet a few years to make impact. But as I say, I'm no lawyer... just law and order.
If he's so honest and wonderful, why did he decide a month into the thing that there was no crime he could indict on and request to be allowed to continue on a fishing expedition in order to trap someone into an indictment at some later point? Why did he spend taxpayer money for two years investigating something he knew to be perfectly legal?