Posted on 02/13/2007 9:00:51 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Ex-senator questions Fitzgerald's case
14 minutes ago
Former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., went on the attack Tuesday against Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, saying the prosecutor had to have known from the start that it was not a crime to disclose Valerie Plame's CIA identity.
A fundraiser for the defense of I. Lewis Libby, Thompson depicted Fitzgerald as out of control, telling ABC News there was "no brake and no check and no balance" on the prosecutor.
Thompson's objections are the same ones Democratic politicians made in the 1990s about independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who spent six years investigating President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In the same fashion, Republicans complained about the six-year investigation of independent counsel Lawrence Walsh into the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan years and the first Bush administration.
While he was a senator, Thompson urged Attorney General Janet Reno to seek an independent counsel to look into the fundraising scandal surrounding the 1996 presidential election and he was disappointed when she refused to do so. Congress eventually allowed the independent counsel statute to expire.
"When you put too much power in the hands of unelected, unaccountable people who have every incentive to focus massive resources onto one particular person — who gets the plaudits in the media for doing so — it's a bad thing," Thompson told ABC.
Unlike Starr, who was appointed by a panel of federal appeals court judges, Fitzgerald's Justice Department superiors appointed him to look into the CIA leak scandal. He has continued his duties as U.S. attorney in Chicago while investigating the Valerie Plame affair.
"Nobody's been charged with outing" Plame, Thompson told ABC. "The Justice Department knew that early on. The CIA should have known that early on.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Don't tease me, LOL!
they would be a RED State, vacuum cleaner!
Gotta love Mr. Thompson.......
Cut to the chase! Please be our next President???
Excellent choice!
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