I’ve avoided this topic like the plague because I try to stay away from national issues. But now that Patrick Fitzgerald has been brought into the subject, it’s time we had a go at it…
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 U.S. attorneys who should be removed. Two prosecutors who received the same ranking as Fitzgerald were later fired, documents show. […]
The March 2, 2005, memo from [US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson] came in response to a proposal floated by [then-White House counsel Harriet Miers] to remove all U.S. attorneys during Bush’s second term. Fitzgerald was placed in a middle category among his peers: “No recommendation; have not distinguished themselves either positively or negatively.”
Although the ranking meant Sampson was not recommending those prosecutors for removal at the time, two U.S. attorneys who received the same ranking were fired last Dec. 7: Daniel G. Bogden of Nevada and Paul K. Charlton of Arizona.
The guy convicts a former governor, dozens of political cronies, has the entire state’s political system in deep panic, but the chief of staff says he hasn’t distinguished himself? Apparently, those people had other, more “important,” priorities on their minds.
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I said at a forum last year that Bush might try to remove Fitzgerald and was shouted down by some of the other panelists.
I want to make it very clear that I have no reason whatsoever to doubt that Fitzgerald was just doing his job, but since it’s now come out that political pressure was exerted on other US Attorneys to indict Democrats before the 2006 election, somebody ought to at least ask Fitzgerald whether he received any communications from the White House or other sources about the timing of last fall’s Tony Rezko indictment. Rezko, of course, was a close intimate of Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
The Rezko indictment seems valid to me, but it did happen just a few weeks before the 2006 election. Meanwhile, President Bush’s pal Mayor Daley had no such trouble in his own electoral run-up this spring.
Fitzgerald has been practically sainted here by the chattering class, but the questions wouldn’t be completely out of order.