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HURRICANE FITZGERALD NEARS
Hurricane Fitzgerald is about to make landfall this week and it could be a category six ( Six indictments I mean )
As indictments loom the obvious White House strategy will be to attack Fitzgerald's decision should he indict Rove or others . This will be under the well practiced Bush/Cheney cover of defending the indefensible or, better yet, criminalizing policy differences.
As usual, the center for American Progress has the best handle on this fast approaching political storm ~ which could well result in a constitutional legal battle of historic proportions.
Allen L Roland
Defending the Indefensible
Just a few months ago, in July 2005, Karl Rove's former deputy Ken Mehlman appeared on NBC's Meet the Press and said, "I have tremendous confidence in Pat Fitzgerald." But when host Tim Russert pressed him on this statement and asked him whether he would "pledge today, because you have tremendous confidence in him, that you will not criticize his decision," Mehlman backed away from his statement, saying he did not want to "speculate." As more and more news reports suggest the White House is facing serious legal problems and a turnover in White House staff, it is becoming clearer that the White House is laying the groundwork to criticize Fitzgerald's decision should he indict Rove or others.
LOWERING THE BAR: Last week, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff "Scooter" Libby were "advised that they are in serious legal jeopardy." As a result, "allies of the White House have quietly been circulating talking points in recent days among Republicans sympathetic to the administration, seeking to help them make the case that bringing charges like perjury mean the prosecutor does not have a strong case." (For a full list of rebuttals to right-wing myths, click here). Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said, "It seems to me quite possible--dare I say probable?--that no indictments would be the just and appropriate resolution to this inquiry." Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) dismissed the leak inquiry as a subject the American people don't care about. And on Meet the Press yesterday, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) said a possible perjury charge against any White House staffer is nothing more than a mere "technicality." But on Feb. 5, 1999, when considering articles of impeachment against President Clinton, Hutchison stated that it was important to prosecute for perjury because she was concerned that "grand juries across America are going to start asking questions about what is obstruction of justice, what is perjury. And I don't want there to be any lessening of the standard. Because our system of criminal justice depends on people telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
THE BIG PICTURE DEFENSE: The Wall Street Journal editorializes, "Fitzgerald's larger obligation is to see that justice is done, and that should include ensuring that he doesn't become the agent for criminalizing policy differences." The Weekly Standard wrote recently that the fall of 2005 will be remembered as a time when it became clear that a comprehensive "strategy of criminalization had been implemented to inflict defeat on conservatives." (See video of this strategy here). Jonathan Chait, writing in the Los Angeles Times, noted that the wording was carefully chosen as a defense not only for Rove and Libby, but also for other conservatives who are in legal jeopardy: Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, David Safavian, Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and others. Chait noted, "DeLay is being pursued by Texas Dist. Atty. Ronnie Earle. Frist is being pursued by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Rove and Libby are in trouble with Republican prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. So apparently disparate elements of the criminal justice system are working in concert to undermine conservatives. That sure is a comprehensive strategy."
A PROSECUTOR'S PROSECUTOR: Bill Kristol, writing in the Weekly Standard, attempted to challenge the "courage" of Fitzgerald by suggesting it would be a bold and proper move for him not to bring any indictments. "Unless the perjury is clear-cut or the obstruction of justice willful and determined, we hope that the special prosecutor has the courage to end the inquiry without bringing indictments," Kristol wrote. But such rhetoric is unlikely to rattle a man seen as an "incorruptible prosecutor" whose record of convictions bears the distinct hallmark of courage. Fitzgerald has won convictions of "the 1993 bombers of New York's World Trade Center and members of the Gambino crime family, and he secured an indictment of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whom Fitzgerald has said he would like to try some day." The Washington Post writes, "A portrait is emerging of a special counsel with no discernible political bent who prepared the ground with painstaking sleuthing and cold-eyed lawyering." "The basic thing is he was enormously fair," said Washington Post national security reporter Walter Pincus, who was subpoenaed to appear before Fitzgerald's grand jury. Even President Bush has been forced to concede Fitzgerald has conducted his inquiry in a "very dignified way."
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