Friday, July 18, 2008

Fitzgerald says Rove was trying to fire him during CIA leak probe

Fitzgerald says Rove was trying to fire him during CIA leak probe
Marcy Wheeler
Published: Thursday July 17, 2008

In a supplement to his responses to the House Judiciary Committee, Patrick Fitzgerald confirms what we've always suspected: Karl Rove was trying to have Patrick Fitzgerald fired while Fitzgerald was still investigating Rove for his role in leaking Valerie Wilson's identity--and the timing lines up perfectly with the Administration's efforts to fire a bunch of US Attorneys.

Remember back in June, when Fitzgerald publicly suggested he had more details to share with Congress about Rove's efforts to get him fired?

"If I owe a response [about the putsch to remove him from his job], I owe it to Congress, first," Fitzgerald said when asked about all this after the verdict.

Well, it turns out Fitzgerald did share those details with Congress. And those details make it clear that Fitzgerald learned Rove was trying to fire him while Fitzgerald was still actively investigating Rove's role in the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity.

more...

http://rawstory.com//news/2008/Fitzgerald_says_Rove_was_trying_to_0717.html

The frogmarch is looooooooooong overdue!

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Waxman threatens AG with contempt unless he gets FBI's Cheney transcripts

Waxman threatens AG with contempt unless he gets FBI's Cheney transcripts
Nick JulianoPublished: Tuesday July 8, 2008

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) says his committee will vote next week to hold Attorney General Michael Mukasey in contempt if the Bush appointee continues to refuse to hand over transcripts of an FBI interview with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Waxman says the interview transcript is vital to the Oversight Committee's investigation of the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame. In a letter to Mukasey (.pdf), Waxman noted that Cheney's former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told the FBI it was "possible" that Cheney told him to expose Plame after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly undercut the administration's claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

"The arguments you have raised for withholding the interview report are not tenable," Waxman told Mukasey. "When the FBI interview with the Vice President was conducted, the Vice President knew that the information in the interview could be made public in a criminal trial and that there were no restrictions on Special Counsel Fitzgerald's use of the interview."

Mukasey has invoked executive privilege -- the Bush administration's go-to response to Congress's attempts at oversight -- in refusing to hand over transcripts of the interviews with the president and vice president. The interviews were conducted in relation to Patrick Fitzgerald's probe of Plame's outing. Libby was the only person convicted as a result of that inquiry, although it eventually revealed that Karl Rove and former State Department official Richard Armitage also had leaked Plame's name.

more...

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Waxman_threatens_AG_with_contempt_unless_0708.html