CREW asks Fitzgerald to re-open the Plame investigation

Raw Story reports, with the news of the missing emails from the WH, and the admission by the Lawyer of the RNC that there are 4 years of Rove's emails missing from the RNC-issued email accounts, CREW, Citizens for Responsible Ethics, has asked Patrick Fitzgerald to re-open the Plame Investigation into Rove's role in the identity leak. Again, another by-product of the DOJ investigation of the firings of the US Attorneys. Four years of emails missing or deleted by Rove. And not from the WH emails....but from the RNC email account. The web is definately tangled.

Rove's attorney denies that Rove intentionally deleted these emails. And Leahy and his committee are now asking for the emails to be investigated. Leahy said:

"They say they have not been preserved. I don’t believe that!” Leahy shouted from the Senate floor. “You can’t erase e-mails, not today. They’ve gone through too many servers. Those e-mails are there, they just don’t want to produce them. We’ll subpoena them if necessary.”

When the Plame trial against Scooter Libby ended with a conviction, Patrick Fitzgerald was asked if any further investigation was planned, he said "If new information comes to light, of course we'll do that."

So Melanie Sloan of CREW, in light of the missing emails and what they might contain has urged that Fitzgerald "should immediately reopen his investigation into whether Rove took part in the leak as well as whether he obstructed justice in the ensuing leak investigation."

Here is CREW's press release:

Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to reopen his investigation of Karl Rove's role in disclosing Valerie Plame Wilson's status as a covert CIA operative in light of recent revelations about missing White House email.

Press reports indicate that Mr. Rove uses a Republican National Committee (RNC) email account for 95% of his communications. In addition, the RNC's counsel has admitted that all of Mr. Rove's emails prior to 2005 have been destroyed. Moreover, the White House has admitted that - as CREW reported yesterday - five million emails are missing from the White House servers. All of this raises serious questions about whether Mr. Rove knowingly destroyed evidence relevant to the Special Counsel's inquiry and whether Mr. Fitzgerald received all relevant documents.

Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said today, "It looks like Karl Rove may well have destroyed evidence that implicated him in the White House's orchestrated efforts to leak Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity to the press in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson." Sloan continued, "Special Counsel Fitzgerald should immediately reopen his investigation into whether Rove took part in the leak as well as whether he obstructed justice in the ensuing leak investigation."

CREW serves as legal counsel to Joe and Valerie Wilson in their civil suit against Karl Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Richard Armitage.

This just keeps pulling people in...

Now it's a Congressman that wrote a letter to US Attorney, Carol Lam, about a case she dropped.

From Raw Story:

A letter sent by a Republican Congressman to Carol Lam, former US Attorney for the Southern District of California, appears to violate the Ethics rules established by the House of Representatives, RAW STORY has learned

However, another attorney who specializes in Congressional ethics said that although rules may have been violated, there were mitigating factors.

When RAW STORY brought Issa's letter to the attention of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, they confirmed that it appeared in violation of the same ethical rules that had prompted them to file complaints against two additional Congress members earlier in the month.

"CREW will be sending an ethics complaint to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct regarding Rep. Issa’s letter to former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam," Naomi Seligman Steiner, the group's Deputy Director, confirmed to RAW STORY this afternoon.

Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-CA) spokesman Frederick Hill told RAW STORY he wouldn't comment on a complaint he had not seen.

"You want me to comment on something that hasn't been filed and you can't send me?" Hill wrote in an e-mail.

CREW's complaint concerns a letter written by Rep. Issa to Lam on Feb. 2, 2004, seeking information concerning the release of and dropping of a case against Antonio Amparo-Lopez, whom the letter alleges was "a known alien smuggler with a long criminal record."

"I respectfully request that your office provide me with information about the facts surrounding [Amparo-Lopez's arrest] and, if applicable, the rationale behind any decision made by your office to decline or delay prosecution of Mr. Amparo-Lopez or any other action that may have contributed to his release," Issa then wrote.
The full letter, a signed copy of which was provided to RAW STORY by Rep. Issa's office, can be accessed at this link.

This is snowballing. I am sure there is more to come.