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.

Patrick Fitzgerald hosts a meeting in Chicago to ask Gonzales questions about the US Attorney Firings

This is interesting. When Gonzales was in Chicago, recently, promoting his Safe Kids campaign, he met with several federal prosecutors. This meeting was hosted by Patrick Fitzgerald. It doesn't sound like it was an easy meeting for Gonzo. The federal prosecutors weren't to happy with the firings and said complained that complained that the dismissals had undermined morale and expressed broader grievances about his leadership.

Here's more from the NY Times:

About a half-dozen United States attorneys voiced their concerns at a private meeting with Mr. Gonzales in Chicago.

Several of the prosecutors said the dismissals caused them to wonder about their own standing and distracted their employees, according to one person familiar with the discussions. Others asked Mr. Gonzales about the removal of Daniel C. Bogden, the former United States attorney in Nevada, a respected career prosecutor whose ouster has never been fully explained by the Justice Department.

While Mr. Gonzales’s trip was part of a long-scheduled tour, he has been meeting in recent days with prosecutors in an effort to repair the damage caused by the dismissals. President Bush has backed Mr. Gonzales, but his tenure at the Justice Department may still be in peril as lawmakers in both parties have called for his resignation, questioned his credibility and raised doubts that he can lead the department.

snip

In Chicago, some prosecutors accused Mr. Gonzales’s subordinates of operating as if the prosecutors were an obstacle to be side-stepped instead of a resource to be tapped in developing departmental policy, one person said.

At least one prosecutor complained that United States attorneys had been excluded from deliberations that led to a change in policy on prosecuting corporate crime, a person familiar with the discussions said. He and others would speak only on condition of anonymity because the discussions were confidential.

The policy change at issue happened in December, when Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty rolled back a requirement that corporate defendants waive the confidentiality of their discussions with lawyers to obtain leniency. Justice Department officials said Wednesday that some prosecutors had been involved in those deliberations.

snip

The host of the Chicago meeting was Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney there, who recently successfully prosecuted I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former White House official, on perjury charges. Mr. Fitzgerald’s spokesman declined to comment on the meeting.

Several other prosecutors declined to discuss the meeting. Justice Department officials said the participants included Steven M. Biskupic and Erik C. Peterson of Wisconsin; Joseph S. Van Bokkelen of Indiana; Craig S. Morford of Tennessee; and James A. McDevitt of Washington State.

Behind the prosecutors’ complaints is what several officials have described as their anger about the seemingly arbitrary manner used to identify the United States attorneys selected for dismissal.

Today, Kyle Sampson testifys!

Fallout from the Fired State Attorney-gate

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is on the hot seat. Now even Republicans are starting to call for his resignation. With Alberto, it's not just the State Attornys who have been fired, it's also the warrantless wiretapping and, I think, many of the Dems still hold him responsible for the torture decisions.

President Bush is still standing up for him but this may not last long. Pressure is coming from both sides of the aisle now.

The AP reports:

“I think the president should replace him,” Sununu said in an interview with The Associated Press. …

“We need to have a strong, credible attorney general that has the confidence of Congress and the American people,” said Sununu, who faces a tough re-election campaign next year. “Alberto Gonzales can’t fill that role.”

“I think the attorney general should be fired,” Sununu said.

Next up to be questioned....Rove:

Think Progress reports:

Today on CNN’s Situation Room, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) blew off White House signals that Karl Rove and other senior Bush officials may resist testifying before Congress on the U.S. Attorney purge.

“Frankly, I don’t care whether [White House Counsel Fred Fielding] says he’s going to allow people or not. We’ll subpoena the people we want,” Leahy said. “If they want to defy the subpoena, then you get into a stonewall situation I suspect they don’t want to have.” Asked whether he’ll subpoena Rove, Leahy answered, “Yes. He can appear voluntarily if he wants. If he doesn’t, I will subpoena him.”

And more on Rove from the Chicago Tribune:

Former Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) said Tuesday that White House political adviser Karl Rove told him in the spring of 2001 that he should limit his choice for U.S. attorney in Chicago to someone from Illinois.

According to Fitzgerald, who was determined to bring in a prosecutor from outside the state, Rove "just said we don't want you going outside the state. We don't want to be moving U.S. attorneys around."

Fitzgerald said he believes Rove was trying to influence the selection in reaction to pressure from Rep. Dennis Hastert, then speaker of the House, and allies of then-Gov. George Ryan, who knew Fitzgerald was seeking someone from outside Illinois to attack political corruption.

Things seem to be falling apart for Bush and his admin. Truth eventually will out.