CREW WRITES PATRICK FITZGERALD ASKING TO RE-OPEN ROVE CASE

http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/27630

13 Apr 2007 // Washington, DC – 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.

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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."

Ohhh, dare I hope something comes of this?

emails. The recovery of those emails is crucial to bushco's removal from office.

If he declines to, then it's a sure indication he's been bought and paid for.

I was never satisfied with the way he ended the investigation- to me it smacked of an unwillingness to take the last step on the obvious path. Too little done with too much evidence still in hand.

on this story, I am skeptical that Fitz has the authority to reopen that case. I would have to go back and check what his original orders were, but I believe it was investiting who leaked Valerie's name. Reopening a case on Rove's email destruction sounds like a real streach to me. Maybe I'm wrong because CREW sent him that request, and THEY are attorneys...I'm not. I honestly think a NEW case would have to be opened, and a new prosecutor (yes it could be Fitz) assigned to the case.

I would love to see this case opened based on the missing emails, but Fitz obviously knew it at the time and felt he had Libby on the purjury and didn't think it would be worth the time and legal battles to go after the Rove emails. That's still the case.

Remember, we have two sets of emails here to sort through...White House and RNC ones. We've already learned that Rove did a majority of his emailing on the RNC ones and thus the ability to get those would be different than a FOIA request for the White House ones. Going after the RNC ones, as we're already seeing, would have run up against Fielding and "Executive Privilidge" that will surely end up in the courts. The question he had was such a challenge worth it...especially when he already had Libby.

If anything, if there was ever the need for a new Special Prosecutor, it would be in this situation...if the statute still existed. The scope of these missing emails cover far greater scandals than just Plamegate. The timing also ties in with Abramoff and the Cunningham/Wade/MZB investigation that led to Carol Lam being shitcanned. And that's what we know about...surely Henry Waxman has many more things he'd like to find out about as well.

IMHO, CREW is doing this to kick the House Democrats to keep digging and get some national press on this story. I think it's somewhat succeeded. Now let's see how much the corporate media follows up on both the missing emails and the fight to extend Executive Privilidge to cover Barney.

--pending new information that can be used in the furtherance of the investigation.

If the discovery of a chain of private email servers outside the purview of the White House, and the discovery that many top administration officials used said servers to bypass the law regarding the recording and archiving of official communications, and also contrary to established law deliberately deleting these illegal communications over a period of YEARS does not constitute said NEW INFORMATION, then please explain to me what the definition would be.

:shrug: