Will Paddy Boy Exit Stage Right?

The intense fallout against once esteemed U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (pictured) over his legal and professional failure to successfully prosecute former Democratic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is growing.

As readers may recall, before the Blago verdict, we reported about Fitzgerald's Assistant U.S. Attorney who was involved in prosecutorial misconduct and allowed a government witness to testify falsely. In addition, we raised the profile of a controversial developer who accused Fitzgerald's staff of wanting him to lie on the stand. When he refused, the developer allegedly was framed and charged with obstruction of justice charges.

But the fallout on Blago is coming from conservative, national, and traditionally Rove Republican publications.

Having failed to secure a conviction on 23 of 24 charges filed, a Wall Street Journal editorial published today called for Fitzgerald's resignation or removal:

Blagojevich may or may not be corrupt, though he has repeatedly proved his stupidity. In any event, Mr. Fitzgerald’s legal team failed to persuade a jury that Blagojevich was guilty of racketeering, conspiracy, wire fraud, extortion, kickback schemes and a litany of other crimes, despite five weeks of argument and testimony that included incriminating selections from thousands of wiretapped phone calls. The defense did not call a single witness. The jury also deadlocked on four charges against Blagojevich’s brother, while his chief of staff earlier copped a plea.

If Mr. Fitzgerald doesn’t resign of his own accord, the Justice Department should remove him—especially after such other recent examples of prosecutorial bad faith or bad judgment involving Blackwater contractors in Iraq, the forgotten backdating accounting scandal and the late Senator Ted Stevens. Prosecutors have vowed to retry Blagojevich this fall on the other 23 mistrial counts. But if he really is guilty, then incompetence alone is grounds for Mr. Fitzgerald's removal.

Blago and Lying to the FBI

Yesterday's stunning news that former Democratic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (pictured right) was not convicted on 23 of the 24 counts he was charged with was a tremendous setback to the Rove Republican Racket, federal prosecutors, and esteemed U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

But there's a bigger story to this. In knee-jerk fashion, prosecutors vowed to retry Blagojevich. The Chicago Tribune reported:

Moments after a rare setback, a chastened U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was acting nothing like the swaggering prosecutor who just 20 months earlier proclaimed he had arrested a sitting governor to stop a political crime spree. He would not take questions from reporters about his office's failure to convict former Gov. Rod Blagojevich on 23 counts against him, winning a guilty verdict only on a single count of lying to the FBI, among the least serious of the charges he faced.  Instead, Fitzgerald vowed to retry the case, then quickly ending his news conference.

The real "political crime spree" and bigger story here is the charge Blago was convicted on: lying to the FBI.

Lying to federal agents, or not telling the whole truth, has been a favorite tool of the federal government to bring in  innocent people, some with no criminal records, and force them to plead out or fry bigger fish.

FBI agents visit and interview people and draft up what are called 302 reports.  A 302 report (sample pictured left) is used to summarize an interview conducted by an FBI agent. Depending on the agent's interpretation, some interviewees may end up as criminal defendants.

Most interviewees believe the FBI is just doing its job and are never told they should have a lawyer present. Their own words, or misinterpretations and misspeak, can be used against them in a court of law.

The Rove Cheney Bush Administration succeeded in using this slight-of-hand tactic. Like the Honest Services Fraud Crime was, lying to the FBI became a stretched-beyond-the-limits weapon to prosecute political targets.