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.

Framed by Fitzgerald's Staff?

In September, we wrote about one of  U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's proecutors who was accused of prosecutorial misconduct after allowing a government witness to testify falsely in a drug conspiracy case.

Later, Fitzgerald's office attempted to justify the prosecutor's action by labeling the testimony "truthful, but inaccurate."

Yesterday, a prominent developer, Peter Palivos (pictured), targeted by Fitzgerald's office, claimed he was framed. He accuses Fitzgerald of using a bogus witness who testified falsely.

The Rove Republican Racket enjoyed unjustly locking away political operatives and fundraisers during the Bush years and Palivos was one of them. It seems this pattern of using witnesses who testify falsely is a regular occurence in Chicago.

Fox News Reports:

A former Chicago developer on Thursday claimed that the House Judiciary Committee is in the middle of a four-year investigation into his long-standing complaint that he was framed by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's office six years ago. Fitzgerald has been at the forefront of a slew of high-profile political cases and currently is leading the corruption case against former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Peter Palivos claims Fitzgerald's attorneys framed him during an investigation into another politician, former Gov. George Ryan. Palivos says the attorneys slapped him with a bogus obstruction of justice charge after he wouldn't lie for prosecutors seeking Ryan's conviction in the corruption case, and he claims they even got witnesses to lie in their testimony against Palivos. Palivos was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to a year in prison in 2005. Since then, he has been engaged in a vigorous campaign against Fitzgerald's office and has dragged Congress into it.

Read more here

Truthful, but Inaccurate

Earlier this month we posted a story about prosecutorial misconduct by an Assistant U.S. Attorney who works under respected U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago.

Now it looks like Fitzgerald's office is defending their own, claiming in a new filing that "no finding of misconduct is justified" and that the witness who allegedly lied was being "truthful, but inaccurate."

Law.com writes:

Federal prosecutors in Chicago have asked a judge to reconsider her ruling last month that four convicted drug traffickers deserve a new trial because prosecutors engaged in misconduct. The prosecutors from U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's office on Sept. 18 filed a motion for reconsideration in the case, telling U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow that the government witness who she determined gave false testimony at the trial actually "was truthful, but inaccurate." When taking into account additional evidence not cited in Lefkow's decision and viewing the case as a whole, no finding of misconduct is justified, the prosecutors argued.

How many times have federal prosecutors been "truthful, but inaccurate" when they go after innocent victims who eventually plead out?

How many members of the Rove Republican Racket created "truthful, but inaccurate" accusations against prominent Democrats in an attempt to silence their political activism?

"Truthful, but inaccurate" is lawyerspeak for justifying a lie or falsehood and prosecutorial misconduct. A lie is a lie is a lie.

Read the whole article here.

Prosecutorial Misconduct and Assistant U.S. Attorneys

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of the Northern District of Illinois is admired for his integrity and independence. He gained recent national fame in the Valarie Plame CIA Leak Affair. Fitzgerald (pictured) has served almost eight years as U.S. Attorney and the Obama Administration indicates they're keeping him on board.

It's a surprise the Rove Republican Racket didn't fire him especially after Fitzgerald indicted Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff for lying.

Now, sadly, comes revelations that a prosecutor in Fitzgerald's office engaged in prosecutorial misconduct.

The Chicago Tribune wrote recently:

"A federal judge has found that a prosecutor in U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald's office committed prosecutorial misconduct by allowing a government witness to testify falsely in a drug conspiracy trial that resulted in the convictions of four defendants in March. In a 27-page ruling issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow ordered a new trial for the four on some counts, including the key conspiracy charge. But she refused to dismiss multiple other counts, meaning each faces sentencing for those convictions."

What does this REALLY show?

It shows the Rove Republican Racket has left many subordinates in positions of power: Assistant U.S. Attorneys who totally disregard good ethics, temperance, and fairness.

The Obama Administration is cleaning house at the top of each U.S. Attorney Office. Maybe it's time Eric Holder and friends take an intricate look at the transgressions of subordinates and Assistant U.S. Attorneys who appear to be more wicked than their Bush-appointed bosses.

Karl Rove Declined to Comment

In the most recent issue of Fortune Magazine, there is an insightful and interesting article on former Republican U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois who only served one-term and vacated his seat in 2004 which Barack Obama won.

The topic of the article is banking, but Fitzgerald talks about the Rove Republican Racket and how they tried to cover for then-Illinois Governor George Ryan.

Fitzgerald accuses Karl Rove of trying to pressure him to nominate someone from the corrupt Chicago machine as U.S. Attorney, which for our sake Fitzgerald refused. Read this:

Presidents customarily defer to senators in their party with regard to nominations of U.S. attorneys. And as the lone Republican senator from Illinois, that responsibility fell to Fitzgerald in 2001. Worried about corruption in state politics, Fitzgerald took the highly unusual step of seeking a U.S. attorney from outside Illinois. "I wanted somebody who was not under the thumb of the powers that be in Chicago," says Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald asked FBI director Louis Freeh for a recommendation, and it was Freeh who suggested Patrick Fitzgerald, a no-nonsense terrorism prosecutor in Manhattan's U.S. Attorney's Office. When word got out, Fitzgerald says, Bush's White House chief of staff Karl Rove told him he had to select someone from Chicago - a directive Fitzgerald obviously ignored. But the press reacted so favorably, Fitzgerald says, "the White House was just inclined to go along."

Fitzgerald also alleges that the Speaker of the House at that time, Dennis Hastert - a Republican from Illinois - at first asked the White House to let him make the nomination instead of Fitzgerald. Hastert was close to Gov. Ryan - who is today serving a 6½-year sentence for corruption - and Fitzgerald believes that Hastert wanted to install a U.S. attorney who "would put a kibosh on the Ryan investigation." Hastert denies Fitzgerald's claims. Rove declined to comment.