Patrick Fitzgerald Will Retain Job In Obama Administration

[SemiCharmedQuark]

From NBC's Pete Williams
Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago who brought criminal fraud charges against Rod Blagojevich, will be staying in his job in the Obama administration, even though he was appointed to the position by President George W. Bush.

U.S. attorneys are political appointees. The normal practice, when there's a change of political parties in the White House, is for the incoming administration to replace all 93 U.S. attorneys with appointees from the new president's party. For now, the Obama administration has asked the current Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys to remain in their posts while it considers how many to retain.

But Fitzgerald will not be asked to move on. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois has recommended that Eric Holder, the new attorney general, keep Fitzgerald. That suggestion was "positively received," according to officials at the Justice Department and Sen. Durbin's office.

Fitzgerald has been the U.S. attorney in Chicago since 2001. His spokesman had no comment on Fitzgerald's future.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/02/10/1789466.aspx

[phleshdef]

1. Good. Fitzgerald does a hell of a job and deserves the position as long as he wants it.

[realitythink]

2. Not getting Rove or Cheney is a good job?

You could argue that he did a lousy job and used the "sand in the face" argument to let the big guys off the hook. After all, he is a republican. In retrospect the Plame case was a disaster.

[leveymg]

3. He did the job he was appointed to do in 2003.

The CIA IG investigated Plame's outing and referred it DOJ for prosecution in September 2003. Fitz's brief was to prosecute those immediately involved, not to bring down the Presidency.

If he'd gone there, he would've been fired.

But, the public did get enough information out of the Libby Trial to know that Cheney was the center of the conspiracy, and Bush approved it. The public simply failed to push Congress to impeach, and Congressional leadership failed to take initiative.

Fitz did his job. The America system of government failed.

[Spazito]

5. I agree, he did his job and am glad he will continue....

with the Obama Administration. It seems some believe Fitzgerald should have ignored the very laws he is appointed to enforce in order to 'get' bush and cheney.

I would love to see Fitzgerald be appointed a special counsel with a broad mandate to investigate the crimes committed by the bush administration but, sadly, I doubt that would happen.

[Orsino]

6. It's not Fitz' fault that outing CIA ops isn't more clearly illegal.

The Administration used the leeway they had, and I think all Fitz had on them was the stupid cover-up.

[leveymg]

7. The crime was indeed structured to evade individual prosecution under the IIPA

See, Intelligence Identities Protection Act
(i) who resides and acts outside the United States as an agent of, or informant or source ... a foreign intelligence component of the Department of Defense, ...
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/laws/iipa.html

However, involvement in the conspiracy to reveal a NOC intelligence Officer's identity was clearly a crime. Otherwise, there would have been no probable cause to investigate it or to prosecute the resulting perjury and obstruction of justice.

[AngryAmish]

4. You have no idea what a sewer Illinois politics is

There are so many crooks involved in politics here - Dems do not compete with Rs. They are the same party really. They are in bed with various business and organized crime interests. Really.

Fitz is putting these crooks in jail. See George Ryan. See Blago. He is putting an entire generation of political fixers and bagmen in jail where they belong. He is pursuing the biggest fish out there (and the biggest fish out there is not Obama, it is Daley).

[ElsewheresDaughter]

8. I feel that this may be a BIG mistake