The indispensable Raw Story points to two remarkable developments in Novak-Plame-Libby-Rove-gate today.
First, WaPo’s Dan Froomkin notes that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has launched an official web site on the Justice Department’s "usdoj.gov" domain. Does that sound to you like an action of a prosecutor who is about to fold his tent and go home? It doesn’t to me – rather, it suggests that he expects to have a whole lot of information to post in the near future. There’s not a whole lot up there yet – but already there are some very important documents. For example, if you read some recent news stories carefully, you can see the beginnings of an effort to portray Fitzgerald as a runaway prosecutor who has gone well beyond his supposed "original charge" of looking for violations of the very narrow Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Two documents (1, 2)on Fitzgerald’s site, however, conclusively debunk that portrayal. Of particular interest is the second of these, written by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General James Comey in February 2004:
I am writing to clarify that my December 30, 2003 delegation to you … is plenary and includes the authority to investigate and prosecute violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, your investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses ….
That’s right, folks. Fitzgerald has – and has always had – the express authority to investigate violations of way, way more than the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. The importance of that Act to the case now appears to have been a gigantic red herring, possibly concocted by Victoria Toensing and other Republican sympathizers who want to diminish public support for the investigation.
The second big development is this report that Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson are in the final stages of deciding whether to bring a civil lawsuit against the Bush administration – sensibly, they are waiting until Fitzgerald says what he’s going to do before they take any formal action. This is important because, as we learned in the Paula Jones v. Bill Clinton case, sitting Presidents (and Vice Presidents) can be forced to testify under oath in a civil case while in office. Can’t wait to see those depositions!
