Rogue Prosecutor

I’ve been delinquent on catching up on the revised indictment of Tom DeLay; hopefully more on that later. In the meantime, go read former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, though, on why “[t]he investigation of DeLay, a matter of national gravity is being pursued with shocking ethical bankruptcy by the district attorney — by Ronnie Earle.”
I’ll make this promise: whatever the outcome of the Valerie Plame investigation, and whether or not Patrick Fitzgerald takes any steps in that investigation that warrant criticism, I will not argue that Fitzgerald is some sort of runaway rogue prosecutor. Everything we know about Fitzgerald (a former colleague of McCarthy’s, among others) suggests that he is a tough, aggressive, but fair-minded guy.
Nothing we know about Earle says the same.

10 thoughts on “Rogue Prosecutor”

  1. Plame indictments for espionage and crimnal conspiracy.
    She is the only on who went to the news at ‘Vanity Fair,’ if you check the facts-the assassinations and bombings started right after that. She knew the results of confirming herself and that is why she did so at ‘Vanity Fair,’ although now she is not an operations officer because they run people like Wilson, but just a NOC.
    Wilson may be in some trouble for going to France before the Niger trip, but womeone had all this arranged. Plame mayhave been working for France or Germany before sho copied herself to Powell to protect herself. It makes no sense she would use a foreign intelligence operation ‘yellowcake’ aimed at CIA WMD, Rice and her degree, and relationhship with Bush; unless it was someone llike France operating out of Niger attacking the White House using Plame who was using Wilson.
    Being a democrat, hating the war, or having to study WMD because of Rice’s degree(which Rice kinda blew) are not enough of an excuse to attack all the major leaders of the US government.
    Who was Plame really working for – its the espionage act that she will be prosecuted under.

  2. By the way, if Earle is so bad, why all the support for Ken Starr? Don’t recall the National Review talking about Ken Starr’s clearly partisan activities…and the leaks coming out of those grand juries were mind boggling, such that I’m surprised there weren’t prosecutions for them. And the activities of Starr (threating to indict Monica’s mother, por ejemplo) went well below any threshold…The NRO, instead, said, “let’s focus on the activities of the accused and not the prosecutor”…so forgive me if I don’t find that source credible…

  3. I don’t put much stock in the leak issue, as leaks occur in many cases and are often driven by other parties, including the defendant (there’s no question that Clinton drew enormous political advantage from the leaks in the Lewinsky case – had the final Starr Report come out of the blue rather than after months of spinning of each new detail, Clinton would never have weathered the storm, and the Democrats would have been badly routed in the fall 1998 elections).
    Other than leaks, the distinctions between Starr’s conduct and Earle’s are extensive – you really can’t draw a parallel between Starr and the other particular points made by McCarthy with regard to misconduct by Earle.

  4. I agree, you can’t draw a parallel. Starr’s conduct was much worse (trying to deny right to counsel, trying to indict people solely to get others to testify, indicting parties only because they didn’t want to give untrue information to the prosecutor, etc, etc, etc)…Ronnie Earle indicts Democrats and Republicans, even himself. DeLay is the one that wants this to be political, rather than “did you take corporate money and convert it illegally to donations to the candidates”…answer to that I’m pretty sure we could all guess…

  5. By the way, the allegations (stated as facts) by McCarthy (an appropriate name) are clearly not knowable by the author, yet rather than allow his readers to make their own conclusions, he draws his own, stating that Earle is a disgrace. Yet all of his anger with Earle about “rank partisanship” is clearly applicable more to Starr than Earle. Earle has indicted Democrats (more than four times as many, including Mattox, which still ticks off Dems to this day)…Starr, on the other hand, did leak to the press (this is pretty documented)…
    Earle’s certainly an ambitious prosecutor that does not hide from the limelight…but that is basically part of the job, particularly in the State Capitol…Much of the allegations McCarthy sites are straight out of DeGuerin’s brief, which is hardly a statement of facts upon which everyone agrees. Some of the allegations are simply not able to be discussed by Earle precisely because he does not want to jeopardize the investigation, particulalry related to what was or was not done in the grand jury room.
    As an aside, McCarthy did not shy from cameras himself in NY, writes a column regularly for a very politically partisan magazine, and yet he thinks he should be able to call anyone else a “disgrace” to the profession? C’mon.

  6. Why is it conservatives always call their own “fair,” but whenever anything or anyone disagrees they are consdieered partisan and unfair?

  7. 1. Much of what McCarthy is referring to has been reported elsewhere in NRO, and he provides a number of links.
    2. As I understand it, most of Earle’s indictments of Democrats were of political enemies of his.
    3. “indicting parties only because they didn’t want to give untrue information to the prosecutor”
    Well, if you believe everything Susan McDougal says, of course you are not going to think well of Starr. In general, you will draw a dim view of most prosecutors if you accept the word of their targets as gospel truth.

  8. Funny you are relying on DeGuerin, DeLay and NRO as sources (somehow those are credible), and taking those as true (even though denied by Earle to the extent he could) and criticizing me for allegedly relying solely on McDougal (forgetting of course it is corroborated by McDougal’s husband, Lewinsky, and Lewinsky’s family, Lewinsky’s family, etc).
    Mattox was briefly an enemy of Earle only after the indictment, not before, and he has recently been interviewed by the Washington Post stating effectively that the partisanship claims are total horse crap, and he ain’t his friend.
    And Gib Lewis, a Democrat indicted who plead, was his friend prior to the indictment. Show me a source where Gib Lewis was his enemy before the indictment. I’d like to see it. I’ll make a deal with you, if you can find that link, I’ll agree that he’s partisan. If you can’t find that link, then you should publicly admit you are wrong about Earle.
    And it still begs the question, do you think DeLay was money laundering in Texas to send corporate money to Republican candidates? I don’t hear any defenses along those lines.

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