{"id":10207,"date":"2007-03-14T15:05:33","date_gmt":"2007-03-14T19:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10207.html"},"modified":"2007-03-14T15:05:33","modified_gmt":"2007-03-14T19:05:33","slug":"prosecutor-story-takes-an-ironic-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/prosecutor-story-takes-an-ironic-twist\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosecutor story takes an ironic twist"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2001, then-Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) had the opportunity to recommend a U.S. Attorney for the Chicago area. As TP noted<\/a>, Karl Rove apparently urged him<\/a> to “choose a U.S. Attorney who he believed would be lenient in probing state corruption.”<\/p>\n

According to Fitzgerald, who was determined to bring in a prosecutor from outside the state, Rove “just said we don’t want you going outside the state. We don’t want to be moving U.S. attorneys around.”<\/p>\n

Fitzgerald said he believes Rove was trying to influence the selection in reaction to pressure from Rep. Dennis Hastert, then speaker of the House, and allies of then-Gov. George Ryan, who knew Fitzgerald was seeking someone from outside Illinois to attack political corruption.<\/p>\n

Fitzgerald said he announced his choice, Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation), a New Yorker, on May 13, a Mother’s Day Sunday, to pre-empt any opposition.<\/p>\n

A year or so later, according to Peter Fitzgerald, Rove “said to me that Fitzgerald appointment got great headlines for you, but it ticked off the base.” Peter Fitzgerald said he believes the “base” was Illinois Republican insiders upset at the prosecutor’s assault on corruption.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s a degree of comedy to the whole thing. Rove wanted a prosecutor who wouldn’t take corruption too seriously, the senator ended up tapping Patrick Fitzgerald, and the U.S. Attorney ended up pursuing Rove’s White House.<\/p>\n

I’d just add that, as I recall from the time, there was a fairly significant public fight over this in Illinois. Then-Speaker Hastert (R) was worried about corruption scandals in Springfield and how high corruption into then-Gov. George Ryan’s (R) administration they might would go. Hastert hoped an in-state Republican prosecutor would be susceptible to political pressure, and Ryan could avoid indictment.<\/p>\n

Sen. Fitzgerald didn’t play along, Patrick Fitzgerald came to Chicago, Ryan was convicted, and the prosecutor was ultimately brought to DC to investigate a little matter about the White House exposing the identity of an undercover CIA agent.<\/p>\n

Funny how things work out sometimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2001, then-Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) had the opportunity to recommend a U.S. Attorney for the Chicago area. As TP noted, Karl Rove apparently urged him to “choose a U.S. Attorney who he believed would be lenient in probing state corruption.” According to Fitzgerald, who was determined to bring in a prosecutor from outside the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}