{"id":4972,"date":"2005-08-15T10:19:14","date_gmt":"2005-08-15T14:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/63.247.129.141\/~sebenen1\/archives\/4972.html"},"modified":"2005-08-15T10:19:14","modified_gmt":"2005-08-15T14:19:14","slug":"patrick-fitzgeralds-new-boss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/patrick-fitzgeralds-new-boss\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Fitzgerald’s new boss"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Deputy Attorney General James Comey on his way to the private sector, there’s been ample speculation<\/a> about who, exactly, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will report to as his Plame investigation continues. <\/p>\n

It seemed last week that Bush-buddy Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum was slated for the job<\/a>, which raised plenty of concerns about the neutrality and independence of Fitzgerald’s investigation. Fortunately, we recently learned that it wouldn’t be McCallum , but rather, David Margolis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

David Margolis, a lawyer at the Justice Department for 40 years, was named Friday to oversee a special prosecutor’s investigation of who in the Bush administration disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer. <\/p>\n

Margolis, whose title is associate deputy attorney general, is taking the place of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, whose last day of work was Friday. Comey will be Lockheed Martin’s new general counsel.<\/p>\n

Comey made the designation of Margolis. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has stepped aside from the probe because he was White House counsel when Valerie Plame’s name was leaked in 2003 and he has testified to the grand jury investigating the unauthorized disclosure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thank you, Jim Comey. For a Republican lawyer in Bush’s DoJ, Comey’s been playing it straight for a long time. Not only did he do the right thing in taking a hands-off approach to Fitzgerald, Comey also did the right thing by tapping Margolis to oversee the investigation.<\/p>\n

Like Mark Kleiman<\/a>, I’ve heard nothing but good things about the new guy.<\/p>\n

Margolis made his prosecutorial bones doing organized crime cases, eventually rising to Chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, from which position he supervised the seventeen Organized Crime Strike Forces which more or less won the war on the Mafia. (That’s when I got to know him.) Margolis has a stratospheric IQ, has been known to wear Willie Nelson t-shirts to work, is used to long investigations using somewhat edgy investigative techniques, and can’t be intimidated by anybody<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At a minimum, it’s good to know that Fitzgerald’s boss is unlikely to interfere with the probe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Deputy Attorney General James Comey on his way to the private sector, there’s been ample speculation about who, exactly, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will report to as his Plame investigation continues. It seemed last week that Bush-buddy Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum was slated for the job, which raised plenty of concerns about 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-4972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4972","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=4972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}