Reply #14: Hitchey is talking about Fitzgerald investigating a crime

[IkeWarnedUs]

We're not talking about the Republicans investigating themselves.

I know it would require the Republicans (at least some of them) to vote to impeach. And we all learned the Senate has to vote to impeach too.

But if Fitzgerald comes back and says that Bush (along with Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and more) broke the law by lying in reports to Congress, I don't see how they cannot act. If not impeachment, then what?

This is from the letter the Congressmen sent to Fitzgerald:

A motive for making such false and fraudulent uranium claims would have been to thwart Congressional and U.N. efforts to delay the start of the war. Pending at the time that the Administration made its uranium claims in January 2003 was a Congressional resolution, H.Con.Res.2, submitted by five members of Congress on January 7, 2003, which expressed the sense of Congress that it should repeal its earlier war resolution to allow more time for U.N. weapons inspectors to finish their work. On January 24, 2003, a few days prior to the State of the Union Address, 130 members of Congress wrote to the president encouraging him to consider any request by the U.N. for additional time for weapons inspections. On February 5, 2003, 30 members of Congress submitted another resolution, H.J.Res.20, to actually repeal the war resolution.

Had it not been for the uranium claims in the State of the Union Address, which sought to squelch congressional concern over the impetus for the pending war, the number of sponsors for H.J. Res. 20 would have been far greater. The influence of the uranium claims can be seen in the fact that 130 members of Congress signed the letter before the State of the Union Address, but only 30 sponsored H.J. Res. 20, which was introduced after the speech. The Administration’s uranium claims thwarted the congressional efforts to delay the start of the war since the Administration used the claims to allege that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program -- despite the failure of the U.N. inspectors to find such a program -- and thus falsely assert that Iraq posed an immediate threat that needed to be nullified without further delay.


<snip>

The Administration’s False And Fraudulent Uranium Claims Arguably Violated Criminal Laws Concerning Communications With Congress

The criminal statute, 18 U.S.C., Sec. 1001, prohibits knowingly and willfully making false and fraudulent statements to Congress in documents required by law. The two uranium claims in the State of the Union Address and the report to Congress concerning Iraq were false and fraudulent, and are in documents that the White House submitted to Congress. See House Document 108-1 and House Document 108-23. The law required the president to give such reports. Article II, Section 3 of the constitution requires presidents to give State of the Union Addresses. Section 4 of Public Law 107-243, which is the Congressional resolution authorizing the war against Iraq, requires the president to give reports to Congress relevant to the war resolution and the president submitted said report on Iraq pursuant to that law. Thus 18 U.S.C., Sec. 1001 was evidently violated.

The criminal statute, 18 U.S.C., Sec. 371, prohibits conspiring to defraud the United States and is applicable since the Supreme Court in the case of Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182, 188 (1924) held that to “conspire to defraud the United States means primarily to cheat the government out of property or money, but it also means to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest.” Senior Administration officials arguably violated Section 371 because their uranium claims had the effect of obstructing or interfering with the function of Congress to reconsider its war resolution and to allow further time for U.N. weapons inspections. If the whole truth had been told, Congress may well have withdrawn the war resolution or delayed the start of the war to allow further U.N. weapons inspections, which would have shown what we now know; that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and had not sought the uranium. However, it should be noted that Section 371 does not require proof that the conspiracy was successful.

Link: http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/ny22_hinchey/morenews/091505fitzgeraldletter.html