U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald: Arresting Rod Blagojevich but not Scooter Libby

[MinM]

Looking at FBI agents arriving on Dec. 9 to handcuff Blagojevich at his home, one is struck by the different handling of Scooter Libby

Some conservative commentators, including Chris Wallace interviewing then-Vice President Cheney on Fox News Sunday (Dec. 21, 2008) initially paralleled the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on Dec. 9, 2008, to the indictment of I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, Cheney’s Chief of Staff, on Oct. 28, 2005.

Both legal matters were prosecuted by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, but there is little similarity in the treatment of Libby and Blagojevich.

One leading difference is that the bureaucratic processing of Scooter Libby, genteel from start to finish, did not include arrest. No guns, few badges; no nightsticks; no handcuffs. Libby was not arrested; he was indicted. This is not singular: In white-collar criminal cases, indictment is more typical than arrest. The news is not that Libby was not arrested; the real news is that Gov. Blagojevich was not indicted.

The absence of an indictment, of course, was not what made news that cold December morning when the U.S. attorney’s FBI troops arrested Blagojevich in a daring pre-dawn raid on his house in Chicago -- but quietly, as they assured the public in a press conference the same day, so as not to wake the children. The headline that flashed around the globe, saturating the 24-hour news cycle from the first moment, was the governor’s arrest. Most media outlets took two weeks or more to cease calling the charges an ‘indictment.’...

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[SoFlaJet]

1. Yea

and to think he was the the big hero/heartthrob around here back then during the Plame investigation-I was always skeptical when I saw no real results.

[acmavm]

2. He was a disappointment, all that Fitzmas crap. The 'investigation'

took how long? And what did we get out of it? Lewis Libby. It was a collossal waste of time and money.

And he's being retained no less.

[Captain Hilts]

3. Blago was caught red-handed, as it were. nt

[HubertHeaver]

4. No, Blago PO'd a Chicago Alderman.

In Illinois, a Chicago alderman outranks the governor.