Libby: Fitz Narrowing Powers In Effort to Avoid Dismissal! (WaPo)

[kpete]

Libby: Fitz Narrowing Powers In Effort to Avoid Dismissal!(WaPo)

Libby Says Prosecutor Trying to Keep Post
Fitzgerald's appointment violates federal law
By PETE YOST
The Associated Press
Friday, March 31, 2006; 7:47 PM

WASHINGTON -- Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is narrowing the description of his powers in an effort to counter calls for dismissal of the criminal case he brought against Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, defense lawyers said Friday.

In a 24-page filing in federal court, the legal team for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said Fitzgerald and the former Justice Department official who appointed him, James Comey, are changing the broad mandate the prosecutor was handed to probe the leak in the Valerie Plame affair.

Libby is under indictment on five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI about how he learned of Plame's CIA identity and what he told reporters about her. Plame's CIA status was exposed on July 14, 2003, by conservative columnist Robert Novak, eight days after Plame's husband accused the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction.

The defense attorneys say assignment of unsupervised and undirected power to Fitzgerald requires that he be relieved of his duties in the investigation and that all actions he has taken be voided.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/31/AR2006033101624.html

[Catherine Vincent]

1. Libby says!?!?!

Libby don't know jack!!!!!

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. LOL!

:o

[Roland99]

2. They come up with this shit now? 2 years later?

:eyes:

[Canuckistanian]

4. Oh, let them try

They'll unleash a shitstorm like they've never seen before.

To many, Fitz is like a last hope for America.

And I tend to agree.

:grr:

[Rose Siding]

5. That's nothing but a press release from Libby

Shame on Yost and the WP

[Webster Green]

6. Reads like mumbo-jumbo...

Since when do defense attorneys get to fire prosecutors?

[Kagemusha]

7. What a jerk this lawyer is.

The last two paragraphs read like this.

Fitzgerald and Comey said that Fitz was the functional equivalent of the attorney general for the limited scope defined for him when Fitz was appointed as special counsel. Special, not independent. Comey said that functional equivalent doesn't mean Fitz is relieved of following justice department guidelines.

Libby lawyer says no no no, first Fitz said he is the functional equivalent of the attorney general, THEN he says that it's limited in scope. Fitz is obviously lying then or lying now.

The lawyer makes two complimentary facts seem like contradictory facts for the simple reason that he says they are so.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

8. That article, and the filing, is full of crap.