D.C. Appellate Court throws out Bush suit against DOJ to block Fitzgerald indictments by Tom Flocco
Washington, DC—October 25, 2005—www.TomFlocco.com—Earlier today the District of Columbia Appellate Court threw out a Bush administration suit against its own Justice Department, attempting to block the issuance of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s indictments against White House officials.
The White House’s initial attempt to obstruct justice and have the indictments quashed and sealed was dismissed by the D.C. District Court late Friday afternoon, according to a sequence of events based on information in the form of data from intelligence field reports. On Friday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez refused to sign for and issue the indictments against himself and his colleagues, which would have made them immediately public. Fitzgerald reportedly appeared with Miers and Rice that same day before the D.C. District Court. The indictments included both President Bush and Vice President Cheney, confirming our exclusive August 2, 2005 Bush-Cheney indictment story at TomFlocco.com. According to intelligence field reports, the appellate court judges reportedly laughed at Bush’s White House counsel and former personal attorney Harriet Miers and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying “you can’t do this.”The last ditch attempts by the White House to prevent the release of the indictments and their criminal contents were led by Miers and Rice, since Gonzalez has reportedly been indicted in an additional count for refusing to issue the original indictments as Bush’s attorney general. This, also according to intelligence sources with intimate knowledge of the facts and the events who spoke with national security expert Thomas Heneghan (www.stewwebb.com).
Importantly, the dismissals by both the district and appellate courts will likely preclude an additional appeal by the Bush administration to the United States Supreme Court, since two consecutive reversals ordinarily prevent the high court from granting relief. This would avoid another 5-4 Supreme Court split decision similar to the controversial Bush-Gore 2000 election recount litigation which has divided the country for five years. Miers and Rice also reportedly attempted to have the courts place a gag order on Fitzgerald and the grand jury in another attempt to obstruct justice and prevent the criminal and far-reaching contents of the indictments from becoming public.
According to the intelligence sources, there are now 28 indictments to be issued in Fitzgerald’s first round—not 22—a fact that was not previously known up to the present time. The number may have changed as a result of new information coming to light in recent days or a decision to add additional indicted officials to the first round for other reasons. An indication of the far-reaching and expanded nature of Fitzgerald’s probes of White House crime families and his independent authority to do so is found in the December 30, 2003 letter from Acting Attorney General James Comey to Fitzgerald in which Comey said “I hereby delegate to you all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department’s investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee’s identity; and I direct you to exercise that authority as Special Counsel independent of the supervision or control of any officer of the Department.”
Comey was even more specific in another letter to Fitzgerald on February 6, 2004 when he said the Fitzgerald’s authority “is plenary and includes the authority to investigate and prosecute violation of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, your investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses; to conduct appeals arising out of the matter being investigation and/or prosecuted…”Developing hard……………www.tomflocco.com
