Last week, CREW sent a letter to Fitzgerald urging him to reopen his investigation in light of revelations that thousands of emails Rove sent via an email account maintained by the Republican National Committee had been lost. CREW serves as legal counsel to Joseph and Valerie Wilson in their civil suit against Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Richard Armitage. Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice earlier this year for his role in the leak of Plame's identity.
Fitzgerald and the Missing Emails
By Matt Renner and Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t Report
Wednesday 18 April 2007
A couple of weeks before I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, was indicted on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers was told that an internal White House probe determined that millions of administration emails dating back to 2003 were lost.
Miers immediately informed Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate whether administration officials knowingly leaked the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, about the administration's lost emails, a government watchdog group has claimed, but Miers may not have told Fitzgerald the extent of the White House's email problem.
During a wide-ranging interview with Truthout on Monday, Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and CREW's Chief Counsel Anne Weismann said they believe Miers did not fully inform Fitzgerald about the millions of emails the White House lost between 2003 and 2005. As a result, the CREW attorneys said it's likely that Fitzgerald did not obtain all of the evidence related to the leak investigation - particularly emails sent during that time period by Karl Rove that may further implicate the White House political adviser in the Plame Wilson leak.
The latest revelation by CREW provides new insight into how Fitzgerald first became aware that some emails related to the leak investigation were not turned over to FBI investigators in the fall of 2003, which the special prosecutor disclosed in a court filing in January 2006.
"We assume this is what [Fitzgerald] was referring to [in his court filing], but we do not know how deep the briefing given to him by Miers was," Sloan said.
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