CREW Asks Patrick Fitzgerald to Reopen The Plame Case

CREW has written Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald asking him to reopen the Valerie Plame investigation. CREW notes that:

Press reports indicate that Mr. Rove uses a Republican National Committee (RNC) email account for 95% of his communications. In addition, the RNC's counsel has admitted that all of Mr. Rove's emails prior to 2005 have been destroyed. Moreover, the White House has admitted that - as CREW reported yesterday - five million emails are missing from the White House servers. All of this raises serious questions about whether Mr. Rove knowingly destroyed evidence relevant to the Special Counsel's inquiry and whether Mr. Fitzgerald received all relevant documents.

Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said today, "It looks like Karl Rove may well have destroyed evidence that implicated him in the White House's orchestrated efforts to leak Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity to the press in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson." Sloan continued, "Special Counsel Fitzgerald should immediately reopen his investigation into whether Rove took part in the leak as well as whether he obstructed justice in the ensuing leak investigation."

Rawstory notes that although at the end of the Libby trial Fitzgerald said he didn't expect to take any future action he did say that if new information came to light he would engage in further investigation.

What is unknown is whether the missing emails are "new information" to Fitzgerald. According to attorney Robert Luskin Rove was under the "understanding" that all of his emails have already been preserved by Patrick Fitzgerald. The AP's Laurie Kellman reports that Luskin said, Fitzgerald "saw and copied all of Rove's e-mails from his various accounts after searching Rove's laptop, his home computer, and the handheld computer devices he used for both the White House and Republican National Committee."

Hey, Judiciary Committee Investigators, how about having a talk with Patrick Fitzgerald? All he can do is tell you he isn't going to open his file.