Today's indictment of Canadian born media mogul Conrad Black, shows us the way our old bud Fitz works these major cases.
Yahoo News
More below
In indicting Black, Fitz first went after one of the mogul's underlings:
The charges follow the plea deal struck with prosecutors by Black's once-loyal lieutenant, David Radler, who has pleaded guilty to a single count of mail fraud and agreed to cooperate and testify against others involved. Radler's plea deal calls for him to serve 29 months in prison and pay a $250,000 fine after the investigation concludes.
After roasting and toasting Radler, Fitz worked his way up the chain:
The Canadian-born Black, a flamboyant conservative who is a member of the British House of Lords, and the others were accused of siphoning off money from his former newspaper empire through a scheme that impacted both his publishing company, U.S.-based Hollinger International Inc., and Toronto-based holding company Hollinger Inc..
Also named in the indictment were three former Hollinger executives -- John Boultbee, Peter Atkinson and Mark Kipnis, Hollinger International's in-house lawyer. He was charged in an earlier indictment in August and pleaded not guilty but additional counts were added in Thursday's indictment.
After that, we go to the Firtz press conference, in which we see that one of the things Fitz seems to hate most is a guy who lies, and then tells more lies. Sound familiar?
"All in all what has happened here has been the grossest abuse by officers or directors and insiders," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald told a briefing.
"By lining their pockets they went about a course of conduct where they ... never told the audit committee or the board of directors, or through them the shareholders, what was going on and how they were self-dealing and taking money from the shareholders for themselves," he said.
"On those occasions when they did go to the audit committee or the board of directors, they told lies and when those became apparent, they told further lies," Fitzgerald added.
While all of this should give heart to those who thought that Fitz was through with Plamegate, which does not seem to be the case with continued investigations and depositions, as reported in other diaries, it also provides a road map to what Fitz is doing--hoping to roll Scooter over on the higher ups.
Woodhead's diversionary tactic to protect his pals in Bushco will avail his source-masters nothing. Fitz is out after the liars and the leakers. It matters not whether Scooter was first. The point is that he lied and kept on lieing. Hopefully, as the heat goes up he just might give Fitz enough to go up the chain to where we see it ends: the Mansion at the Naval Observatory, home of W's former best friend, Dr. Evil.