New York Post Online Edition: commentary
"Some Republicans point to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as they question why special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald felt a need to bring perjury charges against ex-White House aide "Scooter" Libby in the CIA leak case.
They note that independent counsel Robert Ray (he replaced Ken Starr) concluded that then-First Lady Clinton made "factually false" statements under oath about her role in Travelgate, but didn't charge her.
In fact, Ray claimed that Clinton had eight chats with top White House aides that contradict her claims of no Travelgate role.
Fitzgerald cites the exact same number of accounts that conflict with Libby's.
There was no basic crime in Travelgate — the Clintons had a right to fire travel staffers.
And Libby isn't charged with illegally outing CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, nor does the indictment even claim that she was a covert agent."
The difference was the fact that Robert Ray declined to indict a First Lady and knew that Republicans wouldn't crucify him for it, and that the Press would look the other way.
Were Fitzpatrick to have done the same for Libby, eventually the media would have obtained enough leaks from the investigation to conclude that he had the evidence to indict Libby but failed to do so, and that in effect would have ended Fitzpatrick's career.
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