The missing e-mail

Apparently the White House has found and turned over to Patrick Fitzgerald hundreds of pages of heretofore "missing" e-mails relating to the Valerie Plame leak.

Friday 24 February 2006

The White House turned over last week 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Senior aides had sent the emails in the spring of 2003 related to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during a federal court hearing Friday.

The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.

Sources close to the probe said the White House “discovered” the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife’s undercover status to reporters.

Frankly, I doubt that they would have been turned over if they are that incriminating. However, you never know. Maybe Bush and Cheney think they'll just stonewall Congress and the Courts on this one. After all, they answer to no one. From the Clinton Justice Department:

In 1973, the Department concluded that the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions. We have been asked to summarize and review the analysis provided in support of that conclusion, and to consider whether any subsequent developments in the law lead us today to reconsider and modify or disavow that determination.¹ We believe that the conclusion reached by the Department in 1973 still represents the best interpretation of the Constitution.

If you can't indict a sitting president, does that apply to the president of vice as well? It turns out there is precedent for indicting a sitting vice president. Aaron Burr was indicted while holding the office. But, that was a "pre 9/11 world." I'm sure Bush and Cheney would have some argument why you can't do it in a post 9/11 world.