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The April 24, 2018 TMP headline read, “EXCLUSIVE: Comey Has Brought On Former U.S. Attorney Pat Fitzgerald As One Of His Lawyers.”
The Mueller, Comey & Fitzgerald Band is back together. Again.
So what’s this about? Inquiring minds want to know—but the TMP and the MSM seem not to know.
Before going there, let’s go back in time to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and his investigation that led to the convictions of a Chicago real estate broker, and the Governor of Illinois.
Once upon a time Antoin “Tony” Rezko was a fundraiser for both Republicans and Democrats in Illinois—where the space between the two parties is no thicker than a Cubs’ ballpark ticket.
Tony was a particularly active fundraiser for Illinois Governor Rod “Blago” Blagojevich, to whose campaigns he personally donated $117,652, and bundled other contributions amounting to $1,439,000.
While F.B.I. Agents and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, were investigating Rezko as a means to gather evidence against Blagojevich, Rezko was also one of three members of the campaign finance committee for an Illinois State Senator running for the U.S. Senate, Barack H. Obama. Valerie Jarrett, then President of a firm that managed public housing, and Alison Davis, Obama’s boss in a law firm that catered to Chicago slum landlords, were the other two members of the Obama for U.S. Senate Campaign Committee.
The details of the cases against Blago and Tony are not important to recount here. What is important is that F.B.I. agents—Robert Mueller III who was then the Director—working out of Fitzgerald’s office, placed three wired moles in-and-around Rezko’s real estate office.
All three moles were tasked to record conversations involving Rezko.
All three moles has previously pleaded guilty to crimes and were awaiting their sentencing hearings. Meanwhile, they were in limbo, serving at the will of the feds. In short, it was legal blackmail.
The three wired moles were Daniel S. Mahru, a lawyer who worked in Rezko’s office, Daniel T. Frawley, a former Chicago police officer and business partner of Rezko, and, the most interesting of the three, Bernard Barton (AKA: John Thomas).
You can read a longer account of Barton’s fascinating story here. For now, here’s how Barton’s name-change to Thomas happened:
“Bernard Barton’s transition to John Thomas began in the late 1990s when investigators in the USA’s [U.S. Attorney’s] Long Island office in the Eastern District of New York caught Barton and a partner defrauding customers of their billboard leasing company by charging them $350,000 in rental fees for billboard space.”
Guess who was heading up the Long Island office that transferred Barton’s case to Chicago?
From 1994-1999, Loretta Lynch was Chief of the Long Island U.S. Attorney’s Office, and then top assistant to U.S. Attorney Zachary Carter (1993-1999). In 1999, President Clinton appointed Lynch U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Before Chicago, Barton avoided immediate jail time by agreeing to help federal prosecutors gather evidence against organized crime families trying to muscle in on the New York billboard business.
Barton was so good at playing the mole role that the feds delayed his sentencing for…a decade. They had more work for him as a mole elsewhere.
After the billboard mole gig, Barton was sent to Chicago with a new name—John Thomas—and went undercover in U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of Tony Rezko. The Court granted Thomas permission to commit the sort of crimes that got him in New York trouble, in Chicago, as part of his cover.
In 2000, Barton, with a new name, opened up a real estate brokerage and a billboard company. Over time, he wormed his way into the confidentiality of Rezko, all the while wearing a wire monitored by F.B.I. Agents working for Fitzgerald.
On February 10, 2010, David Roeder of the Chicago Sun Times reported:
“Thomas wouldn’t [after Rezko’s story broke] discuss details of his work for the FBI. But sources said that, for more than two years when he was giving information to agents, Thomas provided a fly-on-the-wall look inside Rezko’s real estate operations and his desperate attempts to keep his projects afloat. Sources said Thomas also logged frequent visits to Rezko from Gov. Blagojevich and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). [bolded in the original] Blagojevich and Obama were among the many politicians for whom Rezko raised campaign cash. Neither has been charged with any wrongdoing. Thomas had good reason to help. He hopes to get probation for his own felony fraud conviction in a New York case. And he said he wants to redeem himself in the eyes of business associates and his family. Sources said Thomas helped investigators build a record of repeat visits to the old offices of Rezko and former business partner Daniel Mahru’s Rezmar Corp., at 853 N. Elston, by Blagojevich and Obama during 2004 and 2005.”
So, there were three F.B.I. moles in Tony Rezko’s office wearing wires, recording conversations with, or concerning, Gov. Rod Blagojevich and/or Illinois State Senator Barack H. Obama.
There was never any court testimony or public disclosure of any part of any conversation, between Rezko, Blago or Obama, coming from a Barton-Thomas wire, or from the conversations recorded by Frawley or Mahru.
Not—a—mumbling word.
As Fitzgerald continued to pursue and eventually capture Tony, he also cornered Blago.
Blago’s arrest was coming, but it came early. Fitzgerald had to interrupt Jesse Jackson, Jr.‘s (J.J. Jr. was Co-Chair of Obama’s Presidential Election Committee) attempt to pay Blago in exchange for being appointed to Obama’s U.S. Senate seat coming open after his Inauguration.
J.J. Jr. eventually went to jail, but not for trying to buy a Senate seat.
As chronicled here, someone—from the U.S. Attorney’s Office?—leaked the news to Chicago Tribune reporter John Chase that Blago’s phone was bugged by the feds. Chase then, dutifully, called a Blago associate with the information.
So, Patrick Fitzgerald bottled up Rezko in prison, without implicating Obama in any campaign financing shenanigans, and, also, swept aside “Hot Rod” Blagojevich, who was salivating over his own run for the Presidency as he built his campaign fund.
As a footnote to the Chase-Fitz-Blago saga: According to an investigative reporter from the Chicago website IllinoisPaytoPlay, “John Chase told me that Patrick Fitzgerald asked the Tribune not to run the story exposing Bernard Barton as the FBI mole because ‚Äòthat would affect the election,’ meaning Obama’s election.”
Fast forward to the TMP headline where we began:
Two prominent lawyers, and best friends, are now in an Attorney-Client relationship.
James Comey has at least one other attorney, according to TMP:
“Columbia University Professor Daniel Richman, another close friend of Comey’s who is serving as one of his attorneys and with whom Comey shared some of his memos about his meetings with President Trump to leak to the press, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment for the story.”
Fitzgerald works today at the “white-shoe” law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
“Fitz” might have had a bigger role in the alleged F.B.I. investigation of Hillary’s emails had two now-infamous F.B.I. officials had their way:
“Senior FBI officials involved in the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server considered naming former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor for that probe, according to text messages released Thursday.
The proposal for a special counsel appears to have arisen in March 2016, relatively early in the FBI’s inquiry into Clinton’s email use, based on a limited set of texts exchanged by senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page that were made public by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley.”
So instead of a starring role in the Band, Fitz is a stagehand in the Comey defense.
If he knows anything about the F.B.I.‘s handling of Hillary’s emails, or about any classified information that Comey may have leaked to the media through Richman, Attorney-Client privilege prohibits him from revealing that information.
Comey is like the man who committed bigamy and claimed that his wives couldn’t testify against him.
Marty Watters is an investigative reporter for the Chicago-based website IllinoisPaytoPlay.
Source: Canada Free Press
