In His Copious Free Time

US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who is Special Counsel on the Valerie Plame investigation, seems to be keeping busy with his day job:

The names read like a who's who from some faded blotter left behind at the Chicago Police Department's old State Street headquarters: Joseph (the Clown) Lombardo, Frank (the German) Schweihs, Frank (Gumba) Saladino, and on and on.

But on Monday, 14 men, including several who have for years been reputed to be in the city's top level of organized crime leaders, were being rounded up in connection with 18 murders that stretch back over four decades and had gone unsolved and, in some cases, been nearly forgotten.

...Describing the 9-count, 41-page racketeering conspiracy indictment as putting a "hit on the mob," Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney here, said in a written statement, "After so many years, it lifts the veil of secrecy and exposes the violent underworld of organized crime."

The WaPo had a gushing profile on Fitzgerald.  Folks who wonder what he could earn in the private sector, or wonder about his political ambition, can reflect on this:

His thoroughness, his relentlessness, his work ethic are legendary," says terrorism expert Daniel Benjamin, a former member of the National Security Council.    

Seeing Fitzgerald in action, says Los Angeles lawyer Anthony Bouza, a college classmate, is "like watching a sophisticated machine." Colleagues speak in head-shaking tones of Fitzgerald's skills in taking a case to trial. A Phi Beta Kappa math and economics student at Amherst before earning a Harvard law degree in 1985, he has a gift for solving puzzles and simplifying complexity for a jury.

He is registered as an independent, and claims to have no political ambitions.

Comments

[Brennan Stout]

Fitzgerald lived in a New York apartment for two years and was never there enough to turn on his natural gas.

Chicago Tribune Magazine: "Bulldog"

[Forbes]

In NYC that just means he never cooked at home.

My uncle--now a retired tax attorney--has lived here for 40+ years, and you could count up how many times he's cooked without taking your shoes and socks off!

I know others that have has their gas turned off: "$10 a month, and I never use the stove. All you need is a microwave to heat up leftover delivery!"

[sammler]

How could a mere mob-buster, whose imagination is so limited that he can only see crimes that have actually happened, compete politically with The Great Extortionist?