October 19, 2007
A Very Black Fitzmas, Indeed
Sorry, ladies: Studly U.S. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is single no more.
The Washington Post's Reliable Source column broke the news yesterday, along with plenty of hearts. Fitzgerald, 46, will be tying the knot with 34-year-old Jennifer Letzkus, a former investment banker turned Head Start teacher and marathon runner.
Fitzgerald is the straight-shooting, tough-talking attorney who was appointed the special prosecutor in the investigation into the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity. The affair was the first major scandal to truly threaten President Bush and his administration, raising the hopes of many a partisan. The media churned out glowing profile after glowing profile of The Man Who Would Take On Karl Rove, climaxing in 2005 when People magazine declared him one of its Sexiest Men Alive.
Women across the country, and certainly those from Fitzgerald's home base of Chicago, are in mourning.
"She'd better be good to him," scowled local radio host Judy Markey. "This is the worst day EVER!" wailed The Little Pink Clubhouse.
Fitzgerald was portrayed as the quintessential ungettable bachelor, an Eliot Ness-type figure so obsessed with getting the bad guys that he forgot to make time for a personal life. "Ruthless in his pursuit of criminals," the New York Times purred, "he once went to considerable trouble to adopt a cat."
Swoon.
The Plame affair did land one administration official, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, behind bars. The big dramatic takedown many envisioned, though, never quite materialized.
That didn't seem to faze Fitzgerald, who was appointed to the U.S. attorney's office by the president and was famous in legal circles for his nonpartisanship. After the Plame affair, he ended up on a list of prosecutors the White House wanted to fire. Wisely, someone in the administration apparently decided that canning the prosecutor would be more trouble than it was worth.
As for that cat, it seems that once Fitzgerald went through all that trouble, his work ethic didn't allow him to tend to his furry companion. "His colleagues kidnapped it," the London Observer reported last year. "They sent him photos of his pet in various New York locations: dangled off the Brooklyn Bridge, with a toy gun to its head, outside a dodgy-looking Chinese restaurant. Fitzgerald got the message: you look after the cat, or we do. He sent it to live on a farm."
Photo Illustration: Ryan Merrill
Posted at 4:41 PM
Posted to:
Bush Administration, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, President Bush
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