QUESTION: Mr. Fitzgerald, your critics are charging that you are a partisan who was conducting what, in essence, was a...

(UNKNOWN): In which government (ph)?

(LAUGHTER)

FITZGERALD: You tell me.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) witch hunt. I mean, how do you respond to (inaudible) since you are in Washington...

FITZGERALD: I don't know -- you know, it's sort of, "When'd you stop beating your wife?"

One day I read that I was a Republican hack, another day I read that I was a Democratic hack, and the only thing I did between those two nights was sleep.

I'm not partisan. I'm not registered as part of a party. And I'll leave it there.

and the judge in the case, according to the Wikipedia, at least doesn't seem like a Leftist, anti-war partisan hack:

Walton served as an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia from 1981 to 1989 and from 1991 to 2001. He also served as associate director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In 2001, he was nominated to be a federal bench by President George W. Bush, and subsequently confirmed by the U.S. Senate. In 2004, Bush appointed him to chair a commission investigating ways to curb prison rape. In May 2007, Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr. appointed him to a seat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.[1]

Despite his appointments by Republican officials, The Washington Post reported, "fellow judges and lawyers who appear before him say Walton's decisions do not appear to be guided by politics but by a tough-on-crime mentality." Walton is known by local defense attorneys as a "long ball hitter" - a judge willing to impose long sentences in order to deter future crimes.[1] In fall 2005, the judge was driving his wife and daughter to the airport for a vacation when he came across an assailant attacking a cab driver on the side of the road. Walton tackled the assailant and subdued him until police arrived. The D.C. police spokesperson noted in response, "God bless Judge Walton. I surely wouldn't want to mess with him."[1]

Again, since it apparently didn't sink in the first time:

......if it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter.

The fact is that it was the aggressive politically driven investigation about a non-crime.

Lying to federal investigators is a crime, and there have been cases where the underlying 'crime'  itself wasn't prosecuted:

According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a federal indictment, Stewart avoided a loss of $45,673 by selling all 3,928 shares of her ImClone stock in late 2001. The day following her sale, the stock value fell 16%.[4]

Stewart voluntarily stepped down as CEO and Chairwoman of MSLO but stayed on a chief creative officer. She went on trial in January 2004. Prosecutors showed that Peter Bacanovic, Stewart's broker at Merrill Lynch, ordered his assistant to tell Stewart that the CEO of ImClone, Samuel D. Waksal, was selling all his shares in advance of an adverse Food and Drug Administration ruling. The FDA action was expected to cause ImClone shares to decline. [5]

After a highly publicized, five-week jury trial that was the most closely watched of a wave of corporate fraud trials, Stewart was found guilty in March 2004 of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigators and sentenced in July 2004 to serve a five month term in a federal correctional facility and a two year period of supervised release (to include five months of home confinement). [6]

Stewart agreed in September 2004 to begin serving a five-month prison term while her appeal was still pending. In October 2004, she reported to Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia. She was released on March 4, 2005, after which she was placed under home confinement and required to wear an ankle bracelet for an additional 5 months.

Bacanovic and Waksal were also convicted of federal charges and sentenced to prison terms.[7][8] Stewart also paid a fine of US$30,000.[9]

Of course, there were some at the time who thought the prosecution was politically motivated, but I don't think any of them were independent social liberals.

As for "Smoke and mirrors", I'll respond as I did the last time you engaged in such tactics:

After Fitzgerad knew there was no crime, why didn't he just stop?

That's the second time you've failed to present a reasonable case for Libby's lies to the investigators not being worth prosecuting.

You forgot what Fitzpatrick said in his press conference, btw:

Investigators do not set out to investigate the statute, they set out to gather the facts.

    It's critical that when an investigation is conducted by prosecutors, agents and a grand jury they learn who, what, when, where and why. And then they decide, based upon accurate facts, whether a crime has been committed, who has committed the crime, whether you can prove the crime and whether the crime should be charged.

    Agent Eckenrode doesn't send people out when $1 million is missing from a bank and tell them, "Just come back if you find wire fraud." If the agent finds embezzlement, they follow through on that.

    FITZGERALD: That's the way this investigation was conducted. It was known that a CIA officer's identity was blown, it was known that there was a leak. We needed to figure out how that happened, who did it, why, whether a crime was committed, whether we could prove it, whether we should prove it.