Fitz's take on firing.

From Emptywheel at Firedoglake:

In their Questions for the Record submitted after he testified, HJC managed to ask Patrick Fitzgerald one obvious question they didn't manage to ask when he testified at their hearing on Special Counsels (h/t MadDog)

13. If you had been fired as a U.S. Attorney, what impact would that have had on the CIA leak investigation? What impact would that have had on your appointment as Special Counsel?

During my tenure, this question did not present itself. It is not clear to me what the legal implications would have been had I been relieved of command as United States Attorney while serving as Special Counsel. (This might be an issue that should be specifically addressed if there is a delegation of power to a sitting United States Attorney in the future as it is entirely possible that a United States Attorney could be asked to resign after a change in administration.) It would appear that unless the United States Attorney were specifically retained in some other capacit (such as a Special Assistant United States Attorney), he or she could no longer serve as a Special Counsel who was employed by the Department of Justice and whose authority had been delegated by the Attorney General. It would be possible that a new appointment could be made for such a former United States Attorney which would provide that he or she would serve as a Special Counsel from outside the Department of Justice pursuant to the appropriate regulations.

Had I been relieved of command as United States Attorney while conducting the CIA leak investigation, even if a legal basis were established for me to continue as Special Counsel or in some other proper capacity, I would nevertheless have had to determine whether it would be appropriate for me to continue representing the government under all of the circumstances. I would have had to consider whether my ability to be effective had been undercut and whether any decision I made to prosecute or not prosecute a case (or whether to further investigate any matter) might reasonably subject the investigative team to the criticism that I (or others on the team) might harbor a bias against the administration which had relieved the prosecutor of his Presidential appointment. This would be a determination heavily dependent on the particular factual circumstances which led to the termination of my appointment as United States Attorney.

Emptywheel said:

That is, since Rove never managed to get him fired, Fitzgerald never had to think these things all the way through. But if he had been fired as USA, he would have had to be reappointed to some other position to continue the investigation in a constitutional manner. In any case, though, the threat of firing would present the difficulty that, even if he were appointed to some other position, his investigation might be tainted by the appearance that his prosecutorial decisions might be biased because he had been fired.

And since we know that Rove is implicated in the Rezko's case that he was asked to fire and replace Fitz as USA, we do know that the entire DOJ wasn't legally run under Gonzo. It was run and control by Rove and Gonzo's aides. Of course, the DA was Paul McNulty but he was involved in the USA firing scandal. If Fitz was relieved of his duties as an USA, Fitz would have never been appointed as Special Assistant USA. And it would have certainly been unfit to have him continue his job as Special Counsel and yet fired as USA. If you look at the timline to when the plot to fire Fitz as USA, it was around the time when Rove was masterminding a strategy to fire and replace USAs with loyal Bushies as interims under the Revised Patriot Act. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald was too dangerous for the Administration to keep as USA (because of the Rezko/Blago probe) and Special Counsel (because of the WH plot to discredit and punish Joe Wilson).