Patrick Fitzgerald served as the last independent counsel tapped for a major White House investigation, probing who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. | Brian Kersey/Getty Images Ex-U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald on Comey's legal team

Former FBI Director James Comey’s bench of lawyers is deeper than previously thought.

In May 2017, around the time he was fired by President Donald Trump, Comey hired former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, a spokesperson at Fitzgerald’s law firm has confirmed.


The hiring nearly a year ago of Fitzgerald, first reported Tuesday by Talking Points Memo, helps explain why the Chicago-based attorney has repeatedly declined comment on a series of matters that would appear to be right in his wheelhouse.

Fitzgerald served as the last independent counsel tapped for a major White House investigation, probing who in the George W. Bush administration leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The Chicago-based lawyer is close friends with Comey dating to their work in the 1980s as prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. His representation of Comey is part of a larger team that also includes former U.S. Attorney David Kelley and Dan Richman, a Columbia University law professor and former federal prosecutor.

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Comey also confirmed the hiring in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times. “He’s been representing me since I was fired,” Comey said Tuesday during a Washington event at which he was signing copies of his new book, “A Higher Loyalty.”

Fitzgerald’s work in the Plame case led to the prosecution of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was convicted in 2005 on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements to investigators, largely for denying his contacts with the media about Plame. Fitzgerald did issue a statement earlier this month when Trump pardoned Libby.

Fitzgerald is also a partner at the firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, the same firm that former Obama White House attorney Gregory Craig left. Craig was the senior counsel overseeing a report Skadden put out on behalf of Ukraine’s government that is now a part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the 2016 campaign of President Donald Trump and Russia.

Alex van der Zwaan, the Skadden lawyer who prepared the report, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents and was sentenced to a 30-day sentence.

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.

