White House Awaits Grand Jury News ¶ It’s Rove … Lawrence O’Donnell – Update

The One Very Good Reason Karl Rove Might Be Indicted
By Lawrence O’Donnell | Bio

Huffington Post July 7, 2005 — In February, Circuit Judge David Tatel joined his colleagues’ order to Cooper and Miller despite his own, very lonely finding that indeed there is a federal privilege for reporters that can shield them from being compelled to testify to grand juries and give up sources. He based his finding on Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which authorizes federal courts to develop new privileges “in the light of reason and experience.” Tatel actually found that reason and experience “support recognition of a privilege for reporters’ confidential sources.” But Tatel still ordered Cooper and Miller to testify because he found that the privilege had to give way to “the gravity of the suspected crime.”

Judge Tatel’s opinion has eight blank pages in the middle of it where he discusses the secret information the prosecutor has supplied only to the judges to convince them that the testimony he is demanding is worth sending reporters to jail to get. The gravity of the suspected crime is presumably very well developed in those redacted pages. Later, Tatel refers to “having carefully scrutinized [the prosecutor’s] voluminous classified filings.”

It’s Rove… ◊ by Lawrence O’Donnell – July 2, 2005

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I Knew Content TIME Emails Under Subpoena

PBS Tavis Smiley Interview with Lawrence O’Donnell – July 18

Tavis: Nice to see you again. I’ve been dying to ask you this for a few days since I knew that you were connected to this. What did Lawrence O’Donnell know and when did he know it?

O’Donnell: Well, he knew what was in the “Time” magazine emails that were under subpoena by the special prosecutor. That subpoena was being defied for a year and a half, as was, as we all know, the two reporters were defying their subpoenas and appealing all the way up to the United States Supreme Court to try to be excused from answering—-

White House Awaits Grand Jury News

CBS NEWS Oct. 21 — The White House maintains Mr. Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, and Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, were not involved. Sources close to the case say neither man knows if he’s about to be indicted. Still, the White House maintains it’s going about business as usual.

“I was in the Nixon White House during Watergate, and we pretended that we were all about business as usual. And we had a president who was talking to the portraits. It was not business as usual, but you have to say it,” former presidential adviser David Gergen told CBS News’ The Early Show.

“It will be a significant blow to a White House that’s already in freefall politically,” Gergen, a veteran of Republican and Democratic administrations, said of any possible indictments.

“This is a presidency that has almost collapsed. But if Karl Rove were indicted, that would be like George W. Bush losing his right arm at a time when he needs every limb he’s got to climb out of the hole he’s in and to rebuild his presidency.”

The conclusion of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald‘s two-year investigation, expected within days, bears down on the White House amid other troubles.

Mr. Bush’s pick of White House counsel Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court disappointed many of his longtime conservative allies and puzzled some Republicans in Congress. Also, the White House is still reeling from criticism of its slow reaction to the misery caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Further complicating Mr. Bush’s plans are investigations of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, on conspiracy and money-laundering charges in Texas, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist for stock transactions.

Weary of the CIA investigation and the uncertainty it has brought, presidential aides say they just wish it would end. Officials say they don’t talk about the investigation or its outcome at meetings because they don’t want to give the appearance of colluding against Fitzgerald. They acknowledge there is an expectation that if any White House official is indicted, he will resign.

Indeed, officials have been speculating about who would move in to replace Rove or Libby if they were forced out. The consulting firm jointly headed by one possible Rove replacement, GOP strategist Ed Gillespie, has begun considering how Gillespie’s clients might be reassigned if he were tapped for a White House assignment and how to handle the other ramifications of a White House move.

Cover-Up Issue Is Seen as Focus in Leak Inquiry

  The Huffington Post

WASHINGTON DC (NYT) Oct. 20 — In Mr. Rove’s case, the prosecutor appears to have focused on two conversations with reporters. The first was a July 9, 2003, discussion with Mr. Novak in which, Mr. Rove has said, he first heard Ms. Wilson’s name. The second conversation took place on July 11, 2003 with a Time magazine reporter, Matthew Cooper, who later wrote that Mr. Rove had not named Ms. Wilson but had told him that she worked at the C.I.A. and that she had been responsible for her husband being sent to Africa.

Mr. Rove did not tell the grand jury about his phone conversation with Mr. Cooper until months into the leak investigation, long after he had testified about his conversation with Mr. Novak, the lawyers said. Later, Mr. Rove said he had not recalled the conversation with Mr. Cooper until the discovery of an e-mail message about it that he sent to Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser. But Mr. Fitzgerald has remained skeptical about the omission, the lawyers said.

In Mr. Libby’s case, Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on his statements about how he first learned of Ms. Wilson’s identity, the lawyers said. Mr. Libby has said that he learned of Ms. Wilson from reporters. But Mr. Fitzgerald may have doubts about his account because the journalists who have been publicly identified as having talked to Mr. Libby have said that they did not provide the name, that they could not recall what had been said or that they had discussed unrelated subjects.