Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story report:

Short of a last minute intervention by Rove’s attorney, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is expected to ask a grand jury investigating the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to indict Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove for making false statements to the FBI and Justice Department investigators in October 2003, lawyers close to the case say.

Rove failed to tell investigators at the time that he had spoken about Plame to Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and conservative columnist Robert Novak, both of whom later cooperated in the case. Novak outed Plame in a July 14, 2003 column.

The Chicago prosecutor briefed the second grand jury investigating the outing last week for more than three hours. During that time, he brought them up to speed on the latest developments involving Rove and at least one other White House official, the sources said. The attorneys refused to identify the second person.

As of Monday, neither Rove nor his attorney Robert Luskin has explained Rove’s misstatements to Fitzgerald’s satisfaction, those familiar with the case said. Eleventh-hour testimony from Time Magazine reporter Viveca Novak—who Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin fingered as a crucial witness in keeping his client out of court—does not appear to have been helpful in dodging an indictment, they added.

I suspect the second person is National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. Larry Johnson told us that friends of Hadley said he fully expected to be indicted back in October. It appears that the Viveca Novak defense was ineffective and only served to delay the indictments of Rove and Hadley.

Only true-blue Plameologists need to concern themselves with the Novak defense, but it comes down to this:

Viveca Novak was an occasional lunch drinking partner of Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin. Sometime after Rove talked to the FBI in 2003 Luskin told Novak that Rove didn’t have anything to worry about and Novak told him that she heard he had leaked to a reporter at Time magazine (Matt Cooper). According to Luskin, this was the first he had heard of this, that Rove had forgotten it happened, and that upon learning this news he did a thorough search of email and telephone records. He discovered an email that Rove wrote to Hadley only minutes after getting off the phone with Cooper that disclosed that the conversation was about Wilson.

This defense is pretty weak. Just because Rove didn’t disclose this information to his lawyer doesn’t mean that he had forgotten about it. And how do we know that his lawyer is telling the truth. But it may actually be more incriminating than exculpatory. Rove testified in January February 2004 before the Grand Jury and he did not disclose his conversation with Cooper. He did not correct the record until October 2004. So, even if he had forgotten about his phone call with Cooper and his email to Hadley, he still obstructed Fitzgerald’s investigation for months after being reminded of them. It appears the Novak defense was a mere stalling tactic:

Before Novak testified in a sworn deposition last week, Rove faced the prospect of being indicted on numerous counts, including obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements for failing to disclose conversations he had with reporters about Plame Wilson, sources close to the case said. Several reporters close to Novak said they believe Luskin’s decision to draw her into the case was made to keep Rove’s indictment from being handed up on the day Libby was charged.

We may be having a BooParty very soon.

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