TalkLeft has a good run-down of the latest battle between truthout.org and Rove’s attack dogs. The concise version? They are both calling each other flat out liars. Rove’s spokeman claims Leopold and Ash are “bald-faced liars or completely delusional or both.” Rove’s lawyer was equally dismissive. From Howard Kurtz :
Luskin calls the reports “absolutely bizarre. I’m waiting for him to tell me whether Fitzgerald had the chicken or the pasta. . . . There was no meeting, no communication with Fitzgerald’s team of any kind.”
Truthout says they ‘believe’ they have the story of Rove’s indictment right, that his indictment is sealed, that Rove has turned state’s evidence, that the case has been expanded to Cheney and, perhaps, other areas outside of the Plame affair. (The Niger documents?)
It’s impossible for me to judge the veracity of either side as they both suffer from massive credibility problems. However, it is hard to explain why Rove would not have been indicted by now if he had not cut some kind of deal.
Here are some of the possibilities:
Patrick Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald would probably not be inclined to cut a plea deal with Karl Rove unless one of three things are true.
1) Fitzgerald thinks that he will have difficulty convicting Rove of a serious crime, such as conspiracy, and Rove is willing to cop to a lesser charge to avoid the risk of a long trial and possible jail sentence.
2) Fitzgerald wants to make a conspiracy case, or actually charge someone with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (50 U.S.C. 421 et seq.) and he needs Rove’s testimony for that.
3) Fitzgerald has his eyes on a bigger fish than Rove, which can only be Dick Cheney.
I think we can dismiss (1) because Fitz seems satisfied to charge Libby with lesser offenses, and a conviction for perjury will still vindicate justice for any crime left uncharged. Therefore, charging Rove with the same or similar charges would probably satisfy Fitzgerald.
Number (2) is a possibility, but I haven’t seen much evidence that Fitz is looking to expand the case beyond the Plame investigation or charge anyone with anything other than a cover-up.
The most likely scenario is number (3). Fitzgerald wants to charge Dick Cheney with crimes varying from simple perjury (unlikely) to obstructions of justice (more likely), to something more serious (conspiracy). If Karl Rove has really been indicted, it seems likely he has turned state’s witness against Dick Cheney.
But the problem with this scenario is that, in order for Rove to turn state’s witness, he would have to truly believe that he would go to jail if convicted, rather than receive a pardon (no matter how unpopular such a pardon would be). Is it possible that Rove has received no assurances that he will never see the inside of a jail cell?
Or is this some grand strategy to keep Rove from being indicted a little while longer so he can work on the midterm elections from his office in the White House?
What say you?
Rove is stalling Fitz somehow to allow this to be avoided until after the midterm elections.
No evidence, just a hunch.
we don’t know. We can’t know. We may never know. Frankly I wish everybody would shut up about Rove until something actually happens.
I do have a quibble, on the “credibility” problem. As I understand it, Mr. Leopold has “credibility” problems b/c of past editorial disagreements with publications he’s worked with, and because he pissed off one of the Kossian bullies by posting multiple anonymous comments in some thread. Is that all of it?
I’m not defending the guy. I don’t know if he knows what he’s talking about or not, but Truthout has been pretty reliable over the last several years. I’m suspicious of the scoop Democratic Party organs all ganging up at the same time (not saying you, but dk, Next harangue and Firedoglake all have a tendency to turn toward the throat of a given target with a great deal of ferocity … those targets often being more leftist sites, and sites who push hard on questions about how badly broken the voting systems are). My radar goes up when the pack attacks.
He’s been convicted of grand larceny, I believe, and he has been accused of fabricating stories, emails, and sources in the past.
I’m not out to bash Leopold. But I’m not going to say that I have confidence in him either.
here’s the reason I bring this up …
why do leftists (and psuedo-leftists) turn so quickly on their own? Does George Will react with outrage to the crap on Town Hall dot com? Do the rightwing blogs spend all of their time attacking rightwing news organs?
I’m not saying give the guy a pass, but almost everything I’ve read in the last week about this attacks Leopold’s credibility, and spends almost as much time on that as it does the REAL story. JUST IGNORE IT if you’re not sure about his sources. I’m especially annoyed w/ this b/c I know one of the things he’s been attacked over is the reporting he did on the election results in OH. I’m suspicious that dkos et al. go after him b/c that is one of the beats he covers, and that topic is verbotten at the Big Orange Party Organ. Lotsa writers and reporters have criminal pasts. The poor guy who wrote Fortunate Son was pilloried over his criminal past, but that doesn’t mean his book isn’t factual. Do people only get to pump gas or stock shelves or pick lettuce after a conviction? (Unless, of course, it was a white collar felony, in which case they get a company or something to manage).
People should ignore the guy if they don’t trust the reporting. Time will tell if he was right or if he got burned by his sources. I don’t see everybody impugning the USA Today reporter after very similar pushbacks from the telco companies …
I don’t get to decide who has credibility. Leopold has very little for good reason. I am not going out of my way to bash him, but I am acknowledging that both sides of this story have been caught lying in the past.
Interesting scenarios Booman. Of course I would love to say it is #3. Seeing Cheney locked up would make my day but he will never spend a day in jail because he will be pardoned. Will there ever be any justice for these scumbags? Cynic that I am these days, I doubt it.
So the dutiful Rove wouldn’t just fall on his sword for the good of the party/administration? I’m shocked, shocked to find such a consensus here! (With apologies to Captain Renault.)
Option 4: Facing disaster, Cheney has made Rove an offer he can’t refuse, and Rove and Libby are flipping on W. One can hope.
Oh, don’t tease me that way!
even Cheney, if it should come to that. Bush will say they were acting in the best interests of national security as they saw it and that’s all the justification he will need. He’s not running for re-selection — WTF does he care?
There is no way I can imagine that Rove is cooperating. He may be pretending to cooperate or promising to cooperate or whatever is needed to delay the process. If Rove stabs Cheney in the back, he might as well slit his own throat, career-wise. I mean, who would trust him again to run the kind of dirty tricks he specializes in if there’s the chance he would rollover on them?
I think there’s another option: Leopold and Ash have been Rathered, set up so that media pundits can say that everyone in the left blogosphere is delusional and can’t be trusted to provide reliable information. It’s already being played that way. Don’t trust those lefty bloggers to tell you the truth, O no, you must rely on us tradmedia folks.
All these Rove-is-going-to-be-indicted drills have already led me to say — as I did in an earlier thread — that I’m not going to believe it until I see it in google news headlines. It gets tiresome, dammit! Having your hopes raised and dashed again and again leds to expectation fatigue.
If Rove produced a pardon, or the promise of a pardon, what would be the tectical and legal implications for Fitzgerald if he wanted to press ahead anyway against Rove’s colleagues or superiors?
Can, for instance, a pardon apply against some future failure of Rove to produce evidence? Does it allow him to avoid a subpoena or lie to jury? Can he get a pad of pardons to pull out every time he wants to obstruct justice again?
Would these be Fitzgerald’s issues now?
Apologies if these questions are a ridiculous waste of time. I just don’t know.
.
When Ambassador Joseph Wilson contradicted George W. Bush by telling us that the Iraqi president did not try to buy nuclear material from Niger in Africa, Cheney was roused to get his revenge. He decided to shoot first and ask questions later. He set in motion the outing of Wilson’s wife as an undercover CIA agent. We now hear from Libby that Cheney authorized him to leak classified information.
Now, supposing I were working in Washington and I told a reporter that Plame is an undercover agent, I would probably be arrested and placed in jail faster than anyone could say “treason.” Treason is what Cheney has committed. He spends a lot of time calling liberals traitors because they do not agree with his shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later way of doing things. Yet, this teenager is himself a traitor. He thought it more important to get his vengeance than to protect the security of the U.S.
Do you know what Plame was working on? She was working on the Iranian nuclear program. Now we know less than we could have known.
Cheney, the real president of the U.S., shoots first, asks questions later. He feels so powerful, he sometimes does not even bother to ask questions. Treason means nothing to him; it’s merely a word to hurl against his political enemies.
DOJ and Fitzgerald are going for the conspiracy charges and IMHO investigating the WHIG group.
When DOJ traveled to Italy for further investigation of the Niger Forgeries, that seems the likely option.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I vote for #3. Jason’s article had 3 sources for fact stated of Rove indicted, plus truthout blog posts that there were 2 or 3 in msm that had one source each indicating Rove indicted. Not a criminal lawyer, but is it possible that Fitzgerald gets indictment of Rove, seals the indictment while working out agreement for Rove to testify against Cheney and perhaps others. After all, was it not Rove that told Fitzgerald about the hundreds of “missing” emails from Cheney’s office? Should Rove stop cooperating with Fitzgerald at any point, Fitzgerald can just unseal the indictment and proceed to indict Rove. Gives Fitzgerald a tight leash on Rove, who is quite slippery with the truth. And, it enables Rove to keep his indictment secret until at least the midterms are over; which I may just note, Libby was successful in delaying his trial until next January — all in the good GOP loyalty spirit. Problem is that we may not know if or when Rove was indicted until these trials are over, years down the road, or until some leaker leaks the documents!
It was Al Gore in the Library with a blue dress.
Just wait, this will all be his fault somehow. Dang internets.