Occasionally I get emails from Washington folks who work on the Hill claiming to possess juicy insider digs on our public servants and their corporate paymasters. I usually delete said emails, as I don't want to be responsible for propagating dirty rumors or false information that can't be corroborated. I'd rather let Judith Miller and the New York Times do that. Nonetheless, in the past 24 hours I have been contacted by three separate congressional Democrats in Washington, by email and later phone, who all say the same thing: Karl Rove is about to be indicted.
All this comes on the heels of events that transpired over the weekend, as two different individuals, journalist Michael Isikoff and political commentator Lawrence O'Donnell, both claimed that Karl Rove was responsible for leaking the identity of an undercover CIA officer's identity to Marc Cooper of Time magazine. As Isikoff of Newsweek wrote on July 3:“The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with Newsweek, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article.”
If what Isikoff and O'Donnell claim is indeed true, it still does not necessarily mean that Rove was also Robert Novak's inside guy, although it surely raises suspicion. The indictment, as I am told, will most likely be of felony weight. In fact, Karl Rove may be accused of perjury, as Bush's top strategist told a grand jury that he was not responsible for leaking Plame's identity to Time. So the charge may not be for leaking top-secret information to the press, but for perjuring himself.
Sources also all say that this indictment is likely to come down either late this week or early next week. Of course Rove's lawyer denies that his client ever “knowingly” handed over classified information to the media, or is the “target” of any investigation. Perhaps Rove “unknowingly” leaked the information, and he's the “subject” rather than a “target” of an investigation. Time will tell.
Apparently, I'm not the only one who has been leaked this information either. Over at Redstate, a right-wing Internet blog, one member who calls himself “Ohsure”, also claims that “[four] Great sources confirmed” the matter, and later added: “I not only don't do this, I have never done this. But here it is; ‘Karl Rove will be indicted late this, or early next week.’ I'm trusting a source. So either I am made a [sic] into an overzealous horses a**, or..., I have good sources and may be more trusted to get these things right.”
Ditto.
And as my friend PW has surmised, the fact that Bush has apparently counseled with and considered retaining a private criminal defense attorney with a specialty in defending Republican scofflaws suggests there's a pony buried somewhere underneath all this manure.
