My Take on the Rove Announcement

by emptywheel
Tue Jun 13, 2006 at 06:33:09 AM PDT
I know there is a full diary on this already, but I wanted to present the following to explain my own speculations about what the Luskin announcement--that Rove will not face charges--means. And I wanted to share a snippet of the statement Joe Wilson's lawyer sent out this morning, a statement that captures my sentiment in this as well:


While it appears that Mr. Rove will not be called to answer in criminal court for his participation in the wrongful disclosure of Valerie Wilson's classified employment status at the CIA in retaliation against Joe Wilson for questioning the rationale for war in Iraq, that obviously does not end the matter. The day still may come when Mr. Rove and others are called to account in a court of law for their attacks on the Wilsons.

The NYT announces today that Karl Rove will not be charged in the Valerie Plame case. I'm still looking for a copy of Luskin's statement, but it includes the following:

On June 12, 2006, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised
us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove.



[snip]



In deference to the pending case, we will not make any further public
statements about the subject matter of the investigation. We believe
that the Special Counsel's decision should put an end to the baseless
speculation about Mr. Rove's conduct.

Karl Rove won't be frog-marched. But I'm not sure this means the case will end with Libby.



Now I don't want to raise hopes too high. This may well be the fizzle Murray warned of on the Plame panel over the weekend. But here are my thoughts:



When those of us on the Plame panel got to know each other over the weekend, sitting at the pool so Joe Wilson and Larry Johnson could smoke their stogies, someone (it was probably me, but my sleep-deprived memories of this weekend are hazy) asked who thought Karl Rove was cooperating with the investigation. Two and two halves of us raised our hands. (And I'm not sure whether the last member of the panel had shown up yet, so that may well have been half of us.)



I was one of those who raised her hand halfway. My logic is this:



Dick Cheney is dragging down the White House. He is largely responsible for the mess in Iraq. He is trying to sabotage any attempts to negotiate honestly with Iran. And he is exposing everyone in the Administration to some serious legal jeopardy, in the event they ever lose control of courts. At some point, Dick Cheney's authoritarianism will doom Bush's legacy.



But you can't make him quit. His is a Constitutional office, he was elected along with Bush, so you can't make him resign like you can with your Treasury Secretary or your Environmental Secretary. What better way to get rid of him, then, than to expose him to legal proceedings? It gives you the ability (farcical, but no matter) to say that you have severed all ties with his policies and legacies.



Now here are some data points:



There is clear evidence (for example, in the White House's reluctance to publicly exonerate Libby in Fall 2003) that the White House holds OVP responsible for this mess.


Patrick Fitzgerald received a large new chunk of evidence recently, a bunch of emails.


In March leaks suggested that Rove was helping Fitzgerald understand those emails.


Not long ago, the guy who coordinated the cover-up in Fall 2003 (April 14) and the guy who covered it up with the public (April 20) left the White House.


In an appearance on April 19 Novak denied taking the Fifth--but he did not deny cooperating with the investigation.


After Rove's grand jury appearance on April 25, Luskin gave a somewhat tortured denial of Rove's jeopardy.


Fitzgerald's public comments have recently implicated Cheney more and more, first by revealing that Dick ordered Libby to leak Plame's identity the NIE (in late January), then by showing the world Dick's immediate response to Joe Wilson's op-ed (in May).


Yesterday at Libby's status hearing, Fitzgerald revealed the White House will not block Libby's access to any materials.


In his statement today, Luskin does not claim the investigation is over--he refers to it as a "pending case" and refuses to make further public statements.


This is an outtamyarse speculation, but I think it is possible that those emails revealed the Fall 2003 cover-up, and that Rove at first tried to bully his way through them (all the while recognizing his legal jeopardy increased). The people who were tangentially involved--Card and Scotty--decided to save their skin. And then Rove and Novak, presumably with Bush's blessing, traded real cooperation in exchange for Cheney's head.



I'm not trying to give people undue hope, or trying to cheer people up. But it has become clear that Cheney was the architect of this smear, from start to finish. It has been clear that Fitzgerald has Dick in his sights. If Fitzgerald got closer to being able to prove that case, I think it possible that the Texas mafia might sacrifice the person who caused all this difficulty (and who had become the White House's anvil dragging it down) in order to save its beloved Turdblossom.



When I introduced myself to Byron York over the weekend, he said something to the effect of "a lot of people here have high hopes that Rove would be indicted." I responded, "but don't all reasonable people have hopes that Rove will be indicted." York didn't respond. But as soon as I walked away, I wished that I had responded, "No Byron, many of us have even higher hopes that Dick Cheney will pay for his obvious involvement in this case." It's worth noting, by the way, that Byron York appears to have been one of the first, if not the first, to break the news that Rove will not face charges. It's also worth noting that, when we spoke, York tried to make the case that Rove has been cooperating all along. "No Byron," I patiently explained, "I mean Big-C cooperation. The other stuff was just Rove proving his testicular fortitude." York's attempts to downplay the possibility of Rove's cooperation may not mean anything, just 36 hours before he announced that Rove would not face charges. Then again, it might.



This case may be over--at least at the legal level. But until Patrick Fitzgerald reveals that he is done, we won't know what Rove's escape from justice really means.


UpdateI'd like to make something a bit more clear. The statement at the top of the diary came from Joe Wilson's lawyer, Christoper Wolf, the guy who will take a lawsuit against Karl Rove if the Wilsons decide to sue. So when he says, "The day still may come when Mr. Rove and others are called to account in a court of law for their attacks on the Wilsons," he may have something specific in mind.

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