Court Reissues PlameGate Opinion Adding Karl Rove's Name

[DemReadingDU]

From Jeralyn at TalkLeft:
How close did Karl Rove come to getting indicted in PlameGate? As they say, "this close." Check out today's re-issued opinion (pdf) in the Judith Miller - Matthew Cooper D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals subpoena case containing new un-redactions: the name of Karl Rove.

Now unredacted:

"Regarding Cooper, the special counsel has demonstrated that his testimony is essential to charging decisions regarding White House adviser Karl Rove."

Then on page 39:

"Thus, given the compelling showing of need and exhaustion, plus the sharply tilted balance between harm and news value, the special counsel may overcome the reporters’ qualified privilege, even if his only purpose—at least at this stage of his investigation—is to shore up perjury charges against leading suspects such as Libby and Rove."

The unredaction there is the last two words: "and Rove."

There's more goodies, including those about Armitage, Libby and Cheney. The pdf is searchable, type in your favorite name. The unredactions are in italics.
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/6/29/131743/815


today's re-issued opinion (pdf)
http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200502/04-3138a.pdf

[Kagemusha]

1. Sure, they needed to talk to people to decide if Rove should be charged.

Fitz apparently has really high standards for laying charges. I find that trait to be admirable, if inconvenient to some extent.

[Lerkfish]

2. Interesting, especially in light of how certain blogs were crucified here for suggesting this

and certain blog writers were called every name in the book.

looks like that certain writer MIGHT HAVE BEEN RIGHT after all, or at least his sources were right before it was changed.

[Dhalgren]

3. You said it. I think crow goes good with salad and green beans.

I wonder if there will be any apologies forthcoming? We'll see...

[merh]

6. Don't bet anyone grabbing a fork

but I agree, crow eating is in order.

[OzarkDem]

7. Yes they were

and many of us defended them vigorously.

[Spazito]

10. My thoughts exactly!

That was a sordid episode, imo, in the way the blog writer was treated and not just by a small but vocal group of DU members but others at other sites as well.

[Lerkfish]

16. I was one of the very few asking for restraint and benefit of the doubt

I think many here owe Jason a heartfelt apology, not that he'll get it.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

31. And let us not forget...

What was done to our FRIEND, William Rivers Pitt. The savaging that was done, night after night.

I have never spoken so strongly about that as I will now:

There are some habitues of this site down whose gullets I would not defecate, because of that.

[aquart]

17. Say it: Jason Leopold is not a liar.

[Lerkfish]

18. I think I just was, essentially.

[Kagemusha]

22. Uh, no. N.O. NO. Absolutely not. These aren't even indictments at all.

They're legal arguments citing Rove as a suspect and someone who might be charged as a result of secret grand jury deliberations.

That does not square with Rove being indicted, Rove being subject to a sealed indictment, or anything of the sort, what so tiny ever.

How this proves that "that certain writer" was right is totally beyond me. Not any logic I learned in school.

[Cooley Hurd]

23. IIRC, When Leopold broke the story, everyone (incl Larry Johnson) backed him up...

...but then there was word that Alberto Gonzalez made a special trip to meet w/ Fitz and all of a sudden, POOF - no indictment.

Of course, SO MANY here were quicker than shit to crucify Leopold (incl many DUer's I previously respected).

I backed TO from the git go - because ANYONE who knows how newspapers work KNOWS that the story can change in an instant, leaving the previous reporting null & void. BUT NOOOOOOOOOO. I got MY ass kicked for defending JL & TO.

To all of those doubters - I forgive you and your ignorance.;)

[Kagemusha]

27. So this story above backs that position up how?

That position, if I read it correctly, being that Rove was indicted, and after Gonzales was done, Rove was un-indicted.

[Cooley Hurd]

30. Sounds right to me...

:shrug:

[Kagemusha]

34. ....And you believe that this would happen without the US Attorney resigning?

In a case where the attorney general was recused?

...Well if you do, uh, fine. So Patrick Fitzgerald is corrupt too in your mind?

Edit: And it'd take a judge being in on it. Because if it's not filed with a judge, you haven't ACTUALLY been indicted.

That's why I think this whole thing stinks btw. Intention to indict, wanting to indict, but not doing so at the last minute, these things I can believe. That Rove was indicted, and then un-indicted... it defies belief. Because you are not describing keeping an indictment sealed, on condition of a deal; you're saying, complete rescinding of an indictment that was already filed. (Otherwise Leopold's story is still full of it because almost-indictments don't count.) But... whatever.

[Cooley Hurd]

35. We're talking about the Gonzales DOJ...

...and Fitz was a Bush appointee who was apparently, at one time, on a list of USA's to be fired. Don't get me wrong - I think Fitz is an honest guy. However, he wasn't the most powerful atty in DC at the time.

My point is that the "un-indictment" is plausible under the SOP of the Gonzales DOJ - i.e. bizarro world:

[Kagemusha]

36. An honest man would have penned a resignation letter in such a case.

And for such a laughingstock to be approved by a judge with NO leaks and NO public comment at all just defies all imagination with me. Easier for me to believe Rove never got indicted to begin with, as a result not of Gonzales' maneuverings, but Rove's last minute trip before the grand jury to further muddy the waters.

[Joe Chi Minh]

44. That's a little naive and unwordly, isn't it? Things happen in real life, 'many a slip between

cup and lip'.

".... almost indictments don't count"? Somehow, I very much doubt if 'almost indictments' are exactly thick on the ground, to put it mildly.

Surely, only a journalist, inexperienced and too Hamlet-like in his thought processes to remain long in the profession, and not a seasoned professional journalist, such as Leopold, could have allowed for the possibility of a last-minute change of the agenda just now set and very shortly to be implemented, to supervene.

[Garbo 2004]

45. That "word" to which you refer was a Madsen story that alleged Gonzales met with the grand jury

in an investigation from which he not only was recused and had no supervisory authority but in which he himself had been a witness before the grand jury. Madsen had the grand jury "informing" Gonzales of their decision to indict as a "formality." (Considering the whole point of Gonzales' recusal was due to his involvement in the matters being investigated and the fact that the Grand Jury had Fitz who had the authority of the AG in the matter, that report defied belief and procedure.)

Then Madsen, while suggesting that Leopold/TO had been suckered by disinformation about events at Rove's lawyers' office, also said that the indictment would be released on May 19. Oh and Madsen went on to claim that Fitz had told Luskin that he was now a subject of investigation. There's are reasons why Madsen is not considered a credible info source by the DU admins.

The recently unredacted court opinion reveals that Rove was suspected of lying, well hell yeah. That's not news. That's been known for a long time. Since at least 2004 and publicly confirmed when Cooper testified in summmer 2005. This unredaction doesn't do anything to validate TO's reporting that Rove had been indicted, first on Friday, then the Wednesday before. The date kept floating as I recall as well as when the alleged indictment had been filed. They finally settled on a filing date a week later.

I don't think Leopold made up the story out of whole cloth. His editors, including Pitt, would have to be complicit as they said they checked their sources and swore by them. But TO bit on the story in a rush when others who also were told of an indictment by a single source held back. And TO relied, as it turns out, on a single source for the indictment story. And TO didn't merely report what it's source was telling them, it insisted it was fact and subsequently massaged their reporting to reconcile it to subsequent events, changing the indictment filing date to that of a subsequent sealed case and then speculated about that.

But again, the rereleased unredacted court opinion doesn't vindicate TO's reporting. Who didn't know, long before Leopold's May 2006 articles, that Rove was on the hook for lying about his contacts with the press, specifically Matt Cooper? Speculation in the corportate media regarding a Rove indictment goes back to before the Libby indictment in Oct 2005. None of that in any way vindicates TO's reporting of an actual indictment in May 2006.

[SoCalDem]

4. and yet, Rover still runs free

:grr:

[blogslut]

5. noice!

I am off to pdf-land.

[OzarkDem]

8. No justice in the courts

for criminals in the Bush administration. Thanks to the complete politicization of the DOJ, FBI, CIA and the federal courts system, no one in the Bush administration can be held accountable. The system has been rigged to simply hide the crimes and let the perps walk.

And this is the system Dems in Congress want to rely on to bring Cheney & Bush to justice for ignoring their subpoenas.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. what's the latest on the Alabama governor?

anybody seen word one on that outside DU+links?

media working hard to ignore that one, while they concentrate on missing wives/Paris/IPhone, etc

[H2O Man]

11. Very good.

Thanks for this.

[rudy23]

12. Yet, Fitz will still get smeared as being "overzealous"--Dems take note

If you're going to get smeared anyway, you might as well do what's right.

[me b zola]

13. k&r

[autorank]

14. This post is a gem. One of the tastiest morcels offered in months.

Wow, great work. Thanks :kick: and highly recommended

[DemReadingDU]

15. More discussion from Marcy Wheeler

One of the best parts of today's Appeals Court order releasing more of the grand jury material from the Plame investigation is this paragraph:

Even if the Armitage revelation created a compelling public interest in them—and it
is unclear to us why, as Dow Jones asserts, the Special Counsel’s knowledge that one individual leaked Plame’s identity calls into question the validity of his continuing investigation into others who may have unlawfully leaked this same information—this is irrelevant given that there is no First Amendment right of access to secret grand jury matters.

The Appeals Court judges are basically telling the AP and WSJ the same thing I said months ago--they're being dumb when they claim that Armitage's involvement in the leak touches on Libby and Rove's guilt at all.

read more...
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/06/wsj-and-theap-f.html

[Spazito]

21. Thanks for this, emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler) is always a

must-read for me!

This is interesting:

What is most interesting, though is what remains redacted, Tatel's argument for why Rove was suspected of perjuring himself on the Cooper conversation. The passage directly follows the long Armitage passage above, consists of about two pages, and ends with the point that Cooper's testimony will provide key evidence as to whether or not Rove perjured himself. I'm going to come back to this redaction in a separate post.

I believe Rove appeared one more time before the Grand Jury after this appeal had been decided, hmmmm, could it be because of a sealed indictment for perjury was in the waiting?

[DemReadingDU]

28. Another posting from emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler)

The Two Redacted Pages

<snip>

So the redactions must logically bridge from Rove's involvement in the Novak article to his leak to Cooper. There are several things that must appear in the two redacted pages.

Probably, the paragraph immediately following the newly unsealed material makes some statement that says, "the Special Counsel could not prove that Armitage knew Plame was covert," which would remain redacted as a charging decision. (Or, if Tatel does suggest that Novak's description of Armitage as his source is questionable, the next paragraph would say that.)

It also must include Rove's version of the Novak conversation (which would be protected under grand jury secrecy. This must differ from Novak's in some way. Novak has already said, publicly, that his version, "oh, you know about that too," differed from Rove's in that Rove said, "oh, you heard that too." Clearly, in his subpoena Fitzgerald made a case that this discrepancy--whether Rove claimed to "know" or merely to have "heard" of Plame's identity--was an example of Rove lying. Let me point out that that means Rove's lie about what he said to Novak precisely paralleled Libby's lie, in that Rove appears to have been telling a story about having heard from journalists.

But note the other bit quoted from Novak's testimony: that Rove discussed declassifying the CIA report and that Rove said the report "wasn't an impressive piece of work or a very definitive piece of work." In other words, Rove said something in his testimony about the report--or denied saying anything about the report at all--that Fitzgerald took as evidence that Rove lied. This is really fascinating and possibly quite significant. After all, Rove has claimed not to have known Plame's name when he spoke to Novak. But if Novak testified that Rove mentioned the trip report, it might be a way to place Rove in conversations that address Plame specifically. In other words, this may be the way to prove that Rove learned of Plame from Libby ... or Cheney.

As I said, a significant portion of this redacted space must lay out Rove's testimony about Cooper. It probably tells how Rove initially claimed he never spoke to Cooper, and then, just as Cooper was subpoenaed a second time, Rove magically found the email he wrote to Hadley reminding himself that he had, in fact, spoken to Cooper. It would be positively delicious if Fitzgerald also described the circumstances regarding the discovery of the email--particularly if that email was not disclosed in response to the initial subpoenas. Generally, though, this section would rehearse all of the reasons to believe Rove had lied in grand jury testimony about Cooper.


lots more...
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/06/the-two-redacte.html

[Spazito]

29. Thanks again! Marcy's take on this is always fascinating and

no-one, in the public sphere, knows this case better, imo.

[bleever]

33. The final thoughts re: Cheney are interesting to read,

and she concludes with:

The allusion to potential follow-on indictments suggests that Tatel has seen the evidence of something more there. Perhaps it's evidence of intention on the part of Rove and Libby and maybe Armitage, which could lead to IIPA charges. Or perhaps it's evidence of direct criminal involvement on the part of Cheney. But there's something more there--and something in those two redacted pages must support the argument that there is something more. I happen to think it's Dick, but then I see Dick lurking everywhere in this story.

I'm even wondering if Dick wasn't seeing a chance here to not only use Rove, but potentially oust him from his position as the one other person with control over Bush's diet of items that needed decidering.

[DemReadingDU]

37. Yeh, The Dick is everywhere

He's empowered himself to be the president

[Morgana LaFey]

19. k&r

[Fridays Child]

20. k/r

[porphyrian]

24. Good. Now somebody fucking do something with it. - n/t

[Supersedeas]

25. sadly none of those on the Beltway cocktail circuit has the moxie to mention this 'news'

[nashville_brook]

26. the venom was incredibly disproportionate -- an absurd DU kaniption fit

since when do people go for the jugler of indie journos? it's not a common thing. as per the rhetoric, jason leopold was going to personally responsible for the downfall of all indie journalism -- as if this one item...this one issue...would drive people away from web-based reporting for the rest of time.

i'm glad that people take their journalism so seriously. wonder what indie journo those critics have flailed at since leopold? or was it just jason? i'll answer that. it was just jason and that makes me wonder...

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

32. It may have been disproportionate...

But I sincerely doubt it came to life through parthenogenesis.

No, there was an agenda at play and agents of that agenda at work.

[nashville_brook]

46. that is worded beautifully!

my thoughts eggsactly.

[leveymg]

38. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Not a word about it elsewhere, that I've seen.

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

39. K&R

[spanone]

40. the truth remains.....karl walked.

[Seabiscuit]

41. So is Truthout going to reclaim that KKKarl will be indicted in 24 business hours?

n/t

[Demeter]

42. Darth Vader Wasn't Prepared For Fitz. Neither Was Karl

They didn't know what he knew, they didn't even bury the bodies and blood was all over the floor. They had moles and whistle-blowers, because they knew they would screw anyone to preserve themselves, and they figure everyone else is the same. They lost TOTAL CONTROL of the situation.


I think outing Plame was the first spontaneous act Cheney had done in a long time. Shooting that old man in the face was the second.(or have I got the order reversed?)

That's what happens when emotions override the plot.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

43. I'll be damned!

I can't wait for pay-back.

Yes, Rove,...you are going to get it,...you sick SOB.

I have to add: Hey, KARL,...while you've played AROUND the rules, the rules are going to bite you in the ass whether you cheat or not.