Thursday, October 06, 2005
 

I don't think Rove will be indicted

If Fitzgerald is as smart as I've been led to believe, he will not indict any higher up the hierarchy than he expects to be able to convict, and he will also anticipate that indictments which push Bush and Cheney too deeply into a corner will provoke a nuclear response from them. If this is true, than the question is not who broke the law and is technically indictable, but who can Fitzgerald get away with indicting and still survive to prosecute the indictments.

So, I suspect that indictments will not reach to the highest levels in the White House -- he'll only go as high as he thinks the administration will be willing to cut loose the indictees if necessary. That means Scooter Libby, yes, but most probably not Karl Rove, and not any higher than that (there's only one more level above Rove -- maybe not on the formal White House organizational chart, but in the reality of power and influence).

Although today's revelation that Rove will appear before the grand jury again may seem to indicate otherwise, I think it actually supports my contention. Yes, he's testifying again. Yes, he's received some sort of letter (either a target letter or a subject letter) from Fitzgerald, but those only go to reinforce my intuition that Rove won't be indicted.

Figure this: Fitzgerald knows that Rove is involved, and that he probably has enough to indict him, but he figures doing so will bring the full force of the White House down on him, potentially closing down his entire effort (i.e fire him, replace him with someone more amenable, a la Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre -- and without a Congress controlled by the Democrats, Bush has even more freedom to act in that manner than Nixon did).

So, if Rove's not going to be indicted, how to utilize Rove? Unindicted co-conspirator? Could be, that might slip by without massive retaliation (real retaliation -- there will still be a propaganda fusillade from the right).

In the meantime, Fitzgerald knows Rove's in the shit, and Rove does too, so Fitzgerald figures he can use Rove to get more information to firm up his prosecution of Libby and whoever else is going to be indicted. He sends Rove a letter, tells him that his testifying doesn't mean he's not going to be indicted, thereby keeping the pressure on. Rove's lawyer, presumably, also knowing his client is hip-deep in it, tells him that the one chance he's got not to be indicted is to testify again and give Fitzgerald what he wants.

It all makes perfect sense. (At least to me.) One thing's for sure: it's going to be interesting to see what happens.

Update: I've got more in the TPM Cafe comment thread here. (Mentioned on Digby's blog, with more in the comments.)

Update: Part of one of my comments in the Digby comment thread:

Look, I'm human, I'm a liberal, I'd give my right arm if it would somehow help get Bush out of office. I'd like nothing more than a convenient deus ex machina to swoop in and make everything better, but I've lived through a lot of shit in my middle-aged life, and it doesn't happen that way, because it's not the world our world works right now.

For instance, no matter how many bad things that Bush does that eventually come to light, no matter how serious they are and how close to treason they become, there is precisely zero possibility of Bush being impeached as long as the Congress remains under the iron control of the Republican party.

Sure, those revelations help drop Bush's popularity and his approval ratings but we might as well get used to the proposition that absent a significant change in the power structure in Washington George Bush ain't gonna be impeached -- so putting a lot of energy into trying to make that happen is just a complete waste of time. (Not revealing what's he's done, that's very useful in many ways, but in trying to rev up some kind of impeachment movement. It's a total waste.)

Similarly, seeing Fitzgerald as our savior, whose indictments are going to in some way pull down the Bush administration, cause him to resign, or render it in some way ineffective cannot be anything more than wishful thinking run amuck.

The most that can conceivably happen is that some pretty bad people and sleazy operators will be forced out -- but they will invariably be replaced by others, probably just as sleazy, although perhaps not as adept. That's a good outcome -- doing anything which substantial hurts this administration or causes its ratings to fall is good for us, but it's not, and cannot be, the fatal blow against the empire.

I go a little farther than that, in that I give Fitzgerald credit for being a lot smarter than many others do. I see people praising Fitzgerald's art and craft as a lawyer, and his balls as well, but I think he's smart enough to know exactly how far he can go without provoking Bush to retaliate, and I believe that means drawing the line just below Karl Rove.

Maybe I'm wrong about these things, maybe Fitzgerald's a complete technocrat with no feel for the realities of power politics who just indicts any ham sandwich that comes along and breaks the law, or maybe I'm wrong about where he draws the line and Rove is in his sights, or perhaps we're all wrong and he just doesn't have the goods. But whatever happens, the results of Fitzgerald's investigation are almost certainly not going to solve our George Bush problem, and to crank ourselves up to a fever pitch believing they will is a mistake, because all it will lead to is severe disappointment.

Ed Fitzgerald | 10/06/2005 09:39:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE







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