Rover Rollover

by digby

So Rove’s not going to be frog marched out of the white house any time soon. At least not for Plame. But c’mon. It’s pretty clear that he cut a deal, don’t you think? His lawyer says that Fitzgerald “does not anticipate seeking charges.” Yeah, unless he fails to live up to his agreement to testify. He went before the grand jury five times, and it wasn’t because he had nothing to say. He saved his own neck at Libby’s expense — and maybe Cheney’s.

This post from Chicago’s Archpundit from last October says it all, I think, about Fitzgerald’s techniques:

In his high profiles cases that I’ve followed, Fitzgerald is not the kind of guy to shoot all of his ammunition at once. He’s strategic in what he brings at any given time with the seeming strategy to leverage current indictments to move up the food chain.

[…]

The last U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois was a guy named Scott Lasser who was generally seen as an honest guy, but most of his public corruption trials involved alderman and other assorted small fry. Lasser always seemed to be complaining behind the scenes that he couldn’t get anyone to talk. The reason is obvious from the outside, Lasser looked to build a case and do it at one time. He never exhibited a pattern of building cases slowly and then moving up the food chain. He wasn’t corrupt by any account, but perhaps not very imaginative.

Peter Fitzgerald brought in a Patrick Fitzgerald to change that sense of helplessness. Fitzgerald had worked a number of different kind of cases, but the big ones were two terrorism cases involving the first World Trade Center bombing and the African Embassy Bombings. What isn’t mentioned as much, but is probably as critical to how he tries white collar crime, is he participated in several mafia related prosecutions including one of the Gambino trials.

What does all this mean assuming indictments come down tomorrow? It means that most likely, they won’t be the last and the purpose of them may not be simply to bring justice and an end to the investigation. If Fitzgerald thinks he needs to crack someone to get the top banana, he’ll use all the pressure he has available to get Libby or Rove or someone else to flip if that is where he feels the law will take him.

As far as the great Vizier Rove’s ability to pull naother rabbit out of the hat in November goes: we’ll see. He’s always been overrated. After all, he’s called “Bush’s Brain.” That’s worked out really well hasn’t it?

And the good news is that Libby’s trial is going to be a barn burner if Rove testifies against him.

Update: Christy at Firedoglake has more.

Update II: Jeralynn at Talk Left spoke to Rove’s lawyer who said categorically that there was no deal. Rove is apparently completely in the clear. Long live the man behind the curtain.

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