More Rove Rumors

David Shuster now summarizing the signs pointing to a Rove indictment:

According to the latest documents, the first time Rove is now described as a subject in the overall case - a subject being a technical term meaning somebody is under investigation. And the latest prosecution documents also go out of their way to suggest that Rove is not going to be a prosecution witness at the Libby trial even though Rove is part of the narrative against Scooter Libby. And the reason that’s significant is because prosecutors usually don’t put subjects on the witness stand for tactical reasons if they want to leave open the possibility of later charging that particular subject in a separate case.

The other thing that has long been intriguing about Karl Rove, and that is, we’ve known for months that in the Scooter Libby indictment when they refer to Official A, Official A is Karl Rove. And the indictment against Libby says that Official A disclosed to Scooter Libby that he had had a conversation with columnist Robert Novak. The reason prosecutors describe an official as an Official A is when there’s pejorative information about that person, and the person has not yet been indicted and had a chance to defend themselves. But we’ve looked at prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s record as far as designating people as Official A or Official B, and in every single case we have found, Keith, that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald when he designates somebody as Official A in an indictment, that person eventually does get indicted themselves.

Oh, and the grand jury met today.

Jane at Firedoglake, master Plame-ologists, makes a great point:

The "latest documents" Shuster is referring to (I believe) is the April 12 filing by Libby’s lawyers. What it actually said was:

The defense is likely to call Mr. Rove to provide testimony regarding Mr. Libby’s conversations with Mr. Rove concerning reporters’ inquiries about Ms. Wilson, as expressly discussed in the indictment. (Indictment, Count One, at p 21). Documents from Mr. Rove’s files about the subjects outlines in the indictment are discoverable pursuant to Rule 16 because without them the defense cannnot effectively prepare for Mr. Rove’s examination. As discussed above, Rule 16 compels disclosure of such documents even if Mr. Rove remains a subject of a continuing grand jury investigation.

First of all, this came from Libby’s lawyers not Fitzgerald. Team Libby has repeatedly used these filings to manipulate public opinion and distract from Libby’s crimes, most recently when they tried to hand Richard Armitage out to dry (something Fitzgerald quickly shut down.) [...]

Fitzgerald has gone to great lengths to limit the information Libby is allowed to see — for obvious reasons. He’s gone out of his way to say who he would not be calling, and put Libby in the position of having to call these witnesses himself. Rove is one of those people. When Team Libby then argued that they were entitled to anything Fitzgerald had about Rove, Fitzgerald countered by saying that they should not be allowed to fish through his files for information with which to impeach their own witness. It seemed to me at the time not so much an indication of Rove’s status than a bit of a clever firewall; Fitzgerald still gets to cross-examine Rove but he doesn’t have to show his hand before doing so. Could make for some interesting courtroom theatrics.

She cautions against reading too much into this stuff, that Fitzgerald plays a long game. It does seem to me like there's a lot of smoke; the grand jury's been meeting quite a bit. And surely Libby's lawyers have to know a little bit about what's going on (although if Rove is a target, they may think it takes the heat off of them). So I think that reading the tea leaves suggests that Rove's in some trouble.