Rove-r And Out

Jason Leopold rings the bell for Fitzo de Mayo:

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove.

During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.

Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, did not return a call for comment. Sources said Fitzgerald was in Washington, DC, Friday and met with Luskin for about 15 hours to go over the charges against Rove, which include perjury and lying to investigators about how and when Rove discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative and whether he shared that information with reporters, sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said.

It was still unknown Saturday whether Fitzgerald charged Rove with a more serious obstruction of justice charge. Sources close to the case said Friday that it appeared very likely that an obstruction charge against Rove would be included with charges of perjury and lying to investigators.

Leopold has also said while tracking this case that up to 15 people could be indicted back in October, when only Scooter Libby was targeted. But this article is pretty believable, and given all we know what's been happening, with Rove's 5th appearance before the grand jury and Fitzgerald's stays in Washington, I think this is the real deal.

Furthermore, Newsweek (via Laura Rozen) notes that there are now hand-written notes from the Vice President with direect bearing on the case:

The role of Vice President Dick Cheney in the criminal case stemming from the outing of White House critic Joseph Wilson's CIA wife is likely to get fresh attention as a result of newly disclosed notes showing that Cheney personally asked whether Wilson had been sent by his wife on a "junket" to Africa.

Cheney's notes, written on the margins of a July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed column by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, were included as part of a filing Friday night by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the perjury and obstruction case against ex-Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The notes, Fitzgerald said in his filing, show that Cheney and Libby were "acutely focused" on the Wilson column and on rebutting his criticisms of the White House's handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence. [...]

In the margins of the op-ed, Cheney jotted out a series of questions that seemed to challenge many of Wilson's assertions as well as the legitimacy of his CIA sponsored trip to Africa: "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb. [sic] to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"

It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for Cheney's own notes to be made public. The notes-apparently obtained as a result of a grand jury subpoena-would appear to make Cheney an even more central witness than had been previously thought in the criminal probe. ...

It's so clear that this was an orchestrated attempt to ruin the Wilson family for daring to come up against the White House, and to send the entire CIA a message to shut their mouths or they'd suffer the same consequences. And now everybody's going to have to take a bite out of the shit sandwich created.

Bye, Karl. And your little immigration tack to the right on Monday isn't going to mean a damn thing when your face is all over the papers next week.