It’s become something of a political parlor game the last few days. Everyone wants to know whether Karl Rove is in the clear and has dodged an indictment or if he’s still very much in Patrick Fitzgerald’s crosshairs.
As recently as yesterday, the LA Times reported that Rove has maintained his “uncanny pattern of surviving unpleasant situations, and sometimes seeming to thrive on them.” The WaPo, however, reported at the same time that Rove “remains in significant danger.”
What’s the latest today? It sounds like Rove and his team are more than a little worried.
Rove remains a focus of the CIA leak probe. He has told friends it is possible he still will be indicted for providing false statements to the grand jury.
“Everyone thinks it is over for Karl and they are wrong,” a source close to Rove said. The strategist’s legal and political advisers “by no means think the part of the investigation concerning Karl is closed.”
Cooper’s attorney, Dick Sauber, said Fitzgerald certainly meant it when he told Luskin last week that Rove remains in legal jeopardy and under investigation. “It wouldn’t surprise me knowing how careful he is and how much he doesn’t want to be seen as trigger-happy, that he is going through each of those things [that Rove presented] and seeing if they can be verified or not,” Sauber said.
It doesn’t sound like a dodged bullet to me.