Spinmaster Karl Rove At It Again…
July 31st, 2009New York Times and Washington Post Pawns in Leaks
Alabama Whistle-Blower Says Rove Should Be Charged
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| President George Bush comforts Karl Rove on the day he was forced to resign from the White House in August, 2007. |
by Glynn Wilson
The master of spin from the Bush years, Karl Rove, is at it again, even as he testified before the House Judiciary Committee for the second time Thursday about his role in manipulating America’s judicial system from his office in the West Wing of the White House.
While the transcript of Rove’s testimony might be released in August and the committee may hold a public hearing on White House involvement in the political firing of U.S. attorneys and other executive branch intrusions into the judicial branch, including the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, Rove had already granted interviews with the New York Times and Washington Post to spin the story his way in what may constitute an act of obstruction of justice. Rove even selectively released a few e-mail messages to the papers to bolster his case, although what was reported seems to indicate he was just as involved as we have been reporting for the past two years.
Here’s how the Washington Post played the story.
Political adviser Karl Rove and other high-ranking figures in the Bush White House played a greater role than previously understood in the firing of federal prosecutors almost three years ago, according to e-mails obtained by The Washington Post, in a scandal that led to mass Justice Department resignations and an ongoing criminal probe.
Rove Had Heavier Hand in Prosecutor Firings Than Previously Known
In the exclusive interviews Rove granted to the Post and the Times earlier this month, Rove described himself as a “conduit” of grievances from lawmakers and others about the performance of certain prosecutors.
“The e-mails and interview were provided on the condition that they not be released until Rove’s House testimony concluded,” according to the Post.
Rove said he did not recall several events because of his “busy job” and asserted that he had done nothing to influence criminal cases, “an allegation by Democrats that has dogged him for years,” the Post reports, even though the Post has not been the lead news organization investigating Rove.
The Post allows itself to be used by Rove and his attorney Robert Luskin, who asserts that “there was never any point where Karl was trying to get a particular prosecution advanced or retarded.”
“Yes, I was a recipient of complaints, and I passed them on to the counsel’s office to be passed onto Justice,” Rove told the papers in what appears to be a total distortion of what actually happened. This will most likely come out in the end in either the congressional probe or an ongoing criminal case.
Rove injects a canard about “weak enforcement of voter fraud laws and public corruption,” which he says “had the sound of authenticity to me. If what I’m told is accurate, it’s really troublesome.”
What the two top newspapers in the land don’t seem to realize is that this is an attempt by Rove to not only snake his way out of culpability in politicizing the Justice Department, but to actually try and make it appear as if he gives a damn about the problems he created as Bush’s lead political brain and attack dog. Every single decision made by the Bush administration was filtered through Rove to make sure it met political muster, and the administration aggressively pursued a strategy of taking over the country by the Republican Party. Rove often promised his GOP buddies that his mission was to keep the Republicans in charge of the country “for a generation.”
So why does this come as a surprise to the Post and the Times at this late date?
In the Times version of this fiction, Mr. Rove said he “played only a peripheral role in the removal of the prosecutors.”
Right…
A statement from the Judiciary Committee on Thursday suggested that Mr. Rove might not have fully described his role in the firing of U.S. attorneys in the earlier interviews with the papers.
But we learn from the Times version of the story that Mr. Rove “provided a selection of office e-mail messages about the issue.”
“It’s hardly surprising that Mr. Rove would minimize his involvement in the U.S. attorney firings or that selectively leaked documents would serve his version of events,” the statement says. “The Judiciary Committee intends to honor its agreement to maintain the confidentiality of this process until its work is complete. While not describing the contents of the documents or interviews, the committee believes that the full record will show Mr. Rove’s role in the firing of the U.S. attorneys was more substantial than his statements to the media indicate.”
Rove Says His Role in Prosecutor Firings Was Small
But as one of the e-mails reported by the Times shows, Rove was obviously heavily involved.
“Give me a report on what U.S. attorneys slots are vacant or expected to be open soon,” he wrote to his deputy, J. Scott Jennings, in a late evening e-mail message on Nov. 25, 2006. Mr. Jennings replied with a curt, “Yes, sir.”
Nah, he wasn’t involved…
Reacting to the news, the key whistle-blower in the case against Rove for his involvement in the Siegelman prosecution, Alabama attorney Jill Simpson, said this morning that Rove breached his agreement with the committee by leaking information to the papers, just as her testimony was leaked after she testified last fall.
“He and Rep. Lamar Smith breached my agreement also with congress by leaking my testimony to Rob Riley,” she said. “I even have an apology letter from Conyer’s for their behavior.”
“Clearly Karl cannot honor any agreement even with Congress and the White House,” she said. “I think it is important that he has obstructed justice now for the second time due to his desire to leak and spin in a congressional investigation where he agreed to remain silent. They should charge him with obstruction of justice. Bless his little black heart he just could not help himself.”
The penalty is five years, she said, and he clearly had a written agreement worked out by his lawyer with the White House, Congress and the former president.
“He violated the congressional investigation by talking to the newspapers,” she said. “The statute is clear. See chapter 73 section 1505, the second paragraph. I think we have a bingo.”
Tags: Alabama Whistle-Blower Says Rove Should Be Charged, New York Times and Washington Post Pawns in Leaks, Spinmaster Karl Rove At It Again
July 31st, 2009 at 8:53 am
Is there still in the US an adherence to the RULE OF LAW?
This monkey should have been muzzled long ago.
Was he deposed under oath? Add perjury to his list of crimes.
July 31st, 2009 at 10:27 am
Do we not have enough unrest now in our country (sic)? Why are we wasting money on these investigations when we know nothing will happen (sic)? It is like Obama saus (sic). It is time to move on!
July 31st, 2009 at 11:14 am
Unrest? Wasting money?
No, I don’t think so. How can we move on if we don’t get to the bottom of how the unrest started and how the money was wasted?
Rove and co. twisted this country into knots and raided the federal treasury, pushing us to the brink of bankruptcy.
Should they not pay a price? Should we not have “justice” in this country?
These criminals had no mercy. Why should we?
July 31st, 2009 at 1:17 pm
This is of course boilerplate Machiavellian politics. Rove and his attorney are doing a full court press to taint as much of the entire jury pool of the country as possible. That would, naturally, make a successful prosecution of Rove darn near impossible.
If you liked Watergate, you’re loving this.
July 31st, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Sometimes I wish the South would seceede again, but only if they give me a bus ticket to Massachusetts where they have government sponsored health care. The GOP is The Confederate States Government, temporarily out of power, and Senator Jeff Sessions is The Confederate President in waiting. Getting these George W. Bush Texans and the other Southern GOP leaders out of The US Government could only help our country.
July 31st, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Well, if we had granted the pending request from some in Texas and Alaska to secede from the union, we would not have had to deal with Bush, the worst president ever. And we would not have to worry about Sarah Palin anymore either : )
Funny that much of the opposition to health care reform is coming from Southern conservatives, whose constituents could use some health care coverage the most. Politicians do not represent constituents. They represent the corporations who give them all their campaign money.
Unfortunately, after eight years of Bush, they have ALL the money now.
I say we make that movie to get Saddam’s gold back from the Bush ranch in Paraguay, and use the money get rid of the last of the Southern conservatives in Congress.
August 1st, 2009 at 6:10 am
The more I analyze this Rove leak business, it is obvious that the Washington Post was totally played because they simply have no one on staff who has followed all these stories from the beginning. The headline itself is naive or misleading.
A “Heavier Hand in Prosecutor Firings Than Previously Known?”
No one at the Post has been following our coverage for the past two years, or even the coverage at Harper’s magazine. Newspaper reporters typically use the paper’s own archives for background when researching a story, and the only stories the Post has run to date on the Siegelman case were from Bob Johnson at the Alabama bureau of AP. Everyone of those stories contained the exact same background phrase saying Siegelman and Scrushy were “convicted by a jury of their peers.”
Apparently, no one at the Associated Press has covered enough court to know that judges have a tremendous amount of power to influence the outcome of a case. In this case, the judge forced an obviously hung jury to reach a verdict with what we in the press sometimes call a “dynamite charge.” Then, when it was discovered that jurors were reading news coverage online and e-mailing each other about the case — a clear violation of the jury’s charge in any court in the land — he white-washed juror misconduct with only the pretense of an investigation.
So as the real “watchdog press” around here, we say he was convicted by a corrupt Republican judge — not a jury of his peers.
But the Washington Post would rather have “access” to guys like Rove than challenge his spin in print.
The New York Times story is not much better. The headline says, “Rove Says His Role in Prosecutor Firings Was Small,” then goes on to quote from e-mail messages showing full well that Rove was directing the action at Justice from the West Wing. What more proof do investigators need?
August 1st, 2009 at 6:51 am
This just in from the LA Times. My headline is better…
Rove Declares Innocence in U.S. Attorney Firings, Dems Cry Foul Play
August 2nd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Update: The LA Times reporter was contacted by several members of the Pam Miles List about this last paragraph, but so far, he has only said he will be out of the country for two weeks.
We are not sure why this conclusion is drawn, since even the NYTimes and the Post acknowledge significant disclosures. Guess the LA times is mad they were excluded from access to Rove in this instance.
I e-mailed him twice and got no response. Guess since I am in Alabama I don’t count.
If you want to ask him how he draws such an erroneous conclusion, here’s his e-mail address:
josh.meyer@latimes.com