This news item raises the question: is a legal scandal about to swirl around Karl Rove — and if there is one will he actually face consquences?
Now that Time Inc. has turned over documents to federal court, presumably revealing who its reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on the name of that source, and what might happen to him or her. Tonight, on the syndicated McLaughlin Group political talk show, Lawrence O’Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, claimed to know that name–and it is, according to him, top White House mastermind Karl Rove.
Here is the transcript of O’Donnell’s remarks:
“What we’re going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper’s e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury, the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.
“And I know I’m going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of…for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine’s going to do with the grand jury.”
If it turns out to be Rove, it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out for several reasons:
(1)The big story now that’ll dominate the news (unless some OTHER monster story trumps it) is the Supreme Court seat opening. If it turns out to be Rove will this story get coverage or be shunted to the media’s back burner?
(2)THE key argument used by GOPers during the Clinton impeachment was that Clinton perjured himself and that absolutely could not be tolerated. It didn’t matter what he perjured himself on. What kind of (inevitable) arguments of defense will Rove’s defenders come up with…if this proves to be true?
(3)This would be a highly serious matter. Would Rove face any kind of punishment or a slap on the wrist?
All of this is SPECULATION at this point since this is based on a
few allegations dropped during a (noisy) TV talk show. But it is a story to watch…if it’ll be noticeable amid the hub-bub over the Supreme Court, that is…
UPDATE: Due to this new twist on this intriguing story, Americablog is offering THIS t-shirt, coffee mug, mousepad design.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.