White House strategist Karl Rove has been told he will not be indicted in the CIA leak investigation, his lawyer said Tuesday, removing a cloud that had been hanging over the administration.
“On June 12, 2006, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove,” Rove attorney Robert Luskin said in a prepared statement. “We believe that the special counsel’s decision should put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr. Rove’s conduct.”
Numerous Democrats have urged Rove’s indictment and television commentators have been predicting for months that Rove would be indicted. Fitzgerald has been investigating whether the White House leaked the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame. Plame’s husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, once said he wanted to see “Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.”
The clearing of Rove allows Bush’s top political strategist to move forward in his efforts to engineer Republican victories in the November congressional elections.
Rove declined to comment directly, referring questions to his spokesman, Mark Corallo, who described his boss as “elated.”
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said the development “is probably good news for the White House, but it’s not very good news for America.”
“If Karl Rove had been indicted, it would have been for perjury,” Dean told NBC. “That does not excuse his real sin, which is leaking the name of an intelligence operative during the time of war.
“He doesn’t belong in the White House. If the president valued America more than he valued his connection to Karl Rove, then Karl Rove would have been fired a long time ago.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman accused Democrats of “wrongly prejudging” Rove, adding: “They owe Karl Rove an apology.”
“The facts show that Karl Rove actually did nothing wrong and everything right in cooperating with the investigation but despite that, you had Democrats presuming his guilt, wrongly,” he told MSNBC. “You had Democrats in the Senate who said he had to lose his security clearance — they were wrong.”
