A federal grand jury today indicted Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, after a two-year investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity but spared -- at least for now --President Bush's top political strategist, Karl Rove.
Libby was indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements. The indictment charged that he gave misleading information to the grand jury, allegedly lying about information he discussed with three news reporters. It alleged that he committed perjury before the grand jury in March 2004 and that he also lied to FBI agents investigating the case.
But we still don't know if a crime regarding the orginal charge -- the leaking of Plame's name -- was ever committed. If Libby ends up being convicted for obstructing a non-crime you'd think he's going to feel like a real shmuck. The only "inside dirt" I have on this whole thing is that people who know Libby think he's a pretty smoothe guy and that proving this stuff is by no means a slam-dunk.
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In any case, all in all, you have to think that this has been a good week for Bush. Widespread praise for his pick of Bernanke to head the Fed (seriously, I have seen zero criticism), the Miers withdrawal, new GDP figures, no indictments against Rove and still no evidence that officials in the White House leaked the name of a covert CIA operative.
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Temporary phenom or the start of a turnaround? Well, Sunday marks the start of a new week...
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Update: Libby has resigned, which is never a good thing. In possibly related news the dollar is up. Now is that because he resigned, or that Rove is still around?
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Another update: Of course, the strengthening dollar could simply be because of the improved GDP figures. Which, incidentally may also explain why the stock market is up 170 points today.
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Again: Just saw this:
"I can tell you that the substantial bulk of the work of this investigation is concluded." -- Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
So it's mostly over and we still don't know any more about what the deal is with the Plame leak? Does Fitzgerald actually have the goods on someone or is he just serving indictments so he can look like he's doing his job? This is going to look kind of weird if in the end if indictments are served for obstructing justice and the like but we get nothing about the actual crime Rove and Libby are suspected of committing.
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More: This would seem to suggest that no matter how smoothe Libby may be, his goose is probably cooked.
