From this morning’s Washington Post:
Top White House aides are privately discussing the future of Karl Rove, with some expressing doubt that President Bush can move beyond the damaging CIA leak case as long as his closest political strategist remains in the administration.
If Rove stays, which colleagues say remains his intention, he may at a minimum have to issue a formal apology for misleading colleagues and the public about his role in conversations that led to the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to senior Republican sources familiar with White House deliberations.
While Rove faces doubts about his White House status, there are new indications that he remains in legal jeopardy from Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s criminal investigation of the Plame leak. The prosecutor spoke this week with an attorney for Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about his client’s conversations with Rove before and after Plame’s identity became publicly known because of anonymous disclosures by White House officials, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.
Fitzgerald is considering charging Rove with making false statements in the course of the 22-month probe, and sources close to Rove — who holds the titles of senior adviser and White House deputy chief of staff — said they expect to know within weeks whether the most powerful aide in the White House will be accused of a crime.
Such a move would certainly test the bounds of Bush’s legendary loyalty to those loyal to him.
— Steve Clemons
