PLAME UPDATE….Valerie Plame prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has invited Karl Rove back to testify before the grand jury yet again:
Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th-hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer’s leaked identity and have warned they cannot guarantee he won’t be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.
….Rove offered in July to return to the grand jury for additional testimony, and Fitzgerald accepted that offer last Friday after taking grand jury testimony from the formerly jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
Before accepting the offer, Fitzgerald sent correspondence to Rove’s legal team making clear that there was no guarantee he wouldn’t be indicted at a later point.
Lawrence O’Donnell thinks Fitzgerald is trying to get a few witnesses to flip and become prosecution witnesses:
Prosecutors prefer pre-indictment plea bargaining to post-indictment because they have more to offer you, like not being indicted at all or downgrading your status to unindicted co-conspirator. And pre-indictment plea bargaining can greatly enrich the indictments that the prosecutor then obtains. If, for example, Fitzgerald has a weak case against, say, Scooter Libby, imagine how much Rove’s cooperation might strengthen that case.
If no one RSVPs to Fitzgerald’s invitations, look for indictments as early as next week. If anyone does sit down with Fitzgerald, he will probably have to move to extend the grand jury, which now has only thirteen working days left in its term.
Prediction: at least three high level Bush Administration personnel indicted and possibly one or more very high level unindicted co-conspirators.
Remember, if no one flips, the terrorists have won!
