Karl Rove Indicted…and Cheney May Be in Hot Water, Too

Boy, we haven’t had many headlines that good recently, have we?

First, Turd Blossom. According to Jason Leopold, it’s a done deal—except for the official announcement.

Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.

Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, did not return a call for comment. Sources said Fitzgerald was in Washington, DC, Friday and met with Luskin for about 15 hours to go over the charges against Rove, which include perjury and lying to investigators about how and when Rove discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative and whether he shared that information with reporters, sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said.

It was still unknown Saturday whether Fitzgerald charged Rove with a more serious obstruction of justice charge. Sources close to the case said Friday that it appeared very likely that an obstruction charge against Rove would be included with charges of perjury and lying to investigators.

An announcement by Fitzgerald is expected to come this week, sources close to the case said. However, the day and time is unknown. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the special prosecutor was unavailable for comment. In the past, Samborn said he could not comment on the case.

Take that with whatever grain of salt you’d like, although I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that we’ll be popping some corks this week.

Next up, Dark Lord Dick Cheney. Hand-written notes scrawled by the cloven-hoofed one have surfaced as part of Fitzy’s probe, and the notes, written—if you can believe this; it’s like a bad episode of Murder She Wrote—in the margin of Joe Wilson’s July 6, 2003 NYT column that started this whole kafuffle, “show the vice president personally raised questions about Wilson's trip right after the publication of the Wilson column—and five days before Libby confirmed to Time reporter Matt Cooper that he had ‘heard’ that Wilson's wife, former CIA agent Valerie Plame, had played a role in sending him to Africa.”

Additionally, the NYT is reporting that Cheney argued that the “National Security Agency should intercept purely domestic telephone calls and e-mail messages without warrants in the hunt for terrorists” as early as the weeks following 9/11.

He’s just got his thumbs in all sorts of plums, doesn’t he?