The leak is that Plame Game special prosecutor Vincent Fitzgerald will announce today that he’ll seek a grand jury indictment…but not against Karl Rove (oh, boo hoo, lefties!). The target will instead be Dick Cheny’s chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
And the charge won’t be revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent (double boo hoo!), but that all-purpose refuge of federal prosecutors when they can’t make substantive charges stick: misleading the federal investigators who couldn’t make the substantive charges stick. That’s the “crime” that got Martha Stewart giving cooking lessons in the federal hoosegow for five months because they couldn’t nail her on insider trading.
This is a great victory for the Bush administration. And the wonderful blog Generation Why? (hat tip: Instapundit) tells why:
“The Left has been touting the Joe Wilson Lies story as some sort of evidence that the evil Bush administration is so corrupt it would reveal the identity of an undercover CIA agent as a political payback against someone who opposes the administration’s actions.
“Just one problem… the corruption conspiracy never existed. And the indictment that’s expected today will show that… or rather the lack of any indictment for revealing an undercover agent’s identity will show it. Sure, the Left is likely to cheer gleefully when an indictment comes down today against Scooter Libby, but the absence of an indictment for actually outing an undercover agent will reveal that this was never a story to begin with.
“So when you see folks on the Left using today’s indictment (for making false statements to the grand jury) remember this story was supposed to be about an evil administration outing an undercover agent.”
Don’t miss the rest of Generation Why?’s multi-linked post. As for the alleged charges against Libby, I’ve argued over and over on this blog that Martha Stewart’s conviction was an absurdity. How can it be a crime to cover up something that’s not a crime? Martha has appealed, and I hope to heck she wins. Scooter Libby is the new Martha Stewart–and may he have similar good luck in court.