Rove may be indicted Friday - per Jeralyn Merritt

I am fascinated by the Fitzgerald investigation into the Plame leak, partly because I resent the way the White House used the destruction of her career and her networks to attempt to intimidate her husband and partly because it has been the source of a lot of really fascinating insights into how the White House has been run. Iraq and Katrina have demonstrated the results of how the White House has been run, and the Fitzgerald investigation has shown how the various actors there have interacted to achieve the train wreck that the Bush administration has achieved.

But there is really too much detail. I have tried to follow EmptyWheel at the Next Hurrah in her efforts to decipher the meaning of the entrails of the various legal sacrifices, and while I have great admiration for her work, I simply get lost after about a page and a half.

Then there is Jeralyn Merritt, proprietor of TalkLeft: the politics of Crime. Jeralyn is a Defense attorney in Colorado. Her insights have been informed and well written. Here is another.

She has pulled together some recent reports on Rove's latest encounter with the Grand Jury today, and she suggests that he is toast on making a false statement to investigators in 2003, but that is not a major crime. It is a crime, but Rove may consider pleading guilty to it politically survivable. However, if Fitzgerald also indicts him for a false statement to the Grand Jury when under oath, that is Perjury and Rove will do real time if convicted of that.

The question of what he is indicted on may be why he went before the new Grand Jury Thursday. Remember, the previous Grand Jury expired October 28, 2005, so this is an all new set of people. Ms. Merritt suggests that the indictment is very likely to be handed down Friday, so we don't have long to wait.

As I say, I am fascinated by the case. Both EmptyWheel (last name Wheeler, first name I don't know) and Jeralyn Merritt are attorneys. I just prefer Jeralyn's style. It is a lot less demanding. She does the logic and just hands me the results.

So we'll see soon. Got your popcorn ready?