More Fun with Scooter and Fartblossom!

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Jason Leopold published today new developments in the Libby case, based on court transcripts from May 16, which included Team Libby and lawyers representing a host of media folks, such as Judy Miller, Matt Cooper, Time, NBCNews, NYTimes, and Andrea Mitchell. And of course, Judge Walton.

Team Libby asserts that a different WH official than Libby had mentioned Plame to Judy Miller, because her notebook shows copious jottings of Victoria Wilson, V. Flame, etc., prior to her infamous breakfast meeting with Libby on the 8th.

In addition, it appears Matt Cooper may be in the hot seat, and that Rove is just so not out of the woods. Judge Walton has granted Team Libby access to Matt’s drafts for his confessional in Time because of the interesting differences in them, which will disable his position that the final version was "the" truth, thus impeaching him as a witness.

As for Rove, well…just read:

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

"In a previously undisclosed development, Massimo Calabresi, a Time magazine reporter who shared a byline with Matthew Cooper on the second story printed about Wilson and his wife called Wilson prior to Novak's July 14, 2003, column and discussed with Wilson Cooper's conversation with Karl Rove in which Rove disclosed Plame-Wilson's CIA work to Cooper.
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"Mr. Cooper had said something to Mr. Massimo, at least about his conversation with Karl Rove, which caused Mr. Massimo to call Joe Wilson to ask about his wife and about what Cooper had heard from Karl Rove," Jeffress [of Team Libby] said.

Cooper "talked to Karl Rove on July 11 [2003]," Jeffress told Walton during the court hearing. "Karl Rove told him that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have sent Wilson on the [Niger] trip. There is an email by Mr. Cooper, again to his editor, on July 16 [2003], four days after his conversation with Mr. Libby and five days after his conversation with Mr. Rove about the article they are planning to write in which they are going to mention the wife. And the email says - talks about him having an administration source for the information about Ms. Wilson."

Has there been any more incriminating piece of evidence against Rove yet presented in the press?

Doncha know Wilson told Fitz about this conversation over two years ago, like first thing? I told you the guy has way more info than we do, and more than many give him credit for.

Betcha this phone call from Calabresi is the reason Wilson made his now infamous statement about “seeing Karl Rove frog-marched out of the WH in handcuffs.”

If Fitz has known this all along, and then let Rove cut a deal based only on the info we all knew as of a month ago, he must have been keeping this ace up his sleeve during those negotiations. That would depend of course on just when Team Libby got access to Miller's notes, so I'll have to track that down. Regardless, this is not good for Karl in terms of committing the actual IIPA crime of leaking an agent's identity, and still not good for Libby in terms of lying, as reviewed yesterday.

Poor Karl; guess he didn't know what he was signing up for with the Fitz-Wilson weight loss program.

So. This has become a real fight, and the gloves are off. Rove appears to have made a deal with Fitz - all in the spirit of cooperation - to testify truthfully as Libby’s witness, likely against both Libby and Cheney. But the whole way things have gone down cannot make Libby too comfortable about those prospects. So he’s not holding back for Karl's sake anymore, oh no. Libby's now striking back against Rove with all he’s got. And he just may have got all that he's got from the prosecution in the form of Judy's notebooks.

In a funny kind of way, Team Libby is sorta helping Fitz make his case against Rove, just as Rove has likely agreed to "help" him make his case against Libby. By cooperating, of course. And who’s betting on how protective they’ll be about Cheney? Or even Bush, when their asses are really on the line.

My God. Shakespeare in a million years never could have imagined the likes of all this theatre. And whodathunk the best productions these thugs would give us would be all this great stuff they didn’t actually “produce.”