Top White House aide Karl Rove has been told by prosecutors he will not be charged with any crimes in the investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's identity, his lawyer said yesterday, lifting a heavy burden from one of President George W. Bush's most trusted advisers.
Attorney Robert Luskin said that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald informed him of the decision on Monday, ending months of speculation about the fate of Rove, the architect of Bush's 2004 re-election who is now focused on stopping Democrats from capturing the House or Senate in this November's midterm elections.
Fitzgerald has already secured a criminal indictment against Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Rove testified five times before a grand jury, most recently in April.
Fitzgerald called Luskin late on Monday afternoon to tell him he would not be seeking charges against Rove. Rove had just boarded a plane, so his lawyer and spokesman did not reach him until he had landed in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he was to give a speech to state Republican officials.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Rove, said the White House official "is elated" and said that "we're done."
"In deference to the pending case, we will not make any further public statements about the subject matter of the investigation," Luskin said. "We believe the special counsel's decision should put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr Rove's conduct."
Fitzgerald has been investigating whether senior administration officials intentionally leaked the identity of CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame in retribution because her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, sharply criticized the administration's pursuit of war in Iraq.
Rove, who most recently appeared before a grand jury in April, has admitted he spoke with columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper in the days before they published Plame's name in July 2003.
Rove, however, did not initially tell prosecutors about his conversation with Cooper, only revealing it after his lawyer discovered a White House e-mail that referred to it.
Fitzgerald was investigating whether Rove lied or obstructed justice in failing to initially disclose the conversation. The presidential aide blamed a faulty memory and sought to testify before the grand jury after finding the e-mail to correct his testimony.
The threat of indictment had hung over Rove, even as he was focusing on the arduous task of halting Bush's popularity spiral and keeping Democrats from capturing the House or Senate in November elections.
Fitzgerald's investigation has been under way since the start of the 2004 election, and the decision not to indict Rove is certain to buoy Republicans, who also got good news in the last week with the military's killing of most-wanted Iraq terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"The fact is this, I thought it was wrong when you had people like Howard Dean and Harry Reid presuming that he was guilty," Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman told Fox News Channel's Fox and Friends show yesterday morning.
Democrats, on the other hand, had no reason to welcome the development.
"He doesn't belong in the White House. If the president valued America more than he valued his connection to Karl Rove, Karl Rove would have been fired a long time ago," said Dean, the Democratic Party chairman, speaking yesterday on NBC network's Today show. "So I think this is probably good news for the White House, but it's not very good news for America."
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