John Hannah Flips, And Condi Schemes?

by Steve

Hey, we're having fun now, aren't we?

Raw Story thinks that the staffer who has been flipped by Patrick Fitzgerald is none other than John Hannah, who just happens to be one person at the center of any intersection between Dick Cheney and John Bolton. By pinning Hannah to a wall and making him talk, Fitzgerald will also be able to get the goods on the relationship between Dick Cheney, Rummy’s Office of Special Plans, Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, the use of tainted intelligence by the White House Iraq Group in selling the war, and John Bolton’s efforts to harass the United Nations IAEA away from undercutting the administration’s WMD claims. Dragging Hannah in also drags in Scooter, as Hannah would have reported to him. And Keith Olbermann at MSNBC just confirmed that NBC knows Fitzgerald has already dragged in two of Cheney's staffers for detailed discussions.

And it certainly is delicious that the quickening pace of stories about Cheney’s office these last several days has led to Cheney resignation rumors now. Notice how Condi has managed to insert herself by proxy into a scenario here, as someone who just claimed she would never “run” for president but who never said she would turn down being handed the VP slot. In this way, Bush would have his work wife by his side every day, and the far right wing would go apeshit watching Bush let Cheney go without a fight after everything Cheney had meant to the base, at a time when that same base thinks Bush has gone wobbly. But the bigger question, as Jane notes over at FireDogLake, is whether or not Rice herself is clean enough to be elevated and survive a confirmation battle.

Can a sitting Vice-President be indicted, you ask? Why yes, he can. Who said so? Well, in another in a long string of ironies, Robert Bork said he could.

And in case you want to know what could happen even if Fitzgerald fires blanks and nothing happens with the case, remember that Joe Wilson and his wife may then file civil suits against Bush and Cheney, and thanks to the Supreme Court ruling in the Paula Jones case, that suit will go ahead in discovery phase while Bush is still in office.

Jeralyn Merritt over at Talk Left reminds us that it is more likely that smaller fish like John Hannah or Susan Ralston in Rove’s office would flip and try to cut deals than it would be for Rove and Libby themselves.

(Hat tip to Atrios, among others, for the leads)