Reuters: Fitz Could Notify Administration Officials As Early As Tomorrow

by Steve

This afternoon’s Plame update has several items, which others will post on later. My noteworthy ones are as follows:

Continuing with a point I made over two weeks ago about Rove’s chances with a predominantly African American grand jury in a post-Katrina environment, the Huffington Post’s Lawrence O’Donnell hits the same point late Friday.

And Reuters today said that “lawyers involved in the case” (read: defense attorneys who are guessing) now believe that Fitzgerald could inform administration officials as early as tomorrow whether or not they will face charges. These attorneys feel that Fitzgerald could convene the grand jury on Tuesday to finalize the indictments if any, and then go forward with them presumably on Wednesday. There isn’t any special sleuthing going on here by the attorneys; it’s just a simple look at the calendar, the time remaining for this grand jury, and wild-assed guesses by these attorneys. As far as the speculation about the reasons for why Fitzgerald set up the website last Friday, and then posted the February 2004 letter from James Comey clarifying Fitzgerald’s broad authority in the case, a contrarian could rightly say that Fitzgerald was doing nothing more than taking steps to pressure any remaining targets to flip.

The truth is that we won’t know what the guy has until he puts it out there.