Hmmm…I wonder why he’d be doing something like this?

Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer’s leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won’t be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

The persons, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, said Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not made any decision yet on whether to file criminal charges against the longtime confidant of President Bush or others.

It looks like the President’s consigliere is looking to squeal :

Fitzgerald does not have to send Rove or anyone else a target letter before indicting him. The only reason to send target letters now is that Fitzgerald believes one or more of his targets will flip and become a prosecution witness at the pre-indictment stage. A veteran prosecutor told me, “If Fitzgerald is sending target letters at the end of his investigation, those are just invitations to come in and work out a deal.”

Prosecutors prefer pre-indictment plea bargaining to post-indictment because they have more to offer you, like not being indicted at all or downgrading your status to unindicted co-conspirator. And pre-indictment plea bargaining can greatly enrich the indictments that the prosecutor then obtains. If, for example, Fitzgerald has a weak case against, say, Scooter Libby, imagine how much Rove’s cooperation might strengthen that case.

Perhaps we should start referring to Turdblossom as “Karl the Bull”.

“Please, don’t send me to jail!!”

Firedoglake has a great rundown of the charges that could show up in the possible indictments. Having been repeatedly disappointed over the past few years every time the Bush Administration was about to get what’s coming to them (9/11 investigations, congressional torture inquiry, missing WMD reports, last year’s election, etc.), I’m setting my expectations very low. I’d love to see the President and VP get tarred with the “unindicted co-conspirator” label or worse, I still think we’d be lucky to get any indictments at this point. Not that I’m doubting the evidence, but that I’m weary of getting burned again.