The crafty ways of our man, Robert “Gold Bars” Luskin, lawyer for tadpole-on-deck Karl Rove.
As we noted a short time ago, the AP is now reporting that Karl Rove has availed himself of a last-minute and seemingly last ditch effort to avoid indictment.
Yesterday Luskin cut some blood loose in the water when he refused to deny that Rove had received a ‘target letter’. In the past, Luskin had quite volubly insisted that Patrick Fitzgerald had assured him that Rove was not a target. But no more.
Today he told the AP: “I can say categorically that Karl has not received a target letter from the special counsel. The special counsel has confirmed that he has not made any charging decisions in respect to Karl.”
Here Luskin appears to be availing himself of the transitive property of hyper-parsification. To any reasonable person Luskin’s statement should settle the matter of whether Rove is a target. But Luskin’s own record of slithery parsification forces us to assume that these words are carefully chosen to conceal rather than elucidate. If you come from the con interp world, think of this as the journalists’ version of ‘strict scrutiny’ which is called for in the case of a bamboozler like Luskin.
With that in mind, Luskin’s second sentence means nothing. Being a target may mean you’re likely to get indicted. But it doesn’t mean that the prosecutor has decided that in fact you will be indicted. So that’s just a showy statement that means nothing. Then there’s the matter of the letter. Karl hasn’t gotten one. Luskin earlier approach was to say that Fitzgerald had assured him that Rove was ‘not a target’. Now we’re hung up on the letter.
Can you be notified that you’re a target in any way beside a letter? I really don’t know. But it’s hard to see where a prosecutor wouldn’t cross every t and dot every i in a case of such import.
