To avoid a showdown with the Senate Judiciary Committee, this afternoon the Justice Department finally turned over all the e-mails it has in possession that were sent or received by White House consigliere Karl Rove.
So, after all the sturm und drang of the past few months, what are the results? Pretty weak—only two e-mails sent to KRgeorgewbush.com, Rove's political account.
Both sent on the same day, February 28, 2007, they are from White House aide Jeffrey S. Jennings and include news articles about the burgeoning scandal over the fired U.S. attorneys.
Who previously got a peek at Rove's e-mails? Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the leak of Valerie Plame's name. But it turns out that Fitzgerald, ever the uptight prosecutor, only looked for documents that related to his investigation and didn't delve into the Dark Knight's catalog of horrors.
"Mr. Fitzgerald noted that his office did not obtain all of Mr. Rove's e-mails, but rather obtained access to his electronic media for the purpose of searching for documents responsive to search terms relevant to his investigation," writes Richard A. Hertling,
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General. "Only records responsive to Mr. Fitzgerald's investigative search terms were retained by his office and none of those records are responsive to the committee's subpoena. The electronic media was returned to Mr. Rove's counsel, Mr. Robert Luskin, in a sealed condition."