Fitzgerald Re-Interviews Adam Levine About Rove

By Jeralyn, Section Valerie Plame Leak Case
Posted on Wed Oct 26, 2005 at 11:49:35 PM EST
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On February 11, 2004, Newsday (quoted at length here) reported that former White House Press Aide Adam Levine testified before the Plame grand jury for 45 minutes on Friday, February 6. The paper also reported:

In the grand jury sessions, press aides were confronted with internal White House documents, mainly e-mails and telephone logs, between White House aides and reporters and questioned about conversations with reporters, according to sources and reports.

Levine's lawyer, Dan French, has confirmed for the Washington Post that Levine was interviewed again Tuesday by a member of Fitzgerald's legal team regarding a July 11 conversation Levine had with Rove. This is the same date that Rove and Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper spoke - in a conversation that Rove apparently didn't recall during his initial questioning by FBI investigators or before the grand jury. The Rove-Cooper conversation is the one Fitzgerald reportedly is examining in deciding whether to charge Rove with perjury.

Peter Zeidenberg, a Justice Department prosecutor working with Fitzgerald, called Levine that day to discuss a conversation Levine had with Rove on July 11, 2003, the day Rove spoke with Cooper, according to Daniel J. French, Levine's lawyer.

Levine, part of the White House communications team at the time of the leak, "was contacted as a witness," French said. Levine told Zeidenberg that he and Rove did not discuss Cooper in that conversation, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

It sounds like Rove is desperately trying to avoid a perjury charge and Fitzgerald is trying to give him every benefit of the doubt by satisfying himself that there are no witnesses, only the lone e-mail to Hadley, referring to Rove's talk with Cooper. Then he might accept that Rove simply forgot, as Rove reportedly later told the grand jury.

Yesterday I speculated that Fitzgerald might consider a recantation defense for Rove on any perjury charge, under the grand jury perjury statute 18 U.S.C. 1623(d).

(d) Where, in the same continuous court or grand jury proceeding in which a declaration is made, the person making the declaration admits such declaration to be false, such admission shall bar prosecution under this section if, at the time the admission is made, the declaration has not subst