My Conversation With Mark Corallo Re: Leopold on Rove
Karl Rove's spokesman, Mark Corallo, called me at 8:20 a.m. Mountain Time today. He said someone had read him my post over the phone about my conversation with Jason Leopold (and he had picked up my voice-mail from Saturday night) and he wanted to respond. Here is Mr. Corallo's version:
1. He has never spoken with someone identifying himself as "Jason Leopold." He did have conversations Saturday and Sunday along the lines I described, but the caller identified himself as Joel something or other from the Londay Sunday Times. The calls were to his home number. At one point during their last conversation, he offered to call Joel back, and was given a cell phone number that began with 917. When he called the number back, it turned out not to be be a number for Joel.
2. Josh Gerstein and Byron York called him, not the other way around.
3. There was no meeting or communication between Luskin and Fitzgerald on Friday. Bob was not in the office on Friday at all. He was home, taking care of a sick cat.
4. Karl Rove did not tell the President he would resign.
5. Karl Rove has not been indicted nor told he would be indicted. As far as Corallo knows (and he is in contact with Luskin) Fitzgerald has not yet made up his mind as to whether to charge Rove. There are no charges.
6. He says there is not an ounce of truth to anything Jason wrote. He says he made it up. He also denies that Jason left him a message before the article ran.
7. He has received calls from the major papers on this and denied the story to all of them.
Mr. Corallo's tone was not angry. He was friendly and seemed sincere. If anything, he sounded somewhat bewildered and incredulous at how Jason could have written his article.
So, there you have it. A full and complete official Camp Rove denial of everything in Jason's article.
Now we wait and see. Jason has said if the story is false, he will publicly disclose his sources.
Mr. Corallo gave me his cell phone number for future questions. I asked him how late I could call him and he said up to 11 pm was fine for routine matters and any time if it was breaking news.
Update 4:30 pm: More from Mark Carallo:
The reason we were so "hot to dismiss a relatively unknown reporter writing for an online lefty journal," is because he caused real journalists to waste their time all weekend calling me (and in turn wasting my time) - that's right, every major network and newspaper called me and/or Bob Luskin starting on Friday morning and not ending until late last night;
....I got a call today from the real Joel Loria of the Sunday Times. ... you could call him and he will tell you that he had dinner with our Mr. Leopold last week.
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