Salon Interviews Truthout Re: Partial Apology Over Rove Article

So is Truthout saying that Jason Leopold's reporting was wrong? We put that question to Ash this morning, and his answer seemed to be a pretty unequivocal no. Although Rove's lawyer and his spokesman have both said that Leopold's story was false, Ash said that Truthout still believes that Patrick Fitzgerald, Karl Rove and Rove lawyer Robert Luskin participated in a 15-hour plea-negotiation session at Patton Boggs last Friday; that Fitzgerald gave Rove's lawyers a copy of an indictment charging Rove with perjury and lying to investigators; and that Fitzgerald told Rove's lawyers that their client had 24 hours -- or 24 business hours -- to get his affairs in order.

So why apologize for the story? Leopold's story quoted "sources close to the case" who predicted an indictment announcement last week, and Ash told us this morning that Truthout "hoped and felt strongly" that Fitzgerald would announce Rove's indictment on Friday. That it didn't happen was a cause for concern, Ash said.

In addition, Ash said that he's uncertain about some of the events leading up to and following the meeting that supposedly happened last Friday at Patton Boggs. Ash said he isn't sure now when the grand jury voted to indict Rove, although he said he remains confident that it did so before last Friday. He said that he isn't sure what's going on now to warrant keeping the alleged indictment under wraps, although he suggested that it must mean that Rove's team is cooperating with Fitzgerald somehow.

Finally, Ash said that "there are people whose life was made inconvenient by our story," and that "not all of them are Karl Rove or people beholden to Karl Rove." Who are they? "I can't tell you any more than that," Ash said. Is one of them Leopold? "You're making my life complicated now," Ash said.

I talked a little bit about legal questions that I had on this in comments the other day, but I wanted to reiterate one in particular here: when you have a "sealed indictment," it is sealed — as in not publicly available — for a reason. We used them a lot in drug conspiracy cases, where you had evidence of lower level people but were still working the investigation up the chain, and you would indict a lower level dealer when you had evidence on them, seal the indictment so as not to tip off higher level dealer/distributors, and then unseal the entire batch of indictments if and when you completed the investigation or you had to make an arrest on someone you thought was going to flee the jurisdiction.

Once you talk about an indictment that is under seal with anyone, you break that seal and the information contained within the indictment can become public. Which, frankly, defeats the whole point of having a sealed indictment in the first place.