Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a former U.S. attorney himself, pursued the most grueling, unrelenting and outright damning line of questioning of the day.
Whitehouse wanted an answer to a simple question. The topic was those by-now famous briefings that Karl Rove and his aides (Taylor included) gave at a number of agencies throughout the federal government. The slides from one of those briefings, given at the General Services Administration, showed that Rove’s aides had briefed officials there on which Republican Congressional candidates were in danger.
Whitehouse wanted to know: during those briefings that Taylor gave, did she mention the “names of particular candidates?”
It took about three minutes for a rambling, stuttering Taylor to admit it. Taylor didn’t want to. She talked about how the briefings were “informative,” how they were meant to “thank employees,” how they were meant to impart some knowledge about the “political landscape.” Finally, she admitted, “It’s hard to give the landscape without talking about the people who were the stars in the show.”
But she wanted to make clear: “The purpose of those briefings was to inform people, it was not to direct people.” That, of course, is the narrow distinction on which Rove has relied.