Karl Rove is getting more creative — and less convincing — with his non-denial denials about the politicization of prosecutions over at the Justice Department.
Asked directly by ABC’s George Stephanopolus on Sunday whether he spoke at all with the DOJ officials about the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman for corruption, Rove stammered and repeated the phrase: “I found out about Don Siegelman’s indictment by reading about it in the newspaper.”
The question’s been nagging Rove for a year now, and will probably continue to since the House issued a subpoena last week ordering him to testify on Capitol Hill. House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) rejected Rove’s proposal to submit a written statement to the committee. The White House asserts that executive privilege bars Rove from having to testify.
The question from Stephanopolus was more direct than he’s faced in the past. But Rove has issued vague, strangely worded, lawyerly specific answers to essentially the same question before.
About one year ago, when he was first accused of pushing for Siegelman’s prosecution, he could only refute the specific detail of an individual conversation he allegedly had with Alabama officials.
“I know nothing about any phone call,” Rove told reporters in Alabama in June 2007, before a White House press aide intervened and said, “What he meant to say was that he has no comment.”