Tightening the Screws on "Turd Blossom"

Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove might be feeling the walls closing in on him just a little.

The Republican campaign guru has taken to friendly media outlets--Fox News, The Birmingham News--to deny that he ever sought help with "opposition research" from Alabama lawyer and whistleblower Jill Simpson.

Rove tells The Birmingham News that he has no recollection of ever meeting with, or talking to, Simpson. But in the same article, Simpson attorney Priscilla Duncan makes a statement that could be ominous for Rove:

"In her telephone records, there are calls to Rove and calls to Twinkle Andress," said Priscilla Duncan, Simpson's attorney. Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh is the former Alabama Republican Party chairwoman and now an adviser to Republican Gov. Bob Riley.

Glynn Wilson, at Locust Fork News, goes a step further in writing about documentation that supports Simpson's story:

For the record, and I’ve already indicated my willingness to testify to this, I have heard from Ms. Simpson all about her dealings directly with Karl Rove, over and over again and late into the night on the telephone on many occasions. I have seen the documents which back them up.

But Ms. Simpson and her lawyer in Montgomery are not going to release any more documents until Karl Rove and the other participants in this scandal, including assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin, are called to testify under oath. And for good reason. They have a pretty good case building up that might land some people around here in some pretty hot legal water themselves, including the new head of the Alabama Republican Party, and Mr. Franklin at the so-called Justice department down in Montgomery.

A number of Republican pundits have stated that Simpson has presented little, if any, corroborating evidence to support her story. Rove himself, in The Birmingham News, said he was frustrated that national media accounts have not pressed Simpson for proof or details of when she says she met with him and where, or what work she might have produced as a result.

But Wilson says Simpson and her attorney have decided to withhold certain documents until Rove and others are forced to testify under oath--as she has done. Sounds fair to me.

The story seems to be this: Just because Rove and his supporters haven't seen certain documents does not mean they don't exist.

Rove & Co. also seem to forget that Simpson has presented both written and oral testimony under oath and submitted herself to questioning from Congressional staffers representing both Democrats and Republicans. She also submitted herself to the scrutiny of the nation's premier broadcast news program. Rove has yet to do any of these things, and I suspect reasonable Americans must be asking themselves why that is.