MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell, who broke the news Friday that notes taken by Time magazine's Matthew Cooper indictate that top Bush adviser Karl Rove leaked the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak, said Sunday it's likely that Rove broke no laws.
But even if Rove was behind the disclosure, it doesn't mean he broke any law, he argued.
"[Luskin] is insisting that Karl Rove did not commit a crime," O'Donnell told Drudge. "That may very well be the case."
The MSNBC talker said he had studied extensively the statute allegedly broken in the Plame case, concluding that is "a very difficult statute to violate."
For one thing, he said, "Perhaps [Plame] really wasn't a covert agent - doesn't fit the statute's definition of covert agent. I think that's possible."
Another factor that could mitigate allegations of an illegal disclosure, said O'Donnell, was that whoever revealed Plame's identity "would have had to intentionally disclose it knowing that the CIA is trying to hide it."
"Karl Rove may not have known that," he added.
If indeed Rove was behind the disclosure, "All [of the above] would add up to the fact that no crime was committed in the transmission of this information by Rove to Cooper," O'Donnell said.
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