… is out of the grand jury after reportedly spending 4 hours answering questions. This underscores that there’s a lot going on here that we just do not know about – because the special prosecutor, appropriately, has not allowed his office to leak investigative information. (Disclosure: the special prosecutor is a close friend of mine – and he ain’t leakin’ to me either.) The media is obsessing over the Rove/Cooper angle because that’s a piece of information reporters are aware of. But this is the classic mistake of assuming that what exists is just what you know about.

The reporting continues to be horrible. This excerpt from an AP report this afternoon, is typical: “It was likely Rove’s final chance to convince grand jurors he did nothing criminal in the leak case. Prosecutors have warned the architect of President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign that there is no guarantee he will not be indicted.”

That is not news reporting; it is opinion (actually, wishful thinking) presented as news reporting. So far as we know, no one who is a subject of this investigation has a guarantee that he will not be indicted. The fact that Rove, too, doesn’t have one is unremarkable.

The MSM has seized on the fact that the special prosecutor expressly advised Rove that he had no guarantees. But on the facts before us, that doesn’t necessarily suggest Rove is in difficulty. Rove offered to testify – this appearance was not the result of a subpoena. In that scenario, the prosecutor was essentially obliged to make sure Rove was on notice that he had no guarantees – i.e., that volunteering does not give you immunity. When a witness offers to do something he doesn’t have to do, it is standard procedure for a prosecutor to advise him that he is doing it at his peril. (Miranda warnings, for example, are often given to interviewees who are not under arrest; the law doesn’t require it but prosecutors do it anyway.)

More to the point, neither AP nor any other media source has a clue whether the grand jury was leaning toward indicting Rove unless he talked them out of it in his testimony today. To the contrary, what we have heard is that the special prosecutor has told Rove’s lawyer that Rove is not a target – which actually argues against the likelihood that the grand jury is leaning toward indicting Rove.