Daily Inspiration Quote by Robert Luskin

Legal language at its most careful can read like a lullaby: soothing, repetitive, designed to calm an audience without promising them anything. Robert Luskin, speaking as Karl Rove's lawyer during the Bush-era special counsel probe, builds a sentence that looks like reassurance while quietly protecting every possible exit ramp.

Start with the double negative of institutional distance: "has not advised" and "target of the investigation". In prosecutorial parlance, "not a target" is not the same as "not in trouble". It's a status label, revocable at will, and Luskin knows the public hears it as exoneration. The intent is reputational triage: keep Rove in the realm of normal politics, not criminal jeopardy, long enough for the news cycle to move on.

Then comes the second clause, a master class in strategic ambiguity: the counsel "affirmed" he has "made no decision concerning charges". That doesn't mean charges aren't coming; it means the decision hasn't been announced or finalized, and Luskin isn't going to box the prosecutor into a future contradiction. The phrase also signals process, not outcome: the machinery is still running, so don't treat today's headlines as a verdict.

The subtext is aimed less at the courtroom than at Washington's informal court of legitimacy. If you can keep your client out of the word "target", you keep donors, allies, and party infrastructure from fleeing. It's not innocence being asserted; it's uncertainty being weaponized, with the lawyer translating "we don't know yet" into "there's nothing to see here" while leaving himself legally clean when "yet" flips.