Bill,
Good Morning.
"Any retaliation by Bush was justified in that the entire process with Walsh had become contaminated with politics."...Cringe. Justifiable retaliation against an independent prosecutor! Cringe. ...In addition to the timing point of Walsh's indictment I would add that Walsh had asked Bush to testify before the election and Bush asked that it be delayed until after the election...to avoid impacting the election; Walsh agreed; after the election Walsh approached Bush to testify and Bush declined....A separate question on independent prosecutor political contamination...A think the record shows that Starr determined, prior to the election, that he could find no basis of prosecution with respect to the Filegate scandal though he didn't seem any need to mention that prior to the election...no political contamination here? [And yes, I'm quite aware of Starr's response to this question]...
"And that doesn't even speak to the facts, which I believe could have easily cleared the Bush admin of any wrongdoing."....Picky point here... the charges/events were with respect to the Reagan Administration...not the Bush administration. Your statement of no wrongdoing has to be factually incorrect; at a minimum, Ollie North was guilty of perjury, under oath, in his testimony to Congress. In the larger sense, I don't see how anyone can say that the administration clearly would have been cleared; nor do I see how anyone could have said the administration clearly would have been found "guilty". The point is that the pardons precluded the ability to make that determination. Even if I were to accept that there are times where retaliation against the independent prosecutor is justified [which I do not] I would contend that the determination of guilt or innocence far outways in import that of retaliation. In principle, does one [executive] pardon individuals where no crime has been committed?
Best Regards,
Jim
Regards,
Jim |
