Republicans Could Push for a Pardon
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By JOHN D. MCKINNON, GARY FIELDS and EVAN PEREZ
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 6, 2007 1:25 p.m.
WASHINGTON -- The conviction of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on four of five counts is likely to prompt influential Republicans to push for a presidential pardon since they see the former aide as a victim of prosecutorial excess.
But a pardon for Mr. Libby would create a fearsome political backlash against the White House just as Congress is gearing up to hold hearings on the administration's use of intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion.
Further complicating the prospects for a pardon: President Bush's has rarely exercised his pardoning authority and has done so mostly for non-controversial cases. With just under two years left in office Mr. Bush has pardoned 113 people. Among the seven presidents who have held the office at least seven years since 1897, Mr. Bush ranks last in his use of the pardon power in the first six years of his administration.
Democrats today were already putting pressure to ensure Mr. Libby wouldn't be pardoned. In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it's "about time someone in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics" and urged President Bush to "pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct."
Mr. Libby was convicted today of obstruction of justice, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation that originated from the leak into the identity of a CIA operative.
The Libby case started with a Justice Department investigation into the leaking to the press of the identity of a former CIA official, which can be a crime. To avoid charges of political interference, the Justice Department tapped Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago and a highly respected career prosecutor, as the special prosecutor in charge of the probe.
Mr. Fitzgerald, though, never charged anyone with leaking the identity of Valerie Plame, the former CIA operative, and it now turns out he knew the original leaker's identity early on in the investigation.
The best hope for Mr. Libby, who is now scheduled to be sentenced on June 5, is an appeal or a presidential pardon. The appeal is likely to be based on decisions by U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton to disallow expert testimony and other evidence that defense attorneys thought helped explain Mr. Libby's faulty memory defense.
Presidential pardons of well-known figures can be particularly controversial -- as Mr. Libby knows from personal experience. President Clinton came under fierce criticism for pardoning fugitive financier Marc Rich just before leaving office in 2001. In a historical oddity, Mr. Rich was represented at one point by none other than Mr. Libby, then a high-powered Washington lawyer in private practice.
In making their case for a pardon, supporters of Mr. Libby note that several other administration officials were involved in the leak as well. The original leaker was Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, and political strategist Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary, also peddled information about Ms. Plame to reporters.
Under such circumstances, a pardon of Mr. Libby is appropriate, they say, to counter the effects of prosecutorial overkill.
The prosecution of Mr. Libby aroused sympathy from prominent conservatives, including former Bush adviser Mary Matalin, former Secretary of Education William Bennett, and former CIA director R. James Woolsey, who lent their name to a private fundraising trust that has so far has brought in more than $3 million to help pay for his defense.
Mr. Libby's handling of himself during his ordeal also is sure to score points with conservatives, as well as the White House. Mr. Libby could have done much more during the trial to embarrass the White House. At one point in his opening argument, Ted Wells, one of Mr. Libby's attorneys, suggested the defense would focus on how the White House had tried to make Mr. Libby a scapegoat in the case in order to spare political strategist Karl Rove.
In the end, however, the defense rested without calling Mr. Libby or his former boss Mr. Cheney, and no more was said about White House scapegoating. That led some trial watchers to suggest that Mr. Libby was being careful to preserve the pardon option.
Despite Mr. Wells's aggressive opening statement, "he didn't go down that road during the trial," said Margaret Colgate Love, a former pardon attorney with the Justice Department. "I think that was probably a word to the wise."
With his conviction, Mr. Libby's fate now may depend on the presidential pardoning authority that the Constitution grants President Bush. It is a power he has used sparingly in his first six years in office, and only in non-controversial cases.
Among the 19 presidents who have held the office since 1897, only Mr. Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, pardoned fewer people overall and the elder Bush served only one term. Even Warren G. Harding, who died after 27 months in office, pardoned 300 people and Gerald Ford, who served 29 months, granted 382 pardons, including 147 in his first year.
Mr. Bush came into office amid congressional hearings and a federal investigation of Mr. Clinton's last-minute pardons and commutations, including one to Mr. Rich that was arranged by his ex-wife, a major Democratic campaign contributor. During his first presidential news conference, on Feb. 22, 2001, Mr. Bush said he would be different. Of pardons, he said: "I'll have the highest of high standards."
While it is easy to attribute Mr. Bush's few pardons to the backlash from Mr. Clinton's final performance, Mr. Bush wasn't pardon-happy when he was governor of Texas either. He moved into the Texas governor's mansion in 1995 after a campaign in which he said he would "end early release of criminals." The 18 clemency grants he issued as governor made him the most parsimonious governor of Texas since 1947; Ann Richards granted 70. Even the last Republican to hold the office before Mr. Bush, Bill Clements, used the power 822 times.
The Libby prosecution has drawn parallels to the Iran-Contra affair. The president father, George H.W. Bush, pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others because what they did was out of service to the country. "That was really a vindication of his political people. They were doing their job to protect the presidency," said Ms. Love. "This case is not as serious but there is a similar premise for issuing a pardon."
The charge, while a federal one, isn't likely to bring a great deal of prison time. Defendants in similar situations are routinely allowed to remain free on bond while their appeals are pending. For Mr. Libby, that could delay the beginning of his sentence for months and push the need for a decision back to the end of Mr. Bush's tenure when a pardon would reduce the political fallout. |
