President Bush on Tuesday would not rule out a pardon for White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, although he said a jury’s guilty verdict against Libby for perjury “should stand.”
A pardon would not nullify’s Libby’s conviction, but it would remove its practical effects — for example, prohibitions in many jurisdictions against voting or practicing law.
“As to the future, I rule nothing in and nothing out,” Bush told a reporter who asked about a possible pardon.
The president’s remarks came one day after he wiped away Libby’s 30-month prison sentence, while leaving in place a $250,000 fine and a two-year probation. Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was convicted in March of lying to investigators probing the 2003 disclosure of a CIA employee’s identity.
“I made a decision that would commute his sentence, but leave in place a serious fine and probation,” Bush told reporters after visiting wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. “I felt like the 30-month sentencing was severe.”
Bush’s decision outraged liberals who advocated prison time and miffed some conservatives who wanted an outright pardon. But it at least partially assuaged many Republicans who noted there was no underlying crime in the disclosure of CIA employee Valerie Plame’s name.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, who is running for president, said the commutation proves that “cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice” in the Bush administration.
She made the statement while campaigning with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who once said pardons and commutations were justified if a president believed “a sentence was excessive or unjust.”
The former president made the remarks in 2001, after being widely criticized for pardoning fugitive financier Marc Rich, who in 1983 was charged by U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani with tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran.
On Tuesday, Bush was unapologetic about commuting Libby’s sentence.
“I considered his background, his service to the country, as well as the jury verdict,” he said. “And I made a judgment, a considered judgment, that I believe is the right decision to make in this case. I stand by it.”
