-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: March 8, 2007 2:21:13 PM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: If Bush Pardons Libby, He Commits a Crime -- Would
Exemplify "Rule by Fiat"
MSNBC.com
Scooter Libby's Pardon Problem:
President Bush may well pardon Scooter Libby but he’d have to
[violate] Department of Justice guidelines in order to do it
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek, March 7, 2007
March 7, 2007 - The pardon campaign began almost immediately. No
sooner had word come down in federal court that I. Lewis (Scooter)
Libby had been convicted on four felony counts than conservative
allies began pressuring President Bush to step in and effectively
overturn the verdict. The National Review Online was first off the
block, publishing a “Pardon Libby” editorial barely two hours after
the verdict was announced; the piece denounced the entire CIA-leak
case as a “travesty” and the product of “media scandal-mongering.”
The Wall Street Journal followed suit Wednesday, saying Bush
shouldn’t even wait for Libby to file his appeal. “The time for a
pardon is now,” the Journal declared. (The Web site of the Libby
Defense Trust, www.scooterlibby.com, linked to those and other
editorials calling for a pardon Wednesday.)
But there’s one significant roadblock on the path to Libby’s
salvation: Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff does
not qualify to even be considered for a presidential pardon under
Justice Department guidelines.
From the day he took office, Bush seems to have followed those
guidelines religiously. He's taken an exceedingly stingy approach
to pardons, granting only 113 in six years, mostly for relatively
minor fraud, embezzlement and drug cases dating back more than two
decades. Bush’s pardons are “fewer than any president in 100
years,” according to Margaret Love, pardon attorney at the Justice
Department.
Following the furor over President Bill Clinton’s last-minute
pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich (among others), Bush made it
clear he wasn’t interested in granting many pardons. “We were
basically told [by then White House counsel and now Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales] that there weren’t going to be pardons—
or if there were, there would be very few,” recalls one former
White House lawyer who asked not to be identified talking about
internal matters.
The president has since indicated he intended to go by the book in
granting what few pardons he’d hand out—considering only requests
that had first been reviewed by the Justice Department under a
series of publicly available guidelines.
Those regulations, discussed on the Justice Department Web site at
www.usdoj.gov/pardon, would seem to make a Libby pardon a
nonstarter in George W. Bush’s White House. They “require a
petitioner to wait a period of at least five years after conviction
or release from confinement (whichever is later) before filing a
pardon application,” according to the Justice Web site.
Moreover, in weighing whether to recommend a pardon, U.S. attorneys
are supposed to consider whether an applicant is remorseful. “The
extent to which a petitioner has accepted responsibility for his or
her criminal conduct and made restitution to ... victims are
important considerations. A petitioner should be genuinely desirous
of forgiveness rather than vindication,” the Justice Web site states.
Of course, there is nothing that requires Bush to follow these
guidelines in reviewing a pardon for Libby (whose lawyer, Ted
Wells, stated on the courthouse steps Tuesday that he intended to
push for a retrial, adding that he has “every confidence that Mr.
Libby will be vindicated.”)
As Love, the former pardon attorney, points out, “the president can
do whatever he wants.”
Both Clinton and Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush (who
pardoned Casper Weinberger among other Iran-contra figures), bear
that out.
Still, Bush himself publicly reaffirmed his determination to stick
to the Justice pardon guidelines as recently as last month. In a
Feb. 1 interview with Fox News anchor Neal Cavuto, Bush was asked
about whether he would pardon Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, two
former U.S. Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a Mexican
drug dealer who was fleeing across the border into Mexico. Their
case has become a cause celebre for many conservatives and anti-
immigrant activists who believe it symbolizes the federal
government’s lack of aggressive enforcement of border controls.
Fueled by CNN immigration critic Lou Dobbs and Colorado Republican
Rep. Tom Tancredo, supporters of the two former agents have been
flooding the White House with e-mails and phone calls seeking
pardons for Ramos and Compean.
Bush’s response in Cavuto’s inquiry was telling. He repeatedly
pointed to the Justice Department pardon process to explain how he
would make his decision.
“You know, I get asked about pardons on a lot of different cases.
And there’s a procedure in place,” he said at first. When Bush
added that he has been telling members of Congress who have
contacted him about the matter to “look at the facts in the case,”
Cavuto followed up: “So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying … there is a process in any case for a president to
make a pardon decisions. In other words, there is a series of steps
that are followed, so that the pardon process is, you know, a
rational process,” the president answered.
Doug Berman, a Ohio State University law professor who specializes
in pardons, said the president may have just been pointing to the
Justice Department process as a way to “avoid responsibility” for
the political flap over the Border Patrol agents’ case.
But Bush has always used his pardon power sparingly—dating back to
his days in the Texas governor’s mansion. In 1998, Bush came under
enormous political pressure to commute the death sentence of Karla
Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who had a well-publicized
conversion to Christianity. But despite pleas from conservative
evangelist Pat Robertson, Pope John Paul II and many others, Bush
refused to save her life, and Tucker became the first woman
executed in Texas since the Civil War.
None of this means that, in the last days of his presidency, Bush
won’t feel differently about Libby (who ironically once worked as a
lawyer for Marc Rich in an earlier effort to win him a pardon).
Libby's supporters will argue forcefully that he was unjustly
prosecuted and others, like former deputy secretary of State
Richard Armitage (who first leaked Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity
to columnist Richard Novak) were more culpable and should have been
charged. Cheney—who once praised Libby as “one of the most capable
and talented individuals I have ever known”—may well make a
personal plea to the president.
But for now, one intriguing clue as to White House thinking came
from a well-known Washington lobbyist and White House ally who was
steering reporters away from the pardon idea this week. “The
guidance I get is Libby doesn’t qualify under the guidelines,” the
lobbyist, who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive
matters, told a reporter in a TV “green room” this week. The
lobbyist wouldn’t say who provided the guidance. But the fine print
of the Justice Department guidelines may prove the toughest barrier
for Libby to overcome.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17507199/site/newsweek/
© 2007 MSNBC.com
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