National Security Advisor John Bolton has barely been working in the West Wing for a week, but already his influence is being strongly felt.
In addition to pushing out a handful of security advisors who had been brought in either by his predecessor, HR McMaster or former President Barack Obama, Bolton has apparently convinced President Trump to consider issuing a full pardon to I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby – who famously took the fall for the Valerie Plame scandal following an investigation by a special prosecutor who many of Libby’s allies have accused of overreaching (sound familiar?).
Libby was convicted on four felony counts in 2007 for perjury before a grand jury, lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice. George W Bush commuted Libby’s 30-month prison sentence, but refused to offer a full pardon – a decision that strained Bush’s relationship with his Vice President, Dick Cheney, per the New York Times.
Pardoning Libby has long been a priority for conservatives – particularly the neoconservatives like Bolton who helped push the War in Iraq on the American people. Though such a pardon would put Trump in a potentially awkward position: Absolving one of the chief architects of the War in Iraq.
Some of the president’s critics have accused him of considering the Libby pardon to send a message to Manafort and other Trump associates who’ve been indicted by Mueller: If you stay loyal and refuse to turn on your boss, you will be protected.
Libby, who was not the first person to disclose Plame’s identity to reporters, has long insisted that his conviction stemmed from an innocent discrepancy between his memory and the memories of other witnesses.
The Plame leak, which ultimately set in motion the events that would lead to Libby’s conviction, was purportedly a response to Plame’s husband, diplomat Joe Wilson, who had published an op-ed in the New York Times suggesting that Vice President Dick Cheney had ignored evidence that contradicted the administration’s view that Saddam Hussein possessed a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Libby’s prosecution became a symbol of the polarizing politics of the Iraq war during the Bush administration. Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, was a former diplomat who wrote an op-ed article in The New York Times in 2003 implying that Mr. Cheney ignored evidence that argued against the conclusion that Iraq was actively seeking to build nuclear weapons.
To undercut Mr. Wilson’s criticism, administration officials told reporters that he had been sent on a fact-finding mission to Niger because his wife worked for the C.I.A., not at the behest of Mr. Cheney. But federal law bars the disclosure of the identities of C.I.A. officials in certain circumstances and the leak prompted a special prosecutor investigation.
Charged with lying to investigators about his interactions with journalists, Mr. Libby insisted he simply remembered events differently. But his version of events clashed with the testimony of eight other people, including fellow administration officials, and a jury convicted him. Mr. Bush decided that the prison sentence was “excessive,” but he said he would not substitute his judgment for that of the jury when it came to the question of Mr. Libby’s guilt.
Libby’s defenders have argued that the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, overstepped by prosecuting Libby, who was not the first administration official to reveal Wilson’s true identity to a reporter.
Mr. Libby’s advocates argued that Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, went too far because he had already discovered that the first administration official to disclose Ms. Wilson’s identity to a journalist was Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state in Mr. Bush’s first term, who was not charged. They also argued that Ms. Wilson was not undercover at the time and her employment was well known. Ms. Wilson has denied that she recommended her husband for the mission to Niger and said her career as a C.I.A. official was “over in an instant” once her identity was leaked.
While Libby served no jail time, New York Times reporter Judith Miller ultimately served nearly three months in prison for refusing to give up Libby’s identity to investigators.
The case tested the limits of journalistic independence. Judith Miller, then a reporter for The Times, went to prison for 85 days rather than disclose that Mr. Libby had discussed Ms. Wilson with her. She was freed after Mr. Libby released her from any promise of confidentiality.
The issue became a major point of contention between Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney in the last days of the administration in late 2008 and early 2009. Mr. Cheney repeatedly pressed Mr. Bush to go beyond his commutation and issue a full pardon, bringing it up so often that the president grew irritated by the matter.
Contrary to the popular perception, President Trump has actually been very judicious with the use of his pardon power. As the NYT points out, Trump has issues only two pardons and commuted one sentence in nearly 15 months in office. That’s roughly in line with his predecessors, Barack Obama, Bush and Bill Clinton.
via RSS https://ift.tt/2qttvhJ Tyler Durden