Commutation Now, Pardon Later

""I hope it puts pressure on the president. He's a man of pronounced loyalties and he should have loyalty to Scooter Libby," said former Ambassador Richard Carlson, a member of Libby's defense fund. "It would be a travesty for him to go off to prison. The president will take some heat for it. So what? He takes heat for everything.""  Yahoo

---------------------------------------------------------------

This gets President Bush off the hook for now.  He will pardon Libby, nullifying the felony and fine just before he leaves office.  The pressure must have been severe.  pl

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070702/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_leak_trial

Comments

[Matthew]

Col: It's not like Libby lied about sex. Now that is serious.....

[lina]

A jailed Scooter might make friends with the prosecutor who has never officially closed this case. Libby knows too much about the crimes of this White House to ever spend a minute behind bars.

[steve]

Rather artfully done from Bush's standpoint.

The president splits the baby with a commutation, and avoids the political heat with a pardon in January, 2009.

[avedis]

"The pressure must have been severe. pl"

Ah...but from whom exactly. The answer to that question would potentially be revealing concerning larger and more important issues.

[Arun]

If you are in HUMINT, don't let your spouse annoy the President.

[J]

Colonel,

here's bush's proclamation of his commutation of libby's sentence.

http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/gwbush/libby70207clemency.html

[JfM]

When there is no shame, much more is possible.

[Leila A.]

Guess they're worried Libby might squeal on the higher ups. The Family takes care of its own; rewards loyalty and all that.

I don't know why anybody thinks these guys are any better than a pack of gangsters. They have all the honor of thieves. And they can command whole armies, with thousands of lives snuffed out at their whim. Gangsters look good compared to this crowd in the White House.

If it's a comedy it's the blackest darkest tragicomedy ever made. Rent Juliette Tamor's Titus Andronicus. That's the kind of comedy it is. Bah.

[zanzibar]

Commutation still allows Libby to invoke the 5th - keeps Libby silent and prevents any accountability or justice. If ever there was a case of obstruction of justice at the highest levels here is one.

An example to all the co-conspirators - keep silent and/or lie - you will be taken care of. Justice is for the little people. Cheney must be enjoying that cigar.

[Cold War Zoomie]

So, Colonel.

Do I win the prediction bet?

He technically hasn't been pardoned. I didn't see this option, though.

[jang]

Sounds like Bush has become "My Pet Goat" in 6 short years.

[mlaw230]

Artful it is. The commutation leaves Libby's appeals in place, and his 5th Amendment right to remain silent. Had he been pardoned outright, as he surely will be sometime in December 2008, he could be called to testify before Congress or in civil matters, and have to answer.

The question that remains is whether this constitutes obstruction of justice.

[TR Stone]

God told George personally to pardon Scooter!

[Montag]

Reminds me of the tale of the "Sin Eater." In Medieval times the rich would pay a poor man to eat food from around a newly dead corpse, thus eating the dead man's sins, so that the dearly departed could go to Heaven, no matter how wicked he'd been in life. The trouble was that the Sin Eater would accumulate the sins of his customers, so that his son would have to perform the same service for him when he died, or he'd be doomed to eternal damnation many times over.

Now Bush has eaten Scooter's sins and must hope that the incoming President will be his Sin Eater in turn, by pardoning him. It sure would be a pity if the system broke down somewhere along the line now, wouldn't it?

[robt willmann]

The commutation of part or all of a person's sentence in a federal criminal case nullifies the execution of that part of the sentence specified in the commutation, and the finding of guilt remains intact, as has been noted in news reports today.

Something else this disgusting move by Bush jr and the White House does is to allow Irving Lewis Libby, Jr. to assert his 5th Amendment right to remain silent as long as his appeal has not been decided. With the appeal of his conviction going
forward, the judgment signed by the Court is not legally "final". Thus, if Libby is called before Congress or elsewhere to talk about the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson's line of work and the
destruction of any intelligence gathering networks she may have been involved in, he can still refuse to answer. Had he been pardoned, which would have
wiped out the finding of guilt, he could not "take the 5th". Since the appeal will take a while, his testimony cannot be compelled during that time. If the court of appeals reverses his conviction and sends the case back for a new trial, his right to remain silent continues, because the case would be back to square one.

I agree that there is a pretty high probability that Bush jr will pardon Libby before leaving office. However, to do so, he will have to contradict his "statement" of today (written for him by somebody) in which he says, "I respect the jury's verdict". If he issues a pardon, he will "disrespect" the jury's verdict.

It has never been shown, to my knowledge, that Bush jr had no role in disclosing Valerie Plame Wilson's occupation. Thus, this could be a situation in which there was no pressure on the president to help Libby. He planned to all along because he was right in the middle of the vicious deed.

And the Richard Carlson of Libby's defense fund mentioned in that article is the father of Tucker Carlson, who has a television show (MSNBC) named after him and who has been attacking the prosecution of the liar Libby.

[Michael]

I'd love to say this decision caught me off guard, but with this administration in power I'm sad to say nothing they do, nor will do suprises me. Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, lying, corruption.. its sickening. I just hope the people of the United States look up from their TV's long enough to care about what's happening to their country.. and make some major changes soon..

ugh.

[Comment]

Scooter's future pardon is contingent on Team Scooter's behaving well and not dumping on Bush - or tattling.

Gee Dubs is instinctually excellent at this game - He tries to keep people in the tent pissing out, rather than outside the tent pissing in.

Poppy was not as clever at this type of politics.

[Pony]

We're still a nation of laws, right?

[Ben]

What's next? How would Mr. Bush thinks of his legacy? He purged the ghost of his father being one term presidetn, yet he put himself in a position of bleeding America dry.

[ked]

With E Howard Hunt now dead, who's going to deliver the $250k?

[robt willmann]

ked asks a good and funny one-- "With E. Howard Hunt now dead, who's going to deliver the $250k?" Answer: Probably Marc Rich, former (or current) client of Lewis Libby, and former (or current) Mossad agent, and former (and current) beneficiary of a pardon from Hillary Clinton's husband.

[John Shreffler]

The entire Libby case is OT. The real story is that briefing yesterday in Baghdad about al-Quds, Hizbullah and the Karbala attack last January. We're about to bomb Iran, folks. Libby is small potatoes.

[taters]

Commuter looked out for the Shooter, hence the commute for Scooter.
I agree with your assessment regarding the pardon, Col. Lang.

[Nicholas Weaver]

"God told George personally to pardon Scooter!"

Correction, Cheney's voice on the intercom...

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43189

[meletius]

If this doe not spark a national effort to repeal the president's constitutional power to pardon, nothing will. This "power" is simply nothing but a recipe for political abuse. It certainly has not historically been used to dispense justice (its supposed rationale), especially under a corrupt Repub "president".

This particular exercise of the power is an unprecedented abuse.

First, the supposedly "excessive" sentence was within the sentencing guidelines, used by courts around the country every day--as Fitzgerald acidly observed in his response to Bush's "excessive" lie.

Second, if Bush agreed with the verdict, (which is his story), but not the sentence, he should have let Libby serve whatever portion of sentence he thought "fair" and commuted the rest, right? That this was not done speaks volumes as to the real motive behind the commutation.

Finally, Bush (and Cheney) had a clear conflict of interest in protecting his own WH advisor who had committed perjury in order to protect Bushco. This is an outrageous abuse of the pardon power.

Impeach Cheney.