Six more pardon days left for Bush

posted at 9:50 am on January 14, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Byron York checks his calendar and wonders when George Bush will use his pardon power to grant clemency to Scooter Libby.  Bush has until the morning of January 20th to issue any executive grants of pardon or commutation, and thus far, he hasn’t shown much inclination to change the conservative approach he’s taken over the last eight years.  Can we expect a Clintonesque flurry of last-minute actions, or has Bush done all he plans?

The president has less than a week left to pardon Libby, whose jail sentence Bush commuted in 2007. (Libby still paid a $250,000 fine.) But even though it’s the president’s power alone to pardon, all eyes are on Vice President Cheney, Libby’s old boss. People who paid close attention to the case are looking for any sort of signal from Cheney that something is up, and they’re getting nothing. “I’ve seen the VP recently, and he doesn’t talk about this stuff — never would,” says the first Libby ally. “But we all assume — ‘we’ meaning people who know the case and who know Scooter — that the VP has interceded with the president and made his pitch. It would be irrational not to assume that.” …

The Iran-Contra pardons, to which Love referred, came on Christmas Eve, 1992, when George H. W. Bush, then just a few weeks from leaving office, pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, former top CIA official Clair George, and four others involved in the Iran-Contra affair. Bush made clear that he was trying to right a political wrong. “The prosecutions of the individuals I am pardoning represent what I believe is a profoundly troubling development in the political and legal climate of our country: the criminalization of policy differences,” the president wrote in an impassioned pardon statement. “These differences should be addressed in the political arena, without the Damocles sword of criminality hanging over the heads of some of the combatants.”

The question now, for Libby and his supporters, is whether George W. Bush will follow his father’s example. Even though words are few, emotions are quite intense. “If it doesn’t happen, I’m afraid the president’s legacy on this will be one that is pretty ugly,” says the first Libby ally quoted in this story. “This guy took a bullet for the White House, in an absolutely outrageous, unfounded prosecution by an out-of-control prosecutor. For the president not to recognize that fact, and not to pardon Scooter Libby at this point, would be viewed as disgraceful.”

It’s possible that the Blagojevich scandal may have put a commutation for Libby out of reach.  Without a doubt, a pardon would be seen as a slap at Patrick Fitzgerald, and Bush may want to avoid that at such a politically sensitive moment in Illinois.  Also, significant differences exist between the 1992 situation and Libby’s predicament.  Bush 41 pardoned the people in the Iran-Contra probe for charges that resulted directly from policy, while Libby got convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury.  Fitzgerald never did bring charges against anyone else, which makes the “political” accusation much less convincing.

One point worth noting: Libby has not applied for a pardon.  At all.  Apparently, Libby and his supporters expect Bush to grant the pardon without a request, which seems like a foolish way to approach this.  It gives Bush an easy out by saying that he assumed Libby didn’t want the pardon at all.

Other potential pardon recipients await as well, especially Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.  Many on the Right want the two Border Patrol agents pardoned, or at least given commutations.  Bush has not given any indication that he will grant any sort of clemency to the two agents, which has some immigration-enforcement advocates upset.  Andy McCarthy has written extensively on the issues surrounding their conviction and has argued repeatedly that they do not deserve clemency.

Pardons and clemency rarely go to the innocent, however.  Occasionally, an executive will use that power to address an injustice that the courts are too slow to remedy.  For the most part, though, clemency gets used to clear the records of people who have already served their time and repaid their communities or have at least acknowledged the error of their ways — or in some cases, to make a political point.   Bush has been slow to use that power for any of those purposes during his administration.  I wouldn’t expect him to change now, even with a deadline fast approaching.

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