July 03, 2007
White House Denies Special Treatment For Libby
UPDATED.
President Bush today defended his decision to commute the sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on a perjury and obstruction of justice conviction.
"I considered his background, his service to this country as well as the jury verdict," Bush said at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "I felt like the 30-month sentencing was severe. I made a considered judgment that I believe is the right decision to make in this case, and I stand by it."
It was Bush's first public appearance since announcing, via press release, that he had ordered Libby's sentence commuted. Bush said he believed the jury's verdict should stand, but did not count out a full pardon in the future.
"I rule nothing in and nothing out," Bush said.
This morning, White House press secretary Tony Snow parried with a hostile press corps for half an hour over the decision to commute Libby's prison sentence.
Emphasizing that Bush declined to completely wipe the slate for Libby, who must pay a $250,000 fine and will be on probation for two years, Snow told reporters, "It is important to make clear our faith in what is a pillar of the American justice system, which is everybody's right to be tried before a jury of your peers."
Snow would not say whether Bush believed Libby did something wrong, only that Bush "believed" that Libby had been convicted of those crimes.
"The president thought the jail time was inappropriate," Snow said.
In today's contentious briefing, Snow denied that Bush's decision to help Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was politically motivated or an act of cronyism. Openly skeptical reporters pointed out that there are more than 3,000 petitions for commutation pending in the federal system from people also arguing their sentences were excessive.
"The president does not look upon this as granting a favor to anyone, and to do that is to misconstrue the nature of the deliberations," Snow said. Petitions for commutations "are all different," he added. "The president looked at this one on its merits."
Snow said the publicity surrounding the case also prompted Bush to step in. But that explanation is not likely to sate critics, whose outrage over the Libby matter is rooted in anger over the White House's misguided justification for going to war into Iraq.
Libby's supporters, on the other hand, are similarly incensed at the special prosecutor's investigation of what looked to be the deliberate leak of a CIA operative's identity, which culminated, rather anticlimactically, with Libby's conviction on the comparatively minor P&O charges. According to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was his original source into Plame's identity.
In his forthcoming chronicle of the affair, Novak describes the information exchange as less top-secret leak and more catty Beltway gossip, according to U.S. News & World Report.
In arriving at his decision to let Libby partly off the hook, Bush apparently opted for a third way out of the pressure bubble he was in to either pardon Libby or let the sentence stand. But Snow insisted that the decision was borne out of intense deliberation among high-level officials, and was not done as appeasement.
"The president is getting pounded on the right because he didn't do a full pardon," Snow said. "The point of this is you do not engage in these acts for symbolic or political reasons."
One reporter reminded the room that while Bush's conservative base wanted a pardon, about two-thirds of Americans wanted Libby to serve his time -- apparently setting up a question about whether Bush simply compromised. Cutting him off, Snow snapped, "Then apparently he did not do this for political reasons, did he?"
Snow's explanation of why Bush commuted the sentence -- that he respects the jury's decision -- leaves the president little wiggle room to later pardon Libby. It's unclear what political price he would pay for doing so, however, judging by the tenor of critics' reactions to the commutation.
"This administration is corrupt to the core," Ambassador Joseph Wilson told NPR yesterday.
Snow emphasized that jail or no jail, Libby's career as an attorney was all but ruined. (Libby, incidentally, is a former lawyer for Marc Rich, the fugitive financier whose pardon by former President Clinton still outrages conservatives.)
When a reporter suggested that a second act for Libby might still be in reach -- say, in memoir form -- Snow responded, "I like Scooter but I'm not sure that's one that's going to be flying off the shelves."
Posted at 1:37 PM
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Bush Administration, Crime, Dick Cheney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, President Bush, Tony Snow
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