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Trump Pardons Scooter Libby for Perjury in C.I.A. Leak Case Trump Pardons Scooter Libby for Perjury in C.I.A. Leak Case
(about 5 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Trump pardoned I. Lewis Libby Jr. on Friday, offering official forgiveness for his convictions on perjury and obstruction of justice charges stemming from the C.I.A. leak case during the administration of President George W. Bush. WASHINGTON — For months, President Trump has railed against investigators and presented himself as the target of an unfair prosecution.
So when he was asked to pardon former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, who likewise considered himself the target of an unfair prosecution, Mr. Trump may have seen some parallels — and a chance to make a statement.
The statement came on Friday when the president granted a full pardon to I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was Mr. Cheney’s top adviser before he was convicted in 2007 of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the disclosure of the identity of a C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame. Mr. Libby, the president declared, had not received justice.
“I don’t know Mr. Libby,” Mr. Trump said in a statement, “but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.”“I don’t know Mr. Libby,” Mr. Trump said in a statement, “but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.”
Mr. Libby’s case has long been a cause for conservatives who maintained that he was a victim of a special prosecutor run amok, an argument that may have resonated with the president. Mr. Trump has repeatedly complained that the special counsel investigation into possible cooperation between his campaign and Russia in 2016 has gone too far and amounts to an unfair “witch hunt.” The pardon was only the third of Mr. Trump’s presidency but amounted to a dramatic coda to a politically charged case that once gripped Washington and came to embody the divisions over the Iraq war. Mr. Libby, who goes by Scooter, was seen by his critics as an agent of a war built on false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction and by his friends as a scapegoat for a special prosecutor who was actually trying to bring down Mr. Cheney.
Mr. Libby, who goes by Scooter, was convicted of four felonies in 2007 for perjury before a grand jury, lying to F.B.I. investigators and obstruction of justice during an investigation into the disclosure of the work of Valerie Plame Wilson, a C.I.A. officer. Mr. Bush commuted Mr. Libby’s 30-month prison sentence but refused to grant him a full pardon despite the strenuous requests of Vice President Dick Cheney, whom Mr. Libby served as chief of staff. The decision soured the relationship between Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. Mr. Libby has long maintained his innocence, arguing that his conviction rested on a difference of memories. President George W. Bush commuted his 30-month prison sentence while refusing to give a full pardon, saying he respected the jury’s verdict. But Mr. Libby’s hopes of overturning his conviction took a turn in 2015 when Judith Miller, a former New York Times reporter and a key witness at his trial, recanted her testimony.
The pardon of Mr. Libby paradoxically puts Mr. Trump in the position of absolving one of the chief architects of the Iraq war, which Mr. Trump has denounced as a catastrophic miscalculation. It also means he has forgiven a former official who was convicted in a case involving leaks despite Mr. Trump’s repeated inveighing against those who disclose information to reporters. Victoria Toensing, a lawyer and friend of Mr. Libby’s, said on Friday that she brought his case to the attention of the White House Counsel’s Office over the summer. Ms. Toensing and her husband and law partner, Joseph diGenova, were briefly set to work for Mr. Trump as private lawyers last month until they backed out, citing a client conflict.
After word of Mr. Trump’s plan to issue the pardon emerged on Thursday night, critics of the president quickly interpreted the move as a signal by the president that he would protect those who refuse to turn on their bosses, as Mr. Libby was presumed not to have betrayed Mr. Cheney. Mr. Trump has not ruled out pardons in the Russia investigation. Ms. Toensing would not indicate whether she discussed Mr. Libby directly with Mr. Trump, but she did say that the president called her on Friday to notify her that he had signed the pardon. She then called Mr. Libby to give him the news, but he had just undergone an M.R.I. for a back problem and “was a little hazy,” so she told his wife, Harriet.
Mr. Trump had shown no particular interest in Mr. Libby’s case before. In 2015, during his campaign for the White House, Mr. Trump was asked if he would pardon Mr. Libby and declined to say, calling it an irrelevant issue. It was unclear when Mr. Trump would issue the pardon, which was first reported by ABC News. “It’s taken a long time to get the right thing to happen,” Ms. Toensing said. “As a former prosecutor and as a defense attorney, I’m appalled by what happened.”
Mr. Libby was not charged with the leak itself and has long argued that his conviction rested on an innocent difference in memories between him and several witnesses, not an intent to deceive investigators. Although Mr. Bush’s clemency order kept him from going to prison, Mr. Libby’s conviction nonetheless remained intact and he was disbarred as a lawyer as a result. He was not reinstated to the bar until 2016. In a statement later in the day, Mr. Libby thanked the president. “For over a dozen years, we have suffered under the weight of a terrible injustice,” he said. “To his great credit, President Trump recognized this wrong and would not let it persist. For this honorable act, we shall forever be grateful.”
Among the allies from the Bush administration who have argued that he was treated unfairly is John R. Bolton, an ally of Mr. Cheney’s who served as Mr. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations and started this week as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. Other allies of Mr. Libby’s include Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, a husband-and-wife team of lawyers who recently talked about going to work for Mr. Trump before deciding against it because of a client conflict. Mr. Cheney hailed the move. “Scooter Libby is one of the most capable, principled and honorable men I have ever known,” he said in a statement. “He is innocent, and he and his family have suffered for years because of his wrongful conviction. I am grateful that President Trump righted this wrong by issuing a full pardon to Scooter, and I am thrilled for Scooter and his family.”
The pardon amounts to official forgiveness, not exoneration. A pardon does not signify innocence but does eliminate many consequences of a conviction, such as any effect on the right to vote, hold elective office or sit on a jury. As a practical matter, those seeking pardons hope it will erase or ease the stigma of a criminal conviction. Mr. Bush offered no objection to the decision, even though it conflicted with his own judgment on the case. “President Bush is very pleased for Scooter and his family,” his office said in a statement.
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. But critics saw hypocrisy in Mr. Trump’s decision, coming on the same day that he was denouncing James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director.
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. “On the day the president wrongly attacks Comey for being a ‘leaker and liar’ he considers pardoning a convicted leaker and liar, Scooter Libby,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, wrote on Twitter. “This is the president’s way of sending a message to those implicated in the Russia investigation: You have my back and I’ll have yours.”
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. Ms. Plame, who now lives in Santa Fe, N.M., said she did not believe the pardon had anything to do with her or Mr. Libby but Mr. Trump’s own legal issues. “I would say he’s trying to build a firewall,” she said.
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. His real audience, she added, was the associates who might turn on him. “He’s saying, ‘If you get in trouble, don’t spill the beans, I’ll take care of you.’ This is how the mafia works.”
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 White House rejected any connection. “Not at all,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary. “One thing has nothing to do with the other, and every case should be reviewed on their own merits.”
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. The case stemmed from an Op-Ed column in The Times in 2003 in which a former diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson IV, wrote that he had been sent to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking nuclear materials, only to have his negative findings ignored by Mr. Cheney and the White House. Administration officials told journalists that Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger because his wife, Ms. Plame, worked at the C.I.A.
Mr. Bush assigned White House lawyers to examine the case, but they advised him the jury had ample reason to convict Mr. Libby and the president rebuffed Mr. Cheney’s request. Mr. Bush told aides that he suspected that Mr. Libby had thought he was protecting Mr. Cheney, the real target of the investigation. The outing of Ms. Plame prompted Mr. Comey, then the deputy attorney general, to appoint a special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald. While no one was charged in the leak itself, Mr. Fitzgerald won the conviction of Mr. Libby on four felony counts of perjury, lying to investigators and obstruction of justice.
Mr. Cheney snapped at Mr. Bush. “You are leaving a good man wounded on the field of battle,” he told him when informed of the decision. Among the witnesses at his trial was Ms. Miller, who had spent 85 days in prison resisting prosecutors who sought her testimony about her conversations with Mr. Libby until he released her from any confidentiality pledge.
Mr. Bush was taken aback. It was probably the harshest thing Mr. Cheney ever said to him during their eight years in office together and was meant to attack Mr. Bush’s sense of loyalty to his own troops in a time of war. Ms. Miller wrote in her 2015 book, “The Story,” that she had since concluded that she had been misled by Mr. Fitzgerald’s office and as a result had misinterpreted notes of her talks with Mr. Libby and that he may not have mentioned Ms. Plame’s C.I.A. employment to her after all.
“The comment stung,” Mr. Bush wrote in his memoir. “In eight years, I had never seen Dick like this, or even close to it. I worried that the friendship we had built was about to be severely strained, at best.” “My testimony, though sworn honestly, might have been wrong,” she wrote. She added, “Had I helped convict an innocent man?”
The case has its connections to Mr. Trump because Mr. Fitzgerald was friends with James B. Comey, who was then the deputy attorney general who assigned him the investigation after the attorney general recused himself. Mr. Cheney long suspected that Mr. Comey was taking revenge for a dispute between them over the legality of a surveillance program. Ms. Miller, who has left The Times, said by email on Friday that she had no discussions with the White House about Mr. Libby’s pardon. “I’m pleased for Scooter Libby and am glad that the case I made for him in my book was found compelling,” she said. “I urge others to read the narrative I offered.”
Mr. Comey would go on to become the director of the F.B.I. who was fired by Mr. Trump last year in the midst of the Russia investigation. His dismissal led the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, who was in charge after the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to appoint Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel to take over the inquiry. But Mr. Fitzgerald said the pardon was ill considered. In a statement, he said Mr. Libby’s conviction was based on the testimony of multiple witnesses, not just Ms. Miller.
Mr. Trump has been notably conservative about using his clemency power. Before Friday, he had issued only two pardons and commuted only one sentence in nearly 15 months in office, according to the Justice Department. Most notably he pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff whose crackdown on illegal immigrants earned him a criminal contempt conviction. “While the president has the constitutional power to pardon, the decision to do so in this case purports to be premised on the notion that Libby was an innocent man convicted on the basis of inaccurate testimony caused by the prosecution,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “That is false.”
His record is roughly in keeping with the last three presidents, Barack Obama, Mr. Bush and Bill Clinton, all of whom issued no pardons or commutations in their first year and a half in office.