Trump issues pardon to Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby
Conviction was tied to CIA ID leak
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump issued a pardon Friday to Lewis “Scooter” Libby, offering forgiveness to a former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice related to the leak of a CIA officer’s identity.
“I don’t know Mr. Libby,” 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.”
In a statement explaining Trump’s action, the White House noted that in 2015 one of the key witnesses against Libby recanted her testimony, among other factors.
The White House also said that Libby’s past government service and his record since his conviction have been “similarly unblemished, and he continues to be held in high regard by his colleagues and peers.”
Libby was convicted of four felonies in 2007 — for perjury before a grand jury, lying to FBI investigators and obstruction of justice during an investigation into the disclosure of the work of Valerie Plame Wilson, a former covert CIA agent and the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000, but his sentence was commuted by then-President George W. Bush. Although spared prison time, Libby was not pardoned.
Cheney lobbied Bush aggressively for a pardon for Libby, and Bush’s refusal was said to have caused a strain in the relationship between the two men. To the former vice president and others in his orbit, Libby’s conviction was the product of an overzealous special prosecutor and a liberal Washington jury.
“Scooter Libby is one of the most capable, principled, and honorable men I have ever known,” Cheney said in a statement Friday. “He is innocent, and he and his family have suffered for years because of his wrongful conviction. I am grateful today that President Trump righted this wrong by issuing a full pardon to Scooter, and I am thrilled for Scooter and his family.”
The unfinished business of the Libby conviction has been a longtime rallying point for conservatives, including current members of Trump’s administration. The pardon has been under consideration for several months, people familiar with the president’s thinking have said.
Victoria Toensing, Libby’s lawyer, said Friday that Trump called her personally around 1 p.m. to break the news. She said Trump told her Libby was “a wonderful person who got screwed.”
Toensing declined to say what conversations she had with the White House about Libby in recent days and weeks. She and her husband had been in talks to represent Trump in the Russia investigation.
Toensing submitted materials to the White House last year asserting Libby’s innocence.
“Suffice to say, he’s thrilled,” she said of Libby.
Given the nature of Libby’s crimes, Trump came under fire from critics Friday after he took to Twitter to accuse former FBI director James B. Comey of leaking classified information and lying to Congress.
“On the day the President wrongly attacks Comey for being a ‘leaker and liar’ he considers pardoning a convicted leaker and liar, Scooter Libby,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., 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.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Libby’s pardon had nothing to do with the Mueller probe.