“Hopefully this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life” ...projection is everything in Trumpland.
Which Trumpist wants a “fall-guy pardon”?
Trump pardons Scooter Libby to suck up to the GOP establishment. It’s not a convincing signal, considering that many #TrumpRussia defendants might still die in jail, particularly a NY state prison.
Will they avoid getting stiffed like so many Trump associates.
But that’s what a desperate 45* has left, sucking up to a GOP establishment getting ready to cut him loose, after giving them carte blanche to loot the US economy.
The bigger question is how many really want to be known forever as a Donald Trump fall guy.
“Scooter Libby's conviction spells awful times for the Republicans, and for Dick Cheney in particular.”
When one revisits the media coverage, pardoning Libby was for RWNJ a matter of trying to reward the behavior of a made man.
This is a continuation of GOP rehab, where Rex Tillerson tried to make Iran-Contra’s Elliot Abrams his deputy, and Jarvanka installed Ezra Cohen-Watnick at DoJ. And then there’s the arrival of John Bolton as NatSec advisor.
It’s worth revisiting the original case if only to remind oneself how bad the GW Bush administration became as they conned the US into waging Iraq War 2. So many crime families, so little democracy.
the deliberating jurors often wondered about the role of the White House in general and Dick Cheney and Karl Rove in particular.
The information Libby claimed to have forgotten was just too juicy and meaningful to pop so completely and so cleanly out of his brain. Plame's identity was explosive information. During the trial the jury was given several demonstrations of how extraordinary other Washington types found it. Cheney connected the dots immediately when he heard Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. "Did his wife send him on a junket?" he scribbled in the margins of a newspaper article. When former Time reporter Matt Cooper heard about it from Karl Rove, he told colleagues the information was so powerful it had to be conveyed on "double super secret background." Counselor to the president Dan Bartlett read about Plame's identity in a memo while on Air Force One and exclaimed it out loud like he had bingo.
[...]
Afterward Denis Collins, the former Washington Post reporter on the jury, said the deliberating jurors often wondered about the role of the White House in general and Dick Cheney and Karl Rove in particular. Collins said that "a number of times" the jury asked themselves, "What is he doing here? Where is Rove and all these other guys? ... I'm not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was … the fall guy." Collins sIn the week before Nixon's resignation, Ehrlichman and Haldeman tried unsuccessfully to get Nixon to grant them pardons—which he had promised them before their April 1973 resignations.[69]aid the jury believed that Vice President Cheney did "task [Libby] to talk to reporters." He said, "Some jurors said at one point, 'We wish we weren't judging Libby. ... This sucks.' "
www.slate.com/...
Will a life known as another Trump fall guy be enough for the colluders.
In the week before Nixon's resignation, Ehrlichman and Haldeman tried unsuccessfully to get Nixon to grant them pardons—which he had promised them before their April 1973 resignations.[69]
Will they all commit obstruction of justice and perjury in defense of Lord Dampnut. How willing are they to lie to protect a liar.
But I was really surprised at the charges leveled against him. He was not accused of leaking CIA employee Valerie Plame's name, but of obstruction of justice and perjury.
He didn't do the crime, but risked having to do the time by engaging in a cover up. Since we now know that neither he nor Cheney first outed Ms. Plame, what was it Scooter was covering up, and for whom? He must have known that no one in the vice president's office was responsible for the leak. In any case, Scooter, a high-priced Washington lawyer, surely knew it would be difficult if not impossible for the special prosecutor to give an indictment on the alleged, underlying act.
So, why not tell the investigators in a grand jury the truth? The only thing less comprehensible than his criminal conduct was his defense. I doubt that Scooter ever forgot a single contact with another government official, much less, a reporter of Tim Russert's stature. Certainly not when the subject was Joe Wilson and his allegations against the Bush administration.
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Based on personal observation, I can say with confidence that Scooter Libby was, and presumably still is, one of the smartest, toughest, and canniest bureaucrats I have ever met. In civilian life, he wasn't just a lawyer; he was a shark. He was demanding and tough - stupid and forgetful, he was not. So what explain the acts of which he has been convicted? The only possibility I can come up with is that he thought he was protecting his boss, the vice president.
Nothing else makes sense of Scooter's apparent kamikaze dive into the special prosecutor's investigation. But even here, I have problems making sense of the story. Cheney did not leak. So how would lying to anyone protect the vice president?
www.npr.org/...