Just when things looked darkest for I Lewis “Scooter” Libby, when prison seemed all but certain, President Bush wiped away the former White House aide's 2 1/2-year sentence in the CIA leak case.
Bush’s move came on Monday, just five hours after a federal appeals panel ruled that Libby could not delay his prison term. His prospects for an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court seemed bleak. The former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, Libby was just waiting for a date to surrender.
After months of sidestepping pardon questions, Bush stepped in. He did not issue a pardon but erased a prison sentence that he felt was just too harsh.
“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Bush said in a written statement. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr Libby’s sentence that required him to spend 30 months in prison.” Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald disputed the President’s assertion that the prison term was excessive. Libby was sentenced under the same laws as other criminals, Fitzgerald said. “It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals.”
Because he was not pardoned, Libby remains the highest-ranking White House official convicted of a crime since the Iran-Contra affair. But he won’t have to serve a day in prison, a fact that his friends cheered, even those who wished he’d received a full pardon.
“That's fantastic. It’s a great relief," said former Ambassador Richard Carlson, who helped raise millions for Libby’s defense fund. “Scooter Libby did not deserve to go to prison and I’m glad the President had the courage to do this.”
However, Democrats were enraged. “Libby’s conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq war,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
“Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said Bush’s decision showed the president “condones criminal conduct”.