April 3, 2007: Former GOP Vice-Presidential Candidate Recommends Pardon for Libby

Jack Kemp. [Source: Los Angeles Times]Former representative and Republican vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp (R-NY) recommends that President Bush pardon convicted felon Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007). Kemp’s column, printed in the conservative Web publication Town Hall, is not as vociferous in its condemnation of the Libby perjury trial and special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald as some published by his conservative colleagues (see March 6, 2007, March 6, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 8-9, 2007, March 9, 2007, and March 11, 2007). Kemp begins his column by telling his readers that two jurors in the trial, Ann Redington and Denis Collins, have “endors[ed] a pardon,” quoting Redington from her interview on MSNBC’s Hardball (see March 8, 2007) and Collins from a column by the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd (Collins’s “endorsement” was a tepid “I would really not care” when asked if he would support a pardon for Libby—see March 8, 2007). Kemp writes of a pardon, “It’s the right thing to do and it’s the right thing to do now—anything less makes a travesty of our system of justice.” Kemp echoes his colleagues’ arguments that Fitzgerald prosecuted Libby for political reasons, particularly in an attempt to target Vice President Dick Cheney. He then notes that two previous presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, have pardoned government officials who were targeted by special prosecutors—Bush in his pardon of convicted Iran-Contra conspirator Caspar Weinberger (see December 25, 1992) and Clinton’s pre-emptive pardon of then-CIA Director John Deutch, who was under investigation for mishandling classified information on his home computer. Weinberger was facing the possibility of years of jail time; Deutch was negotiating with prosecutors for a guilty plea to a single misdemeanor charge. Kemp repeats debunked charges that the CIA did not treat Valerie Plame Wilson’s status as either classified or particularly sensitive (see Fall 1992 - 1996, Late 1990s-2001 and Possibly After, April 22, 1999, (July 11, 2003), Before July 14, 2003, July 22, 2003, July 30, 2003, September 30, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, January 9, 2006, February 13, 2006, September 6, 2006, and March 16, 2007) and also repeats his colleagues’ charges that the government’s witnesses had no better memories of key events than did Libby. Kemp concludes: “Most prosecutors would walk away from such a case—a case based on a faulty premise and focused on faulty memories months after the fact. President Bush would be well within presidential authority and past presidential practice if he were to rectify this travesty in the near future. My hope is he pardons Libby now!” [Town Hall (.com), 4/3/2007]