During an interview on Des Moines news-talk station WHO, here is Bill Clinton’s response to President Bush’s decision Monday to commute the sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case:
Bush administration officials believe that they should be able to do what they want to do, and that the law is a minor obstacle.
I think the facts were different (comparing to his pardons).
It’s wrong to out that CIA agent, and wrong to try to cover it up — and wrong that no one was ever fired from the White House for doing it.
Strangely enough, Libby, who represented financier Marc Rich from 1985 to 2000, told a House committee in 2001 that prosecutors “misconstrued the facts and the law” in pursuing Marc Rich’s tax evasion charges. Marc Rich, who fled to Switzerland in the 1980s to avoid racketeering, tax evasion and fraud charges stemming from oil trades with Iran, was one of a group of last-minute pardons issued when Bill Clinton left office in 2001
Pardons Granted by President Bill Clinton
Source: USDOJ Ofice of the Pardon Attorney
|