"President George W. Bush closely reviewed the facts in the case at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, who urged a pardon", she said in a statement to the Daily News.
Former ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, former Central Intelligence Agency agent Valerie Plame railed against President Trump Friday after he pardoned Lewis "Scooter" Libby-a onetime aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby was prosecuted for lying to the FBI and for obstruction of justice in an investigation into who leaked the identity of covert Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame.
And there are many more people who can incriminate the president, whereas in the investigation into Ms. Wilson's exposure, Mr. Libby was one of the only people who could say whether the president had authorized the leak of a C.I.A. officer's identity.
He said that he and his family are grateful and that they have "suffered under the weight of a awful injustice". Trump also pardoned a U.S. Navy sailor, who was convicted after taking photos of classified portions of a submarine.
The president signed off on clemency for Scooter Libby on Friday, following months of consideration.
The chief federal prosecutor in Libby's case was Patrick Fitzgerald, then the USA attorney from the Northern District of IL.
He added that Trump is "essentially developing a coalition of extremists".
"Mr. Libby's case has always been a cause for conservatives who maintained that he was a victim of a special prosecutor run amok, an argument that may have resonated with the president".
In retrospect, it's clear that Libby's prosecution marked the beginning of a criminalization of policy differences-a unsafe trend that continues to this day. Mr Trump has called that probe a "witch hunt".
Comey, who was appointed FBI Director by Obama in 2013, was sacked by Trump in May 2017 amid a probe into the NY billionaire's ties to Russian Federation. Though spared jail time, Libby was not pardoned.
Plame spoke to MSNBC Friday.
"While the President has the constitutional power to pardon, the decision to do so in this case purports to be premised on the notion that Libby was an innocent man convicted on the basis of inaccurate testimony caused by the prosecution", he said in a statement. Some argued that, as Hamilton put it, the supposition of the connivance of the Chief Magistrate ought not to be entirely excluded. In the end, though, they made a decision to give, even for treason, the pardon power to the president alone.
By the end of 2003, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case.
The grand jury investigated the leaks.
In August, Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio just weeks after a federal judge found the former Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff guilty of ignoring a court order to stop racial profiling in immigration enforcement.
Plame's identity had been revealed to journalist Robert Novak by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, according to Fox News.
