Right smack dab in this column yesterday by Tom Brune of Newsday (link via Raw Story):
WASHINGTON — Now that top White House aide Karl Rove is off the hook in the CIA leak probe, President George W. Bush must weigh whether to pardon former vice presidential aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the only one indicted in the three-year investigation. […]
“I think ultimately, of course, there are going to be pardons,” said Joseph diGenova, a former prosecutor and an old Washington hand who shares that view with many pundits.
“These are the kinds of cases in which historically presidents have given pardons,” said the veteran Republican attorney.
Surprise, surprise that a Republican flack like diGenova is calling for a pardon. The only interesting question is who is behind this story: the White House or Libby?
(cont.)
Brune’s “story” goes on to speculate that Libby’s defense stratgy so far has been intended to force the issue of a pardon, by risking increasing disclosure of Cheney and the White House’s role in the Plame affair in the pre-trial discovery and trial phases of the litigation. That may be. And Libby may indeed be the source for this story.
But I wouldn’t put it past Karl Rove to be sending up a trial (pardon the puns) balloon about a pardon for Libby so soon after his own butt’s no longer in a sling.
Oh, and look who’s quoted at the very end of the article. Our very own Lieberman campaign manager in the Senate, Chuckie Schumer, who tells us this:
Democrats have already indicated they will go on the attack. Last fall, their congressional leaders wrote Bush urging him to pledge not to pardon Libby. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Bush did not respond.
“I think it would be very wrong to pardon Scooter Libby, and I doubt the president would do it,” Schumer said Friday. “It would cause him real damage.”
Do you know the expression “whistling past the graveyard”? That fits our Chuckie Boy to a T, don’t you think?