Did Libby Make a Deal?

Bush was asked about the Libby case in an interview with Univision yesterday before leaving today on a week-long trip to Latin America.

Asked whether he might pardon Libby, Bush replied: "I'm pretty much going to stay out of it until the course -- the case has finally run its final -- the course it's going to take."

Was Bush just talking about his weak and transparent excuse for not commenting on the case as a whole? Or was he hinting that he might well get involved, only later? In either case, he certainly appeared to leave the door to a pardon wide open. White House spokesmen have also not ruled anything out.

Bush, of course, can pardon anyone he wants to under any circumstance. The Constitution gives him that power -- although, as a Newsweek story below indicates, pardoning Libby would violate his own personal policy.

But agreeing to a pardon as a quid pro quo? That wouldn't meet anyone's moral standards.

If there was some sort of agreement between the Libby team and the White House, you can be sure neither of the parties will ever admit it. But if further evidence emerges that something along these lines may have taken place, it seems to me that the only way Bush could fully assure the public that it didn't happen would be for him to pledge that no such pardon will be issued.

Bush's Personal Pardon Policy

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball write for Newsweek that "there's one significant roadblock on the path to Libby's salvation: Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff does not qualify to even be considered for a presidential pardon under Justice Department guidelines.

"From the day he took office, Bush seems to have followed those guidelines religiously. He's taken an exceedingly stingy approach to pardons, granting only 113 in six years, mostly for relatively minor fraud, embezzlement and drug cases dating back more than two decades. Bush's pardons are 'fewer than any president in 100 years,' according to Margaret Love, former pardon attorney at the Justice Department.

"Following the furor over President Bill Clinton's last-minute pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich (among others), Bush made it clear he wasn't interested in granting many pardons. . . .

"The president has since indicated he intended to go by the book in granting what few pardons he'd hand out -- considering only requests that had first been reviewed by the Justice Department under a series of publicly available guidelines.

"Those regulations, which are discussed on the Justice Department Web site at www.usdoj.gov/pardon, would seem to make a Libby pardon a nonstarter in George W. Bush's White House. They 'require a petitioner to wait a period of at least five years after conviction or release from confinement (whichever is later) before filing a pardon application,' according to the Justice Web site.

"Moreover, in weighing whether to recommend a pardon, U.S. attorneys are supposed to consider whether an applicant is remorseful."