Contrast with Comey ADMITTING he leaked. I don't care if he lies about the reason, he's already confessed the deed.
As I recall it, Libby misremembered a meeting with Bob Woodward and claimed it was with Tim Russert. Russert disputed his account, but Woodward came forward and said that Libby’s account was accurate except that he had met with Woodward and not Russert.
The prosecutor knew that Libby was not the leaker and knew who the real leaker was, but prosecuted Libby for perjury for making a mistake that anyone could have made in a similar situation. And that rat Bush let him rot in jail for it and didn’t even have the decency to give him a full pardon at the end of the day.
There wasn’t any reason to ‘take the heat off the administration’, because the real leaker wasn’t even sanctioned for the supposed crime. But hey, maybe I remember it wrong.