Posted on 04/12/2018 6:37:00 PM PDT by ethom
President Donald Trump is poised to pardon Scooter J. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, according to sources familiar with the president’s thinking.
The president has already signed off on the pardon, which is something he has been considering for several months, sources told ABC News.
The move would mark another controversial pardon for Trump and could raise questions as an increasing number of the president’s political allies have landed themselves in legal jeopardy. The White House has repeatedly said that no pardons are currently on the table for people caught up in the Russia investigation.
Libby was convicted in 2007 of lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice in the investigation into the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame, a former covert CIA operative. Then-President George Bush commuted Libby's 30-month sentence, sparing him prison time, but didn't pardon him.
After Libby claimed that he couldn't have been the source of the leak, multiple people came forward to testify that they learned of Plame's identity from Libby prior to when Libby said he had first received the information.
At trial, Libby claimed to have simply forgotten he actually learned about the identity from Cheney a month before he said he had.
Since the conviction, Libby has since had his law license restored and former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell restored his voting rights in 2013.
Many conservatives have been urging a pardon for Libby, including attorneys Joe diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
What I want for Christmas: Trump pardons Flynn and gives him a job in the Trump organization.
Second wish: Trump gives preemptive pardons to all Mueller targets.
Notice 43 didn’t do it.
BLANKET PARDON them all. Flynn, his son whatever! announce one every few days
And Fitzgerald’s the godfather of Comey’s kids...IIRC.
Also, Fitzy’s job in Chicago apparently was to keep a lid on the Holy Land / HLF terror charity and IAP investigations to minimize the damage to ratdom.
Just noticed Fitzy had a snit fit over a book:
http://www.newsweek.com/us-attorney-fitzgerald-fights-book-publication-80649
He should also ORDER Sessions to re-open the case of Sandy Burglar. Even though that POS is dead, it is highly relevant to look at how Comey and co. let Berger off for flagrantly raiding the National Archives and stealing/destroying sensitive records about pre-9/11 Clintonista discussions.
Republicans like Libby get lynched for nothing at all, while Democraps like Sandy Berger skate when committing real crimes to protect the Clintonistas.
It wasn’t a blunder until the leftists and Russia-fans undermined the war and started delivering aid and comfort to insurgents. Became a blunder in 2008 when Obama was elected.
Let's face it. The entire reason the DC left is going nuts about Trump and targeted their efforts on the Justice Dept. is because there are a large number of criminal Democrats who would be vulnerable under a functioning Trump Justice Dept. It was priority one for the Obama administration scum (including Hillary) to dismantle the Trump Justice Department before it ever got off the ground. The problem is that a large percentage of those who support Democrats and the left could care less what they do, as long as they stay in power.
Wasn’t Scooter one of the backers of the disastrous war in Iraq? We shoulda kept the oil.
I think the Iraq War only made sense if we were prepared to stay indefinitely. And this was not going to be a peaceful occupation like Germany or Japan, but an endless fighting occupation, costly in blood and money.
Iraq was no longer an obstacle to Iran by that time, its intel officials were already holding meetings with NIF’s Tourabi, Iranian IRGC and with bin Laden in Sudan. If Iran was such an obstacle, Iraq would not have used Iran to store the aircraft Saddam didn’t want to lose to US airstrikes, and Iraq’s al Dhouri, who later formed ISIS with Zarqawi, would not have been so cozy with Iran’s ally and Hezbollah hangout, Syria, and its ruling Baath Party.
If there’s one thing everyone should know about the Middle East, it’s that rivals there are more than willing to set aside rivalries for what they perceive as a greater goal.
Pardoning Scooter Libby is the right thing to do. Another blot on the George Bush presidency. Long overdue and again, it takes President Trump to right wrongs which deep state republicans turned a blind eye to. God bless and protect President Trump.
You took the words right out of my mouth. Or keyboard.
About time. Should have been done by W. Why wasn’t it?
Giving Libby his deserved pardon is Trump's way of giving the finger to Comey right before his big ABC interview and book release.
But an argument can be made that we pushed Saddam into the arms of Iran. When the USA takes a lower and less-threatening profile, regional powers will fear each other more than they fear the Americans.
(snip) ...All along, Secretary of State Colin Powell knew that the facts were more complicated, yet he said nothing [about Armitage’s role]. And he had rather unflattering reasons for silence.
At the time, the relatively dovish State Department and CIA were struggling with the office of the vice president and the secretary of Defense for the primary role in shaping Iraq and Middle East policy.
Every day that the vice president was smeared with the Plame allegations strengthened Powell’s hand in the Bush administration’s internal struggle....(/snip)-—Powell’s halo knocked ajar, VirginianPilot ^ | 9-2-06
Powell was content to let a perverted justice system maul innocent men and their families for something they did not do to advance his own agenda. I guess it was a lot easier than making a good argument in a debate against them.
Keep you pen handy Mr. President and do a lot of others, I love watching the liberals get their panties twisted tighter...
Especially Charlie Schumer...make him squirm...and squeal...will be fun to see...
Yes!!! Excellent! The media will cover and try to make hay of it, of course. But a lot of people will take a little time to to discuss and earn something about this case.
Case study for what’s happening today. Hard for one not to see that if they’re familiar with the case.
Brilliant.
Hope Trump does the pardon right in the Rose Garden.
Pardon Libby, prosecute Wilson and Plame, the trail of the Plamegate frameup will lead back to the same Clinton intelligence community assets trying to frame Trump.
Valerie Plame’s still in the news...
She’s on the board of a group called the Ploughshares Fund:
http://www.ploughshares.org/about-us/board-advisors
BOARD & ADVISORS
Valerie Plame
Author, former career covert CIA operations officer
(Full list at link)
4 posted by maggief
Which begs the question, what is Ploughshares?
Ploughshares was a group which worked as part of the Obama administration’s media “echo chamber” to sell the Iran deal, even paying the media for their cooperative efforts :
FLASHBACK: Group that helped sell Iran nuke deal also funded media (re. Echo Chamber)
AP ^ | May 20, 2016 | BRADLEY KLAPPER
Posted by maggief
WASHINGTON (AP) — A group the White House recently identified as a key surrogate in selling the Iran nuclear deal gave National Public Radio $100,000 last year to help it report on the pact and related issues, according to the group’s annual report. It also funded reporters and partnerships with other news outlets.
The Ploughshares Fund’s mission is to “build a safe, secure world by developing and investing in initiatives to reduce and ultimately eliminate the world’s nuclear stockpiles,” one that dovetails with President Barack Obama’s arms control efforts. But its behind-the-scenes role advocating for the Iran agreement got more attention this month after a candid profile of Ben Rhodes, one of the president’s top foreign policy aides.
In The New York Times Magazine article, Rhodes explained how the administration worked with nongovernmental organizations, proliferation experts and even friendly reporters to build support for the seven-nation accord that curtailed Iran’s nuclear activity and softened international financial penalties on Tehran.
“We created an echo chamber,” said Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, adding that “outside groups like Ploughshares” helped carry out the administration’s message effectively.
(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...
Is there an “echo chamber” selling the Russian ‘hacking’ claims? Revisiting the Iran Nuke Deal echo chamber connections...
http://www.ploughshares.org/about-us/staff-board/joseph-cirincione
JOSEPH CIRINCIONE
President Washington, D.C.
Joseph Cirincione is president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. He is the author of the new book Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late, Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons and Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats. He is a member of Secretary of State John Kerry’s International Security Advisory Board and the Council on Foreign Relations.
His commentary has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Financial Times, Kyodo News, Moscow Times, Foreign Policy, The Hill, Daily Beast, and Huffington Post. He has appeared on ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, PBS, MSNBC, Fox News, BBC News, Australian Broadcasting Coporation, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, NHK, Russia Today, and Al Jazeera.
Cirincione worked for nine years in the U.S. House of Representatives on the professional staff of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Government Operations. He is the author of hundreds of articles on nuclear weapons issues, the producer of two DVDs, a frequent commentator in the media, and he appeared in the films, Countdown to Zero and Why We Fight. He previously served as Vice President for National Security and International Policy at the *Center for American Progress and Director for Nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has held positions at the Henry L. Stimson Center, the U.S. Information Agency and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He teaches at the graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
(*Center for American Progress Founder: John Podesta of Hillary Clinton campaign fame)
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