A Good Decision

Pretty laughable Hillary's pronouncements on pardons and Jesse's son's showboating. Byron York on the President's decision to commute Scooter Libby's sentence:

The problem with much of the rhetoric is that it fails to take into account the full meaning and practice of the president’s clemency powers. Yes, there are pardons for ordinary criminal offenders, most of which are dictated by longstanding guidelines at the Justice Department. But there are also frankly political pardons, something the Founding Fathers envisioned when they gave the president the power to pardon, to commute sentences, and to offer mercy in other forms. A number of presidents in the past have faced problems similar to George W. Bush’s, and they weren’t hesitant to use the pardon power when they needed it. No one should be surprised that Bush has, too. [snip]

But the point wasn’t mercy alone; the Founders also foresaw that the pardon power might be used for distinctly political purposes. George Washington pardoned the men who had taken part in the Whiskey Rebellion. Thomas Jefferson pardoned those convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts. Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson granted amnesty to Confederate soldiers. Warren G. Harding pardoned prisoners held under World War I espionage laws. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter pardoned Vietnam draft dodgers. And Ford famously pardoned Richard Nixon.

In recent years, the pardon power has fallen into disuse — or, in the case of Bill Clinton, misuse. For his first years in office, Clinton mostly ignored his pardon power. Margaret Love, the attorney who headed the Justice Department’s pardons office from 1990 to 1997, points out that for the first seven and a half years of his presidency, Clinton “pardoned less generously than any president since John Adams.” Then, at the end of his time in office, Clinton got to work, issuing what was undoubtedly the worst series of pardons in history. He infamously pardoned the fugitive tax-evading financier Marc Rich (whose attorney was one Lewis Libby), a number of Puerto Rican terrorists, and Susan McDougal, his old Whitewater partner who went to jail rather than answer the question of whether Clinton testified truthfully at her fraud trial.

Fitzgerald's investigation was purely political, there was no underlying crime, which he knew early on. Here's the parallel from Bush 41, when policy differences were criminalized:

Weinberger was a brilliant and dedicated public servant who contributed enormously to the United States’ victory in the Cold War, Bush wrote. Beyond that, each of those pardoned, he continued, deserved clemency for other reasons as well: They were motivated by patriotism; they did not seek to profit from their actions; they had long records of service to their country; and they had already paid a heavy price in legal fees and damage to careers.

Patrick Fitzgerald's pursuit of this partisan prosecution was a disgrace. The president's decision was a good one.