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posted by janrinok on Friday April 13 2018, @08:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the stand-by-your-man dept.

Update: President Trump has pardoned I. Lewis Libby Jr., former Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. He is better known as "Scooter Libby":

"I don't know Mr. Libby," Trump said in a statement, "but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life."

Previously:

President Trump plans to pardon I. Lewis Libby Jr., who as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney was convicted of perjury in connection with the leak of a C.I.A. officer's identity, a person familiar with the decision said on Thursday.

Mr. Libby's case has long been a cause for conservatives who maintained that he was a victim of a special prosecutor run amok, an argument that may have resonated with the president. Mr. Trump has repeatedly complained that the special counsel investigation into possible cooperation between his campaign and Russia in 2016 has gone too far and amounts to an unfair "witch hunt."

Mr. Libby, who goes by Scooter, was convicted of four felonies in 2007 for perjury before a grand jury, lying to F.B.I. investigators and obstruction of justice during an investigation into the disclosure of the work of Valerie Plame Wilson, a C.I.A. officer. President George W. Bush commuted Mr. Libby's 30-month prison sentence but refused to grant him a full pardon despite the strenuous requests of Mr. Cheney, a decision that soured the relationship between the two men.

A pardon of Mr. Libby would paradoxically put Mr. Trump in the position of absolving one of the chief architects of the Iraq war, which Mr. Trump has denounced as a catastrophic miscalculation. It would also mean he was forgiving a former official who was convicted in a case involving leaks despite Mr. Trump's repeated inveighing against those who disclose information to reporters.

Critics of Mr. Trump quickly interpreted the prospective pardon as a signal by the president that he would protect those who refuse to turn on their bosses, as Mr. Libby was presumed not to have betrayed Mr. Cheney. Mr. Trump has not ruled out pardons in the Russia investigation.

Is this President Trump's "Chelsea Manning moment"?


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday April 13 2018, @09:50PM (3 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Friday April 13 2018, @09:50PM (#666639) Homepage Journal

    If I had a lot of money - which I don't - I'd run a full page ad in every newspaper in the land specifically for the purpose of informing the public of their right to nullify.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Friday April 13 2018, @09:59PM (2 children)

    by insanumingenium (4824) on Friday April 13 2018, @09:59PM (#666640) Journal

    The part I don't understand is how it is an established right, but that it is common in jury instructions to flat out deny it, and to even go so far as to make it against the rules to specifically inform the jury about nullification. Seems like a right you can't talk about isn't a right.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 14 2018, @12:07AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 14 2018, @12:07AM (#666671)

      That's because it isn't a right. It's a power.

      A right is something that is acknowledged as such by someone else. A power is something you don't need anyone else's input for.

      In the case of nullification, the legal scum will never acknowledge it as a right. But the jury can still vote 'not guilty' -- for reasons of nullification, or any other reason, or no reason at all -- and that is that. No matter what the judge, prosecutor, police, etc. think. (In theory. It's probably a good idea for nullifiers to get out of that jurisdiction as soon as possible, lest your car headlights suddenly stop working, and drugs spontaneously generating in your back seat.)

    • (Score: 1) by DeVilla on Saturday April 14 2018, @12:33AM

      by DeVilla (5354) on Saturday April 14 2018, @12:33AM (#666690)

      Seems like a right you can't talk about isn't a right.

      Give that man a cigar and ban him from jury duty!