President Bush commuted the sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term that Bush said was excessive.Bush’s move came hours after a federal appeals panel ruled Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case.
That meant Libby was likely to have to report to prison soon and put new pressure on the president, who had been sidestepping calls by Libby’s allies to pardon the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Bush said in a statement. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.”
Bush left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for Libby, and Bush said his action still “leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby.”
I’m almost speechless. Does this mean Bush will now be reviewing every convicted felon’s sentence to ascertain if it’s too excessive or is this something he will reserve only for his buddies? A pardon would have looked better. By commuting the sentence, he’s admitting there was a crime committed, but that Libby should for some reason be exempt from actually really being punished for it.
If he did this because he truly thought the 2 1/2-year prison sentence was excessive, why didn’t he just shorten it down to something smaller? Because it wasn’t that he felt 30 months in prison was excessive, but that he was to go to prison at all is what Bush thought was excessive.
