Washington – President Bush refused to explain to Congress on Wednesday why he commuted the prison sentence of former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee chairman John Con yers, D-Mich., Bush counsel Fred Fielding said Congress had no authority to review a presidential clemency decision.
“To allow such an inquiry would chill the complete and candid advice that President Bush, and future presidents, must be able to rely upon in discharging their constitutional responsibilities,” he wrote.
The letter came in the middle of a politically charged hearing by the Judiciary panel on Bush’s move last week to erase Libby’s 2 1/2-year prison sentence. Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of obstructing justice in a federal probe of the leak of ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity.
The hearing’s star witness was her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat whose 2003 newspaper column challenging Bush’s case for the Iraq war precipitated Plame’s unmasking.
“In commuting Mr. Libby’s sentence, the president has removed any incentive for Mr. Libby to cooperate with the prosecutor. The obstruction of justice is ongoing, and now the president has emerged as its greatest protector,” Wilson testified.
Conyers argued that using the clemency power to benefit a former aide who was in a position to incriminate other administration officials was suspect.
Republicans angrily derided the hearing as a partisan stunt that could accomplish nothing.
