Lewis “Scooter” Libby arrives for a hearing at the Federal Court House June 14, 2007, in Washington, D.C., to appeal his two-and-a-half-year prison term on perjury and obstruction convictions. Photo : Mark Wilson ( Getty Images )

It would be nice if the president of the United States actually saw the irony of claiming that James Comey, the former director of the FBI, is a “liar” and a “leaker” at the same time that he’s set to pardon a known liar and leaker, but Trump doesn’t get irony. He also doesn’t get the American idiom of the pot and the kettle or understand how to read and order from the healthy menu at Applebee’s.




If reports are to be believed, President Donald Trump is expected to grant a pardon to Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to then-Vice President Dick Cheney. According to CNN, Libby was convicted in 2007 for leaking the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

He would lie and claim he didn’t leak Plame’s name, but several people would testify that this wasn’t the case. In fact, they testified that Libby was out here telling everyone who would listen that Plame was, in fact, an agent with the CIA. Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison, and then-President George W. Bush commuted Libby’s jail sentence but didn’t grant him a full pardon.


I don’t know if this reported pardon, which some news sources claim is already signed by Trump, is merely a symbolic gesture, considering that Libby’s sentence was commuted shortly after it was issued. And his voting rights were restored in 2013 by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. Also, on Nov. 3, 2016, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals granted Libby’s petition for reinstatement to the D.C. Bar. So unless Libby had a restraining order keeping him 100 feet from known CIA agents, I don’t know what’s left to pardon.

CNN did pose a rather petty theory as to why Trump might be pardoning Libby right before the release of former FBI Director James Comey’s tell-all:



Libby was convicted in a case headed up by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who was named by then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey. Thursday’s pardon news came hours after excerpts surfaced from an explosive tell-all book by Comey that harshly criticizes the President. Comey was fired as FBI director by Trump last year.

This isn’t the first controversial pardon Trump has issued. Shortly after taking office, he pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is so racist that he was locked up after refusing to follow a court order to stop harassing and arresting Latinos living in Arizona.