Word: legalizes
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...fight over the pardon was also a prelude to the difficult questions about justice and national security inherited by the Obama Administration: How closely should the nation examine the actions of government officials who took steps - legal or possibly illegal - to defend the nation's security during the war on terrorism? The Libby investigation, which began nearly six years ago, went to the heart of whether the Bush Administration misled the public in making its case to invade Iraq. But other Bush-era policies are still coming under legal scrutiny. Who, for example, should be held accountable...
...obstructing justice, perjury and lying to investigators. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and a $250,000 fine, a precipitous fall for a man known as the Vice President's alter ego and formerly a prestigious lawyer at a premier Washington firm. He fought the verdict, his legal bills paid by a defense fund that raised $5 million, but a federal appeals court ruled on July 2, 2007, that Libby had to report to jail...
...That meant taking up the pardon question again was, as a West Wing veteran put it later, like passing a kidney stone - for the second time. Bolten declined to take a stand, according to several associates. Instead, he lateraled the issue to Fielding, claiming that a legal, not a political, call was required. If the counsel's office decided a pardon wasn't merited, says an official involved in the discussions, everyone else would have cover with Cheney. "They could say, Our hands are tied - our lawyers said the guy was guilty." (See the top 10 unfortunate political one-liners...
...session, which was attended by the President and his top aides. He made his points in a calm, lawyerly style, saying Libby was a fall guy for critics of the Iraq war, a loyal team player caught up in a political dispute that never should have turned into a legal matter. They went after Scooter, Cheney would say, because they couldn't get his boss. But Bush pushed past the political dimension. "Did the jury get it right or wrong?" he asked...
...there was the commutation of 2007. Fielding told Bush that justice had been done in commuting Libby's harsh sentence nearly two years before. Bush had no moral obligation to do more. "You've done enough," he told the President. Presidential counselor Ed Gillespie, without passing judgment on the legal merits, told Bush a pardon would have political costs: it would be seen as an about-face or a sign that he hadn't been forthright two years earlier in declaring that a commutation was the fairest result...