![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() To help make a decision, Bush personally asked White House lawyers to reexamine the case to see if a pardon was justified. Yet how could he tell Cheney no? How could he reject his partner of two terms on the one thing Cheney cared about most? For a man who valued loyalty above almost all else, it cut against the grain. The whole pardon process seemed corrupted to him, and now here was the ultimate insider seeking a special favor. He had long bristled at the notion of people trading on connections to win executive clemency. He brought it up again and again, to the point that the president did not want to talk with him about it anymore.īush’s gut told him no pardon, and he usually followed his gut. Lewis Libby, who was known to all as Scooter and had been convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in a case that had its roots in the origins of the Iraq War. For two months, Dick Cheney had been lobbying for a pardon for his former chief of staff, I. ![]() His vice president, the man who had been at his side through every crisis for eight tumultuous years, was pressing him as never before. The nation’s forty-third president had just days left in office, and the Decider, as he had memorably dubbed himself, was struggling with one final decision. “Yeah,” the lawyer said, “I think he did it.” Bush was sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, chewing gum, staring, and listening-in fact listening longer than usual. ![]()
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