Will the President Pardon Rove?/Conyers letter to Bush

[cal04]

Today, I wrote to the White House to ask the President to pledge that he will not pardon any Administration official indicted during the course of the Fitzgerald investigation. As some of you may recall, his father, President George H.W. Bush, issued pardons of officials under indictment in the Iran-Contra scandal. Many of my Republican colleagues, and some of my Democratic Colleagues, raise questions about the pardons issued by President Clinton during his last days in office. It would seem to me that an Administration that promised a higher standard of ethics could, at least, make this pledge.

The White House has promised its full cooperation with the investigation, but has thus far fallen woefully short of actually cooperating. In fact, thus far, their strategy has been attack, attack, attack -- most significantly on Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. I believe we will soon see attacks by the President's surrogates on every part of this investigation: the prosecutor, the Central Intelligence Agency and the press. I am afraid, if push comes to shove, a pardon will be a last ditch tactic to evade accountability.

I do not have any illusions that the President will answer my letter (as he has ignored a letter signed by more than 120 of my colleagues about the Downing Street Minutes), but the press has the power to ask the question directly, and I hope they will.The letter is here. There are several other questions I am pursuing and I will have more to say on this soon.
(Link of his letter goes to Rawstory)
http://www.conyersblog.us/default.htm

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Conyers_writes_Bush_Promise_you_wont_pardon_those_who_oute_0725.html

[mike_c]

1. request to the DU admin-- please enable a genuflecting smilie....

John Conyers deserves it.

[fob]

Seconded

[Ian David]

2. On the one hand, if Rove is pardoned...

then he will be free to testify under oath about anything without fear of incriminating himself.

In other words, he can admit to doing anything wrong that he cares to, and take-out any co-conspirator that he wishes.

By not pardoning Rove, Bush makes it very clear that if Rove testifies against others, he can still incriminate himself, and still go down with them.

Bush to Rove: You'd better keep your mouth shut, because I'm not gonna pardon you.