U.S. President Donald Trump plans to pardon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby Jr., who as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney was convicted of perjury in connection with the leak of a CIA officer’s identity, a person familiar with the decision said Thursday.
Libby’s case has long been a cause for conservatives who argued that he was a victim of a special prosecutor run amok, an argument that may have resonated with the president. Trump has repeatedly complained that the special counsel investigation into possible cooperation between his campaign and Russia in 2016 has gone too far and amounts to an “witch hunt.”
Libby was convicted of four felonies in 2007 for perjury, lying to investigators and obstruction of justice during an investigation into the disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s work with the CIA. President George W. Bush commuted Libby’s 30-month prison sentence but refused to grant him a full pardon despite the strenuous requests of Cheney, a decision that soured the relationship between the two men.