NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2001

As far as Bush would go Monday about the possibility of his pardoning Clinton was to say:

"It's hard to pardon somebody who hasn't been indicted for anything. No, I wouldn't pardon somebody who has not been indicted. It doesn't make any sense."

That still left open the question of whether Bush might even consider granting clemency should Clinton, as the ex-president after Jan. 20, be indicted for any crimes committed during the eight years he has served as chief executive.

Robert W. Ray, the independent counsel now investigating Clinton, presumably for perjury in connection with the Monica Lewinsky scandal, has said he will announce shortly after Clinton leaves office whether to pursue the case against him.

Bush's comments, made during a photo opportunity in Texas, also raised another question:

How does he square his position with the fact that President Gerald R. Ford gave a blanket pardon to his predecessor, Richard M. Nixon, even though Nixon had not been indicted for any of the Watergate crimes?

Bush limited his further comments about Clinton to:

"I think we've had enough focus on the past. It's time to move forward.

"It's time to get all this business behind us, to allow the president to finish his term and let him move on and enjoy life and become an active participant in the American system."

The possibility of a presidential pardon for Clinton also brought up the issue of how such a pardon might affect the disbarment proceedings against him currently taking place in his home state of Arkansas on grounds that the president perjured himself in a federal court.

According to a story in Tuesday's issue of the Washington Times:

Joseph diGenova, a former United States prosecutor, said a pardon would not nullify those disbarment proceedings.

A pardon "obliterates a conviction" and restores a person's civil rights," diGenova said. "A disbarment is a private matter run by the state.

"The right to practice law is not a civil right. It's a privilege granted by the state."

That was concurred in by Richard W. Painter, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, who said that "a presidential pardon does not extend to an attorney disciplinary hearing."

There's also the matter of whether Clinton even wants or feels the need for a pardon.

Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, touched on that yesterday, when he said:

"President-elect Bush's position during the campaign was that President Clinton has neither asked for nor sought a pardon, and he takes President Clinton at his word."

Ordinarily a president acts on petitions for pardon, but the Constitution gives him the power to grant them regardless of whether they are requested.

Clinton is not on record as requesting or even favoring one. In fact, he has told the American Society of Newspaper Editors he's neither ashamed of his impeachment by the House of Representatives nor interested in a pardon.

He even went so far as to say he thinks he is owed an apology for having been put through the impeachment process, which ended in his not being convicted by the Senate.

"I have no interest" in a pardon, Clinton said. "I wouldn't ask for it. I don't think it would be necessary."

He added that he is "prepared to stand before any bar of justice."

Still, he has not said he would refuse a pardon.

One prominent Senate Republican, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has suggested that Bush should pardon Clinton.

"I think it would end a problem in America that needs to be ended," Hatch said Sunday. "It's time to put this to bed.

"It's time to let President Clinton fade into whatever he's going to fade into, and I just don't see keeping it alive any longer, and I don't think there's a jury in America that is going to convict President Clinton."

Back on Feb. 12, 1999, the day the Senate acquitted Clinton of impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, Rep. Henry J. Hyde, the Illinois Republican who presented the impeachment case to the upper chamber, said:

"The president has had a trial, and it is over. To follow up with an indictment and to put the president on trial would diminish the institution of the presidency and the nation in the eyes of the world."

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Clinton Scandals
Impeachment

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