Judiciary Committee: Pardon For Rove a Cool Idea!

The House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing now into the U.S. attorney firings. Committee members’ questions to Glenn Fine, inspector general of the Justice Dept., have centered on whether Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, former top White House counsel, will ever talk to anyone about the dismissals (they didn’t cooperate with the IG report).

It appears the committee may have just stumbled upon a bipartisan solution: pardon Rove.

Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) asked Fine whether a pardon of Rove by George W. Bush would preclude Rove from testifying before the committee.

Fine gave her a quizzical look and said he hadn’t considered that hypothetical, but that, no, that shouldn’t prevent him from testifying.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) then pounced on the idea, saying that if all the committee wants is the truth, it should encourage the president to pardon Rove, and then he can talk. He compared a pardon with immunity for a witness who testifies in a criminal trial.

This is probably just a blip on the screen in the ongoing U.S. attorney scandal. But it’s interesting that Issa, a critic of the committee’s investigation, would seek out a pardon of Rove, when the “boy genius” has yet to be charged with a crime (besides contempt of Congress).

It’s also interesting that a presidential pardon of Miers and Rove is in the realm of possibility. Even Ronald Reagan didn’t pardon the key players of Iran-Contra when he left office.