Valerie Plame, the former CIA operative at the center of the case against a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, said Friday morning that President Donald Trump’s impending decision to pardon the aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was about no one but Donald Trump.
“This is definitely not about me. It’s absolutely not about Scooter Libby. This is about Donald Trump and his future,” she said Friday appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “What he’s putting out there is the idea that you can pardon people for serious crimes against national security. I think he has an audience of three, perhaps more. That would be Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner.”
She said the “message” being sent is “you can commit perjury and I will pardon you if it protects me and I deem that you are loyal to me.”
The White House announced Friday afternoon that Trump had pardoned Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff who was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI in 2007. The conviction stemmed from a probe into the leak of the identity of Plame, who had been working for the CIA as an undercover agent overseas. Plame was married to Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador and a critic of the George W. Bush administration’s case for the war in Iraq. Libby was never charged with leaking Plame’s name to the press.
Plame drew parallels between Libby’s case and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 election, claiming Trump was attempting to send a message to Flynn and Manafort about his pardoning power as president.
Watch a clip of the interview below:
