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Bush facing flood of pardon requests
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Other pre-emptive pardons
Others to be pre-emptively pardoned might include advisers — Gonzales or other Bush administration lawyers, for example — who sanctioned potentially illegal policies or lied to Congress about them.
"If President Bush were to pardon key individuals involved in the misdeeds of his administration, from warrantless wiretapping to torture to the firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons, the courts would be unable to address criminality, or pass judgment on the legality of some of the president's worst abuses," Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., wrote in a Nov. 20 op-ed for Salon.com. "Issuing such pardons now would be particularly egregious, since voters just issued such a strong condemnation of the Bush administration at the ballot box."
Gonzales' lawyer, George Terwilliger, said Justice Department investigations have proved its former top boss did nothing wrong.
"As has been made clear from the results of months and months of investigation of Judge Gonzales' tenure as attorney general, there is no basis to even suggest that a pardon is needed for anything," Terwilliger said in a statement. "It is time for this to end."
Clemens is under investigation for his congressional testimony when he denied under oath that he ever used performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens was identified in former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell's report on drug use in baseball. He has maintained his innocence and filed a defamation lawsuit in January against his former trainer, Brian McNamee, who claims he injected the seven-time Cy Young award winner with steroids and human growth hormone.
Though absolute, the president's pardon power does not come without risks.
Clinton's 2001 last-day pardon to fugitive financier Marc Rich tainted Democrats who worked for him — including then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder who is now awaiting Obama's nomination to run the Justice Department.
Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, pardoned Reagan-era Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who was indicted in the Iran-Contra arms scandal. Weinberger's indictment by a special counsel days before the 1992 presidential election is believed to have contributed to Bush's defeat.
The Nixon pardon
And President Gerald Ford narrowly lost re-election in 1976 after pardoning former President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal — the most controversial pre-emptive pardon in U.S. history.
In his most high-profile official act of forgiveness so far, Bush saved I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby from serving any prison time in the case of the 2003 leak of then-CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. Libby was convicted of perjury and obstructing justice.
Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, has not applied for a full pardon, Justice spokeswoman Sweeney said.
Margaret Love, former Justice Department pardon attorney under Clinton, said Bush has never seemed interested in flexing his power to pardon, going back to his days as Texas governor.
"His has been a very sparing, very regular and very conservative use," Love said. "There's no reason to think based on the pattern of his grants to date that there are going to be any irregularities or surprises at the end of his term."
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