--- title: Why George W. Bush Never Pardoned Scooter Libby description: President George W. Bush never pardoned Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, and it broke their relationship. canonical: https://time.com/5240027/donald-trump-scooter-libby-george-bush-pardon/ author: Massimo Calabresi article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-04-13T21:33:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:57:55.614Z article:section: Politics og:title: George W. Bush Never Pardoned Scooter Libby and It Broke His Relationship With Dick Cheney og:description: From the 2009 TIME cover story, "The Final Days of Bush and Cheney" og:url: https://time.com/5240027/donald-trump-scooter-libby-george-bush-pardon/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7da61f5c3b9fd003/69892dabbc6cfcb8d63e5aa5/bush-cheney-time.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2150 og:image:height: 1209 og:image:alt: President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: George W. Bush Never Pardoned Scooter Libby and It Broke His Relationship With Dick Cheney twitter:description: From the 2009 TIME cover story, "The Final Days of Bush and Cheney" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7da61f5c3b9fd003/69892dabbc6cfcb8d63e5aa5/bush-cheney-time.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # George W. Bush Never Pardoned Scooter Libby and It Broke His Relationship With Dick Cheney > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. 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It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf](https://time.com/author/massimo-calabresi/)  ## Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf Calabresi is TIME’s Washington bureau chief. Apr 13, 2018 9:33 PM UTC  President George W. Bush speaks to reporters during a meeting with economists in the Roosevelt Room of The White House as Vice President Dick Cheney looks on in Washington, on Jan. 30, 2004. President George W. Bush speaks to reporters during a meeting with economists in the Roosevelt Room of The White House as Vice President Dick Cheney looks on in Washington, on Jan. 30, 2004. Luke Frazza—AFP/Getty Images  by [Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf](https://time.com/author/massimo-calabresi/)  ## Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf Calabresi is TIME’s Washington bureau chief. Apr 13, 2018 9:33 PM UTC **Editor’s note:** _The following is an excerpt from the Aug. 3, 2009 TIME cover story_ [_“The Final Days of Bush and Cheney.”_](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1912414,00.html) _On Friday, President Donald Trump_ [_granted a full pardon_](http://time.com/5239612/donald-trump-scooter-libby-full-pardon/) _for I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, saying “for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly.”_ Hours before they were to leave office after eight troubled years, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney had one final and painful piece of business to conclude. For over a month Cheney had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering Bush to pardon the Vice President’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Libby had been convicted nearly two years earlier of obstructing an investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity by senior White House officials. The Libby pardon, aides reported, had become something of a crusade for Cheney, who seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship with Bush to the breaking point–and perhaps past it–over the fate of his former aide. “We don’t want to leave anyone on the battlefield,” Cheney argued.  Dick Cheney and George W. Bush on the Aug. 3, 2009, cover of TIME Cover Credit: PHOTOGRAPH BY LUKE FRAZZA/AFP/GETTY. INSETS, FROM LEFT: CBS/LANDOV; TOM GRILL/GETTY. Bush had already decided the week before that Libby was undeserving and told Cheney so, only to see the question raised again. A top adviser to Bush says he had never seen the Vice President focused so single-mindedly on anything over two terms. And so, on his last full day in office, Jan. 19, 2009, Bush would give Cheney his final decision. These last hours represent a climactic chapter in the mysterious and mostly opaque relationship at the center of a tumultuous period in American history. It reveals how one question–whether to grant a presidential pardon to a top vice-presidential aide–strained the bonds between Bush and his deputy and closest counselor. It reveals a gap in the two men’s views of crime and punishment. And in a broader way, it uncovers a fundamental difference in how the two men regarded the legacy of the Bush years. As a Cheney confidant puts it, the Vice President believed he and the President could claim the war on terrorism as his greatest legacy only if they defended at all costs the men and women who fought in the trenches. When it came to Libby, Bush felt he had done enough. But the fight over the pardon was also a prelude to the difficult questions about justice and national security inherited by the Obama Administration: How closely should the nation examine the actions of government officials who took steps–legal or possibly illegal–to defend the nation’s security during the war on terrorism? The Libby investigation, which began nearly six years ago, went to the heart of whether the Bush Administration misled the public in making its case to invade Iraq. But other Bush-era policies are still coming under legal scrutiny. Who, for example, should be held accountable in one of the darkest corners of the war on terrorism–the interrogators who may have tortured detainees? Or the men who conceived and crafted the policies that led to those secret sessions in the first place? How far back–and how high up the chain of command–should these inquiries go? ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5240027/donald-trump-scooter-libby-george-bush-pardon/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5240027/donald-trump-scooter-libby-george-bush-pardon/"},"headline":"George W. Bush Never Pardoned Scooter Libby and It Broke His Relationship With Dick Cheney","datePublished":"2018-04-13T21:33:05.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:57:55.614Z","description":"From the 2009 TIME cover story, \"The Final Days of Bush and Cheney\"","url":"https://time.com/5240027/donald-trump-scooter-libby-george-bush-pardon/","keywords":["White House","George W. 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