The pardon is a foregone conclusion.

Bush always says he doesn't want to interfere with the legal process. So that puts us at about June, 2008. Bush has until his last day in office in January, 2009 to issue the pardon.

Thanks to Judith Miller for delaying the case for a year, at most Libby will see one year in jail, that is if he doesn't avoid jail awaiting appeal.

The timing is perfect for pardon. It will happen shortly after the November election. I have no doubt.

So, no pardon before the appeal is decided.

It's behind the Times Select subscription wall but I quoted from it in Omertà: Taking Care Of Business? Or Burning The Bush?:

Can George W. Bush preemptively pardon himself by pardoning Libby?

It looks like he'll have to. Scooter Libby is one of those guys the old joke "We have to kill him - he knows too much" was the perfect description of. But Libby is too well known. Taking him out would be too obvious. So he has to be taken care of or his former bosses might have a vacation they'd rather not have.

A president who tries to void laws he doesn't like by encumbering them with "signing statements" and who regards the Geneva Conventions as a nonbinding technicality isn't going to start playing by the rules now. His assertion last week that he is "pretty much going to stay out of" the Libby case is as credible as his pre-election vote of confidence in Donald Rumsfeld. The only real question about the pardon is whether Mr. Bush cares enough about his fellow Republicans' political fortunes to delay it until after Election Day 2008.

Either way, the pardon is a must for Mr. Bush. He needs Mr. Libby to keep his mouth shut. Cheney's Cheney knows too much about covert administration schemes far darker than the smearing of Joseph Wilson.
...
Ever since all the W.M.D. claims proved false, the administration has pleaded that it was duped by the same bad intelligence everyone else saw. But the nuclear card, the most persistent and gripping weapon in the prewar propaganda arsenal, was this White House's own special contrivance. Mr. Libby was present at its creation. He knows what Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney knew about the manufacture of this fiction and when they knew it.

"Elitist"

someone should dig up Freddies statements on whether Susan Mcdougal should be pardoned, when she was doing time.

Also, his statements after the Mark Rich pardon.

So, does anyone know anything about the time requirement?  It's relevant because I'm thinking Bush would probably rather pardon Libby BEFORE he goes to jail because it gets this thing out of the way before the election season is at a fever pitch next year AND it throws red meat to his base that is angry with him over immigration.  And, it fits with his profile of standing by his people - especially ones that show loyalty like Libby did by protecting Cheney.  To do that he may have to ignore the time requirement and the requirement for remorse.