Kohring sought pardon before Bush left office
Just before George Bush left office, former Rep. Vic Kohring asked the president to pardon his crimes – or at least cut short his prison sentence.
That according to a letter the longtime Valley lawmaker wrote this month to the Daily News.
"I felt my odds were greatly against me with both requests," wrote Kohring, a Republican who served 12 1/2 years before his conviction in late 2007 on bribery conspiracy and attempted extortion charges.
"But (I) needed to ask anyway, otherwise I'll always wonder if they would have been granted."
Kohring said he requested the pardon in December with a five-page letter to the White House. But in the final days of his presidency, the only prisoners Bush granted early release were a pair of former U.S. Border Patrol agents who shot a fleeing drug suspect.
For now, Kohring remains in a minimum-security prison in Taft, Calif., where he insists he never committed any crime. He is appealing his conviction.
A federal judge in May sentenced him to serve three and a half years. He is one of four former state legislators convicted in the FBI's broad public corruption investigation in Alaska.
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