Iglesiasgate: Wilson and Domenici Fingered

Iglesias-gate just got a little hotter.

Via TPM Muckraker, US Attorney David Iglesias, who was fired by the Justice Department in their purge of prosecutors, essentially fingered the members of Congress who called him and pressured him to indict a Democratic former state Senator before Election Day 2006. Until these comments, Iglesias was careful to say "members of Congress" pushed for the indictment, but gave no details. But now he has pretty much acknowledged that it was Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, which makes perfect sense.

U.S. Attorney David Iglesias on Wednesday blamed his firing on failure by his office to bring indictments in the courthouse investigation before the November elections, saying he felt that two members of Congress pressured him to do so.

After his final news conference as U.S. attorney, he confirmed to the Journal that two members of the New Mexico delegation contacted him before the election and asked when indictments would be handed up by a federal grand jury.

Iglesias said he assumes that the members of the delegation were unhappy and complained to the White House, which led to his firing.

This is the first indication that the two members of Congress were definitively from the New Mexico delegation. There are only five members of Congress from New Mexico, and two of them are Democrats. Rep. Steve Pearce's office has officially denied involvement. That leaves Domenici and Wilson, who have both refused to answer any questions on the subject. So there you go.

We all remember that Wilson was in a tough re-election fight last year against former state Attorney General Patricia Madrid, and we remember that a central issue of the race was Madrid's alleged lax attitutde toward state corruption. If the US Attorney would bring an indictment against a former state Senator right in the middle of the campaign, it would further emphasize this point and embarrass Madrid. The senior Republican official in the state is Sen. Domenici, so his involement wouldn't surprise anyone either, especially considering his trying to help save his fellow incumbent.

This is kind of a big deal. We have two members of Congress who are using their position to tamper with a federal investigation, and additionally threatening the livelihood of a federal prosecutor. IANAL, but this seems to me to be a classic obstruction of justice crime. You also have the involvement of the executive branch, who ultimately has the power to hire and fire the US Attorneys, so there needed to be some communication between the offices of Wilson and Domenici and someone either at the DoJ or the White House political shop. AND, Justice Department officials like Paul McNulty LIED TO CONGRESS about why Iglesias and the other prosecutors were fired, citing performance reviews when the reviews themselves give Iglesias high marks for his official conduct.

Pass the popcorn. This one is getting veerrry interesting. And the implications for 2008 are enormous.

Iglesiasgate

There is the makings of a major scandal in New Mexico, something that may have national significance like no other story since perhaps the outing of Valerie Plame. It comes out of the Justice Department's purge of 7 federal prosecutors. The Bush Administration has already taken a lot of flack and received a lot of attention from the US Senate from this brazen act. But today things got a little more interesting.

David Iglesias, US Attorney for New Mexico, stepped down today, and he did not go quietly. In a bombshell article by McClatchy, Iglesias claimed that he was fired for expressly political reasons. This has been alleged in most of the other firings, but what's different here is that we have the personal involvement of members of Congress.

The controversy flared up early Wednesday afternoon after David Iglesias, the departing U.S. attorney from New Mexico, told McClatchy Newspapers that he believes he was forced out because he refused to speed up an indictment of local Democrats a month before November's congressional elections.

Iglesias said that two members of Congress called separately in mid-October to inquire about the timing of a federal probe of a kickback scheme. They appeared eager, he said, for an indictment to be issued before the elections in order to benefit the Republicans. He refused to name the members of Congress because, he said, he feared retaliation.

Two months later, on Dec. 7, Iglesias became one of six U.S. attorneys who've been ordered to step down for what administration officials have called "performance-related issues." Two other U.S. attorneys also were asked to resign.

Iglesias, however, had received a positive performance review before he was fired and said that he suspected he was forced out because he resisted the pressure and didn't indict anyone before the election.

"I believe that because I didn't play ball, so to speak, I was asked to resign," Iglesias, who stepped down Wednesday, told McClatchy.

Iglesias is being a little coy. There are only three Republican members of Congress in the New Mexico delegation; Rep, Steve Pearce, Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson. One would wonder why anyone outside the state (except perhaps those involved with the Republican campaign committee) would care. Pearce has officially denied contact with Iglesias; Domenici and Wilson haven't.

And there is certainly motive for Wilson. She was involved in a very difficult race in her district this past election with former state Attorney General Patricia Madrid. The allegations that Iglesias was asked to investigate and prosecute quickly involved a kickback scheme with a former state senator. Madrid spent the previous number of years in Santa Fe, and a big issue in the campaign for her was how she "ignor(ed) corruption in the state despite her being the top law enforcement official there." An indictment before Election Day would have been a crucial blow to Madrid's hopes to beat the incumbent Wilson. And it only STARTS with Wilson. As Josh Marshall writes:

If you're a nervous member of Congress in a tight election and you're pissed you can't get any action out of Iglesias, you probably don't call the DOJ. You call the White House, specifically the political office. So who at the White House got called? And what did they do?

So this involves most of the Republican New Mexico delegation in Congress, the White House's political team, and the Justice Department who eventually meted out the punishment.

This is one of those stories that is moments away from becoming a full-fledged feeding frenzy. The Senate Judiciary Committee exploded today, particularly Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Linda Sanchez, demanding more information from the DoJ and vowing to subpoena the fired US Attorneys for more information. There will be votes in the Senate and the House as early as tomorrow. You'll recall that earlier this month, deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified to Congress that the attorneys were all fired for cause. Subsequent releases of records showed that their personnel evaluations were all positive. So you can add lying to Congress to the list of charges. Along with members of Congress tampering with federal investigations.

This will be on A10 of the WaPo tomorrow. It could hit the front page within days.