The Daily Background

As you’ll recall, one of the initial suspicious tidbits regarding the US Attorney purge scandal was the fact that the US Attorney for New Mexico, David Iglesias, had been fired after he was inappropriately contacted by GOP lawmakers, who it seemed, were pressuring him to hurry up with cases against Democrats before an election. It was unclear whether or not the particular members of Congress would get in trouble for this though.

Now, my man Jason Leopold reports that the House Ethics Committee is looking into the matter with regard to Heather Wilson (R-NM), one of the members of Congress who contacted Iglesias.

David Iglesias, the former US attorney for New Mexico who was fired last year along with eight other federal prosecutors, will testify Wednesday before the House Ethics Committee about a phone call he received from Representative Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico), who queried Iglesias about the status of public corruption cases he was pursuing in the state.
[…]
About six weeks after the telephone calls Iglesias received from Wilson and Domenici, he was fired. Justice Department officials told Iglesias his dismissal was being carried out to give someone else an opportunity to serve as US attorney. However, evidence has surfaced implying that Iglesias and other US attorneys were fired for partisan political reasons.

Wilson has publicly acknowledged that she phoned Iglesias last year to inquire about ongoing probes involving Democrats, but she disputed Iglesias’s characterization that the phone calls were meant to pressure the former US attorney to secure indictments prior to the election. Wilson also denied that her inquires played a part in Igesias’s dismissal.

Interesting. Well, we’ll see if this leads to something more than a dead end than it did with Senator Pete Domenici, who the Senate Ethics Committee called for testimony last year without any admonishment to the Senator, who is up for re-election in 2008. Still, There are signs that this investigation may be different, especially because it is the first investigation in ten years to go forward in the House Ethics Committee, which should say something at the very least.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog