Posted on 04/15/2007 9:42:51 PM PDT by CedarDave
Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was fired after Sen. Pete Domenici, who had been unhappy with Iglesias for some time, made a personal appeal to the White House, the Journal has learned.
Domenici had complained about Iglesias before, at one point going to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before taking his request to the president as a last resort.
The senior senator from New Mexico had listened to criticism of Iglesias going back to 2003 from sources ranging from law enforcement officials to Republican Party activists.
Domenici, who submitted Iglesias' name for the job and guided him through the confirmation process in 2001, had tried at various times to get more white-collar crime help for the U.S. Attorney's Office— even if Iglesias didn't want it.
At one point, the six-term Republican senator tried to get Iglesias moved to a Justice Department post in Washington, D.C., but Iglesias told Justice officials he wasn't interested.
In the spring of 2006, Domenici told Gonzales he wanted Iglesias out. Gonzales refused. He told Domenici he would fire Iglesias only on orders from the president.
At some point after the election last Nov. 6, Domenici called Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and told him he wanted Iglesias out and asked Rove to take his request directly to the president.
The [subsequent] conversation between Bush and Domenici occurred sometime after the election but before the firings of Iglesias and six other U.S. attorneys were announced on Dec. 7.
Iglesias' name first showed up on a Nov. 15 list of federal prosecutors who would be asked to resign. It was not on a similar list prepared in October.
The Journal confirmed the sequence of events through a variety of sources familiar with the firing of Iglesias, including sources close to Domenici. The senator's office declined comment.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
Iglesias Had Varied Critics During Career (US Attorney ouster)
As time passed, Domenici heard complaints about Iglesias from law enforcement officials, current and former assistant U.S. Attorneys, lawyers practicing in federal court, state Republican Party leaders and some crime victims.
But how can that be? Iglesias conducted a press conference with pie charts showing how great his performance was. Oh.
Having "great numbers" on immigration, narcotics and illegal firearms prosecutions was important at the upper echelon of the Justice Department, where Iglesias' stock was relatively high.
But critics say the numbers can be deceiving.
"It doesn't matter if the case is a complicated multi-defendant conspiracy or a mule (a person transporting) carrying marijuana across the border," one federal prosecutor told the Journal. "Those cases are essentially the same when reduced to the numbers."
The temptation is to take the simpler "mule" cases over those more difficult to prosecute but that might have significant impact on drug trafficking.
I think we need to investigate the Congressional role in these firings. I want all of the emails that the Congress has.
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