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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The administration of President George W. Bush was deeply involved in the improper firings of federal prosecutors, the head of House Judiciary Committee charged on Tuesday in releasing a crush of documents. Democratic Chairman John Conyers said the materials -- more than 700 pages of transcripts of its interviews with former top Bush aides Karl Rove and Harriet Miers and 5,400 pages of e-mails by the Bush White House -- also showed the administration sought to hide its role from the public. The office of Bush, a Republican, had no comment on the development. Conyers made the...

WASHINGTON — Thousands of pages of internal e-mail and once-secret Congressional testimony showed Tuesday that Karl Rove and other senior aides in the Bush White House played an earlier and more active role than was previously known in the 2006 firings of a number of United States attorneys. Aides to former President George W. Bush have asserted that the Justice Department took the lead in the dismissals, which set off a political firestorm that lasted months. Mr. Rove played down his role in the firings in a recent interview and in closed testimony last month before Congressional investigators. But the...

The dismissal of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias in December 2006 followed extensive communication among lawyers and political aides in the White House who hashed over complaints about his work on public corruption cases against Democrats, according to newly released e-mails and transcripts of closed-door House testimony by former Bush counsel Harriet Miers and political chief Karl Rove. House Judiciary Chairman John M. Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) Tuesday characterized the role of Bush White House figures in the firing episode as improper and inappropriate. "Under the Bush regime, honest and well-performing US Attorneys were fired for petty patronage, political...

Recently retired U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici is the focus of a federal grand jury investigation of the U.S. attorney scandal, along with several Bush White House officials, according to an online report Wednesday in TPM Muckraker. However, Domenici's attorney on Wednesday denied the retired Republican senator is at the center of the investigation. "The investigation exists, but it's not focused on Senator Domenici to the exclusion of others," Washington lawyer Lee Blalack told a reporter. According to the Muckraker report, the grand jury is investigating whether Domenici and others tried to improperly press former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to bring...

Former U.S. attorney David Iglesias, who was among nine U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration in 2006, has a new job prosecuting suspected terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Iglesias has been hired as a prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions and has been reactivated in the Navy as a captain. "It's the most important work I've ever done in my 25 years as a lawyer," Iglesias said Wednesday. "Our focus is laser sharp. It's just on terrorist cases and nothing else." Iglesias' announcement of his job comes as the nascent Obama administration circulated a draft executive order...

Governor Bill Richardson says it's all a matter of timing -- that if only the feds had wrapped up a corruption investigation into his New Mexico Administration by now, he'd be cleared and would be winging his way to Washington confident of Senate confirmation as the next Commerce Secretary. Instead, he withdrew his nomination earlier this week. And maybe he's right about timing. But we'd dial the clock back not to August, as the national media have in clucking that Barack Obama has a sloppy vetting process. Rather, go back to December 7, 2006. That's the day the Bush Justice...

COMMENT FROM LIB FRIEND: "Actually if you want to know the real reason ACORN is busted, please listen to the interview of David Iglesias on Fresh Air. Iglesias was one of the US Attorney’s fired by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for political reasons. He just came out with a book discussing it. In the interview, he talks about these very type of “voter fraud” cases being timed close to an election in order to intimidate legitimate voters from poor and minority neighborhoods from voting. It was because he set up a task force made up of both republican and democrats...

President George W. Bush, Karl Rove, the former White House political adviser, both appear to have helped orchestrate the firing of former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias after receiving numerous complaints from Republican activists that the federal prosecutor did not pursue allegations of voter fraud before the 2006 midterm elections, according to a report on the U.S. Attorney purge released Monday by the Department of Justice's internal watchdog. The 356-page report is the culmination of an 18-month joint investigation by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine and the head of the agency's Office of Professional Responsibility H. Marshall Jarrett. Their...

Immunity Considered for Ex-Gonzales Aide Laurie Kellman April 17, 2007 WASHINGTON (AP) - 0415dv-fired-prosecutors The House Judiciary Committee is set to vote on whether to grant Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' former counsel immunity from prosecution and force her to testify about the firings of eight federal prosecutors. "I am hopeful we can approve immunity so that we can schedule her to testify as soon as possible and begin to clear up the many inconsistencies and gaps surrounding this matter," Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said in a statement Tuesday. A two-thirds vote of the panel is required to approve the resolution,...

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 2005, Doña Ana County District Attorney Susana Martinez had a nearly beheaded teenage corpse on a ditch bank. In 2006, Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White had a deputy dead in the East Mountains. Federal law enforcement agencies led by the FBI were there to help. But Martinez and White said they had to kick and scream to get the attention of the U.S. Attorney's Office, run by fellow Republican David Iglesias. Martinez threatened to go to the president of the United States to get help in her case. It worked, and federal prosecutors took over the drug-related kidnapping and...

Four people were indicted Thursday in an alleged kickback scheme that?s at the core of the debate over the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. Former state Senate President Pro Tem Manny Aragon, Toby Martinez, Raul Parra and Sandra Mata Martinez all face charges. The U.S. attorney?s office in Albuquerque says Marc Schiff, Ken Schultz and Manuel Guara had already entered guilty pleas in the case. Investigators say the kickbacks were related to the construction of the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Courthouse in Albuquerque. Iglesias believes he was fired as the federal prosecutor for New Mexico for resisting pressure from Senator...

Rep. Heather Wilson has long been among the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress, eking out wins in a Democratic-leaning New Mexico district because of her independent reputation and persistent campaigning. She now faces a new challenge to her future as well as her reputation: involvement in a growing political tempest over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys by the Justice Department. Wilson acknowledged Monday night that last October she contacted then-New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to inquire about the pace of a corruption probe against the state treasurer, a Democrat. But she firmly denied calling to pressure Iglesias to...

Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) has hired a top defense attorney to handle the pending ethics investigation into allegations that he pressured a federal prosecutor to bring indictments against New Mexico Democrats on the eve of the 2006 elections. Lee Blalack, who recently represented former [convicted] congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) ... said today that he has signed on as Domenici's attorney in the wake of allegations from fired U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias. Iglesias alleged that Domenici phoned him at his home and asked about a pending public corruption investigation. The Senate Ethics Committee indicated Monday that it has...

Media Credit: Pierre Roussel/iPhoto IDB President Enrique Iglesias and other officials of multilateral development banks are under increased scrutiny. Yellow police tape sealed off a sixth-floor office in the exquisite headquarters of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) just two blocks from the White House. The tape barred entry to the room, but it could not contain the horror within, where a former official of an IDB Central American office, reportedly distraught over misconduct at the multilateral development bank (MDB), had slashed throat and wrists. While doing so, say IDB insiders, the former official wrote in blood on an office...