Hullabaloo

Sunday, March 11, 2007

 
Are We Clear?

by digby

Crystal.

A couple of days ago I speculated about the US Attorney purge:

This little gambit has the mark of Rove all over it. The Arkansas crony was his little house boy. He even made the mistake of defending the decisions today and drawing himself into it publicly.

It's long past time for Bush Brain to testify before congress, don't you think?

Guess what?

Report: Rove was urged to oust attorney

N.M. GOP chief says he complained about prosecutor, was told 'he's gone'

The chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party was quoted Saturday as saying he urged presidential adviser Karl Rove and one of his assistants to fire the state's U.S. attorney.

McClatchy Newspapers reported that Allen Weh said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove, asking that he be removed, and followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

"Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event.

"He's gone," Rove said, according to Weh.

"I probably said something close to 'Hallelujah,"' said Weh.

The GOP party leader made clear his dissatisfaction with Iglesias stemmed in part from his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation.

The Justice Department has said the dismissal of Iglesias and seven other U.S. attorneys was a personnel matter. White House involvement, Justice said, was limited to approving a list of replacements after the Justice Department made the decision to fire the eight.

The McClatchy story quoted Weh as saying he does not know whether Rove was involved in the firing of Iglesias or merely had been advised of the decision when the two talked at the White House.

"There's nothing we've done that's wrong," Weh told the papers. "It wasn't that Iglesias wasn't looking out for Republicans. He just wasn't doing his job, period."

[...]

Neither Rove nor the White House press office responded immediately to e-mails Saturday evening seeking reaction to the McClatchy story. A reporter left messages Saturday evening at Weh's home and cell phone numbers.

A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said last week that administration officials were aware of the impending firings and offered no objections. But Rove "wasn't involved in who was going to be fired or hired," she said.

At a speech Thursday in Arkansas, Rove said of the general flap over the firings, "My view is this is unfortunately a very big attempt by some in the Congress to make a political stink about it."

Iglesias has said he felt pressed by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., to rush indictments against Democrats before Election Day last November.

Domenici and Wilson acknowledge calling Iglesias, but deny pressuring him.

"Part of the controversy behind this is prosecutorial discretion," Iglesias told the McClatchy papers. "What that means is it's up to the sole discretion of the prosecutor in the case of how to handle the indictment and when to issue it."

In case you missed it last week, here's a little bio of Iglesias, the man whom the heroic Karl Rove axed for political reasons:

Iglesias, an evangelical Christian, was born in Panama, where his father was a missionary. His family moved to New Mexico when he was 12. After graduating from the University of New Mexico's law school, Iglesias became a Navy judge advocate general.

In 1986, he was one of three JAGs who represented Marines accused of attempted murder for a hazing incident that their lawyers argued was encouraged by commanders at Guantanamo Bay. The successful defense helped the Marines avoid serious penalties, and the case inspired the hit Broadway play "A Few Good Men" and the later film. Iglesias was not consulted during the production of the play or movie.

He left the Navy but remains a captain in the reserves. He returned to New Mexico to start a family. Iglesias left a job in the Albuquerque city attorney's office to become a White House fellow in the Clinton administration. He then returned to New Mexico and ran for state attorney general in 1998, narrowly losing.

After George W. Bush was elected president in 2000, New Mexico Republicans, led by Domenici, lobbied for Iglesias' appointment as U.S. attorney. The expectation was that he would follow up his tenure with another run for public office.

"They felt they were grooming him for a political career," said Joe Monahan, a New Mexico political blogger.

Iglesias didn't make an initial splash. "He was very quiet," Monahan said. He earned the ire of the state GOP by refusing to prosecute anyone for voter fraud after the 2004 elections, despite some Republicans' contention that 15-year-olds voted. Iglesias said he could find no federal crimes.

The highlight of his term was the prosecution of state Treasurer Robert Vigil for extortion. Though Vigil is a Democrat from a prominent New Mexico political family, Iglesias' prosecution was seen as nonpartisan and was supported by Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson. The first trial ended in a mistrial, but Vigil was convicted last year.

At the same time, New Mexico media were full of speculation about Iglesias' investigation of local Democratic politicians' involvement in the construction of an Albuquerque courthouse. That was the case that Domenici and Republican Rep. Heather A. Wilson had inquired about. The two politicians have denied they were trying to influence Iglesias.

David Campbell, a Democrat who was Albuquerque's city attorney when Iglesias worked in the office, said his friend's actions showed his character.

"As a Bush appointee he's a stellar appointment, a right-wing evangelical Christian but somebody who plays his professional life with a lot of integrity," Campbell said. "You couldn't say a bad word about the guy."

Karl Rove and his pals have systematically set out to make Republicans with integrity an endangered species.

Rove continues to be paid by the taxpayers of the United States and needs to be called to testify before congress on his role in this. I suspect that the White House will claim executive priviledge for this political henchman, but they should be forced to do that. The American people need to be reminded that they are paying for this assassin and that his boss, the president of the United States, is protecting him. It's all part of the big picture that's emerging about Republican rule.


Update: Josh Marshall wrote this, which seems to me to further make the case for Rove's involvement.

Given what we know about New Mexico and Washington state, it simply defies credulity to believe that Lam -- in the midst of an historic corruption investigation touching the CIA, the White House and major Republican appropriators on Capitol Hill -- got canned because she wasn't prosecuting enough immigration cases. Was it the cover? Sure. The reason? Please.

I'm not sure Lam would have been canned simply for prosecuting Cunningham. His corruption was so wild and cartoonish that even a crew with as little respect for the rule of law would have realized the impossibility of not prosecuting him. But she didn't stop there. She took her investigation deep into congressional appropriations process -- kicking off a continuing probe into the dealings of former Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis. She also followed the trail into the heart of the Bush CIA. Those two stories are like mats of loose threads. That's where the story lies.

Rove no longer has any policy responsibilities. He's the white house political guy, period. He failed to keep control of the congress. He has no job --- unless it is putting out all these political fires. Dirty politics has, in the end, turned out to be the only thing he is really good at.


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digby 3/11/2007 10:32:00 AM |