Fired US Attorney David Iglesias Speaks
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics, Law
The following is pretty damning. Not only because it lays out a very succinct timeline of when these firings started to take shape, but also the nature of how politically craven the justifications for the firings were.
Politics entered my life with two phone calls that I received last fall, just before the November election. One came from Representative Heather Wilson and the other from Senator Domenici, both Republicans from my state, New Mexico.Ms. Wilson asked me about sealed indictments pertaining to a politically charged corruption case widely reported in the news media involving local Democrats. Her question instantly put me on guard. Prosecutors may not legally talk about indictments, so I was evasive. Shortly after speaking to Ms. Wilson, I received a call from Senator Domenici at my home. The senator wanted to know whether I was going to file corruption charges � the cases Ms. Wilson had been asking about � before November. When I told him that I didn’t think so, he said, “I am very sorry to hear that,� and the line went dead.
A few weeks after those phone calls, my name was added to a list of United States attorneys who would be asked to resign � even though I had excellent office evaluations, the biggest political corruption prosecutions in New Mexico history, a record number of overall prosecutions and a 95 percent conviction rate. (In one of the documents released this week, I was deemed a “diverse up and comer� in 2004. Two years later I was asked to resign with no reasons given.)
Get that folks? That’s his record.
And concerning that voter fraud…
As this story has unfolded these last few weeks, much has been made of my decision to not prosecute alleged voter fraud in New Mexico. Without the benefit of reviewing evidence gleaned from F.B.I. investigative reports, party officials in my state have said that I should have begun a prosecution. What the critics, who don’t have any experience as prosecutors, have asserted is reprehensible � namely that I should have proceeded without having proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The public has a right to believe that prosecution decisions are made on legal, not political, grounds.What’s more, their narrative has largely ignored that I was one of just two United States attorneys in the country to create a voter-fraud task force in 2004. Mine was bipartisan, and it included state and local law enforcement and election officials.
After reviewing more than 100 complaints of voter fraud, I felt there was one possible case that should be prosecuted federally. I worked with the F.B.I. and the Justice Department’s public integrity section. As much as I wanted to prosecute the case, I could not overcome evidentiary problems. The Justice Department and the F.B.I. did not disagree with my decision in the end not to prosecute.
This is a public servant doing his job. And the Bush administration saw fit to fire him for faulty political reasons. True, the President can fire anybody they please at any time, but to consistently lie about the reasons to cover their own ass shows how truly cowardly they can be.
So then, what would Iglesias want to see now?
President Bush addressed this scandal yesterday. I appreciate his gratitude for my service � this marks the first time I have been thanked. But only a written retraction by the Justice Department setting the record straight regarding my performance would settle the issue for me.
I wonder if he’ll get it…
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 and is filed under General Politics, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 21st, 2007 at 11:44 am
With all of the play time this is getting, there seems to be one fact that is overlooked – these people serve at the pleasure of the president (whichever president inhabits the white house). So why aren’t we comparing this instance to when Clinton asked all of the US attorneys to resign? Let we forget, there was one that was vigorously pursuing the Whitewather issue at the time he was asked to resign. Hard to say that at least some of those were not politically motivated as well.
Bottom line – either they serve at the pleasure of the president and can be dismissed for any reason or they don’t. Which is it?
March 21st, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Bottom line – either they serve at the pleasure of the president and can be dismissed for any reason or they don’t. Which is it?
Oh, they’re fired all right. However, the issue (or fact) is that this might have been punishment for failing to procede in a specific manner on a specific case (or cases). That becomes obstruction of justice, to hold the job over your head to force you to perform in a certain manner.
March 21st, 2007 at 1:21 pm
I get so tired of hearing “Clinton fired all of them”. Correct – at the beginning of his term. So have all other presidents for the past 25 years or so, including Bush Junior. Mid-term, Clinton fired only 2. One bit a strip club dancer & the other slugged a reporter. Telling only part of the truth is lying.
As far as the investigation goes, investigations for Obstruction of Justice is very mush an issue here. Another is slander against some of the US Attorneys & lying to Congress about who did & knew what, when – another form of Obstruction of Justice, even though they were not under oath when doing so.
The claims Iglesias makes match with everything else I have read lately about the case.
March 22nd, 2007 at 6:27 pm
They got rid of this guy because they didn’t feel he was going after voter fraud. Sure it’s political – voter fraud is a much bigger issue among Republicans, and the groups that were alleged to have committed fraud in this case were left-leaning. He may not think he had much of a case, but that’s almost irrelevant – the people in power disagreed with them, and so he’s out of a job.
There was a good article in Sunday’s NYT on this – much more detailed and balanced than most of what is seen in the press. (If you hurry, you can read it before it goes into the archives: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/washington/18attorneys.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
)
Here’s the lead:
“The first whiff of something suspicious came when a 15-year-old boy received a voter registration card in the mail. Soon a second one arrived. Then his 13-year-old neighbor got one, too.
Neither boy had applied for the cards, and it looked as if their signatures and birthdates had been forged. It was August 2004, and the local authorities quickly traced the problems to a canvasser for a liberal group [ACORN] that had signed up tens of thousands of voters for the presidential election in this swing state.”
The first scandal isn’t that this guy got whacked – it’s that the administration mislead the American people as to how and why the decisions were made. The second scandal is that the administration isn’t willing to air their laundry – there is no reason why the A.G. shouldn’t be on the stand under oath. Democracy demands accountability.