Iglesias recounts a lunch with politics on the menu
Brett
>From the Los Angeles Times
Iglesias recounts a lunch with politics on the menu
The fired U.S. attorney says he was targeted for not pressing charges
that could have helped the GOP.
By Tom Hamburger
Times Staff Writer
May 19, 2007
WASHINGTON - Weeks before the 2006 midterm election, then-New Mexico
U.S. Atty. David C. Iglesias was invited to dine with a well-connected
Republican lawyer in Albuquerque who had been after him for years to
prosecute allegations of voter fraud.
"I had a bad feeling about that lunch," said Iglesias, describing his
meeting at Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen with Patrick Rogers, a lawyer
who provided occasional counsel to the New Mexico Republican Party.
When the voter fraud issue came up, Iglesias said, he explained to
Rogers that in reviewing more than 100 complaints, he hadn't found any
solid enough to justify criminal charges.
Iglesias recounted the episode in an interview with The Times after
meeting behind closed doors with federal investigators this week to
provide new details of the events leading up to his termination as
U.S. attorney. He said he now believed he was targeted because he was
seen as slow to bring criminal charges that would have helped GOP
election prospects.
Federal investigators are examining whether electoral considerations -
such as a broader Republican initiative to enforce anti-fraud rules
and cull questionable voters from rolls nationwide - played a part in
the termination of Iglesias and other U.S. attorneys last year.
The Iglesias case has attracted special attention because the Bush
administration has had difficulty defending his dismissal as being
nonpolitical, especially after Iglesias revealed that two Republican
members of Congress had called him before November's election to ask
about a corruption case against New Mexico Democrats.
Iglesias' account of the lunch meeting with Rogers, not previously
reported, raises new questions about political pressures applied to
U.S. attorneys related to voter fraud and other matters.
Rogers confirmed the lunch meeting but disputed parts of Iglesias'
account, saying Iglesias had been changing his story "depending on
what he needs to do to keep the story alive, get media attention and
write another chapter of his book."
Discussion of voter fraud
Iglesias has told reporters and investigators that he is speaking out
because his reputation has been assaulted and because political
considerations were pushed improperly into the once-sacrosanct area of
prosecutorial discretion.
"I believe the primary reason for my forced resignation is that I was
not engaged in filing criminal complaints ... in advance of the '06
election," Iglesias said in an interview after his three-hour meeting
with the Office of Special Counsel.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said, "The department
did not and would not ask for the resignation of any individual,
including Mr. Iglesias, in order to interfere with or influence a
particular prosecution for partisan political gain."
Although most of the seven other U.S. attorneys fired last year have
not complained as aggressively, the dismissals have created a cascade
of embarrassments for the department and Atty. Gen. Alberto R.
Gonzales, who faces a "no confidence" vote in the Senate next week.
This week, another fired U.S. attorney who has said he felt pressure
on voter fraud cases, John McKay of Seattle, said he thought
interference with Iglesias and other prosecutors amounted to "possible
obstruction of justice." He predicted that a criminal inquiry would be
launched. He said he felt pressure to bring voter fraud charges in his
district after a 129-vote margin put a Democratic governor into office
in Washington.
"Suffice it to say that we thoroughly investigated [the election] at
every appropriate turn. My job is to look at the evidence, and
frankly, there wasn't any evidence of a crime," McKay said.
Iglesias reached a similar conclusion after reviewing voter fraud
allegations in New Mexico.
Rogers said Iglesias had adopted the Democrats' view of election
fraud, dismissing a serious problem as the imaginings of feverish
partisans.
In fact, both major parties work assiduously to interpret election
laws in their favor, particularly in battleground states where
elections can be decided by thin margins.
Rogers, Iglesias recalled, had pressed him in 2004 and then again just
before the 2006 election to push for voter fraud convictions in the
state. Iglesias said he was so concerned about the propriety of the
preelection get-together with Rogers that he asked a colleague from
the office to join him as a witness.
Rogers, reached by telephone in Albuquerque, recalled a brief
discussion of voter fraud at the lunch, but he challenged much of
Iglesias' account.
Rogers said the primary purpose of the gathering was to discuss the
U.S. attorney's failure to move on corruption cases, not voter fraud.
Rogers also said that it was he who invited the other employee of the
office to attend and that he was presenting them with concerns of
others in law enforcement, including concerns raised in a newspaper
article that described how the FBI had finished its work on a public
corruption matter and turned it over to the U.S. attorney.
Rogers acknowledged he had challenged Iglesias in the past to review
instances of alleged voter fraud and said he was shocked that Iglesias
launched a task force on the broad issue rather than pursuing specific
cases.
'Absentee landlord'
Unbeknownst to Iglesias, a few months before that lunch, Rogers and
another Republican attorney from New Mexico, Mickey Barnett, had
complained about Iglesias at the Justice Department in Washington. The
session was arranged with the assistance of the department's then-
White House liaison, Monica M. Goodling, and an aide to White House
political strategist Karl Rove, according to e-mails released recently
by congressional investigators.
One of those they met with was Matthew Friedrich, a senior counselor
to Gonzales. Friedrich would meet again with Rogers and Barnett in New
Mexico, where, he told congressional investigators, the pair
complained about Iglesias. They made it clear "that they did not want
him to be the U.S. attorney.... They mentioned that they had
communicated that with Sen. Domenici, and they also mentioned Karl
Rove," Friedrich said, according to a transcript provided by
congressional investigators. Pete V. Domenici is a Republican U.S.
senator in New Mexico.
Iglesias has said that he believes "all roads lead to Rove" in
explaining the dismissals and that he is counting on the Office of
Special Counsel to find the truth.
That obscure office is charged with enforcing the Hatch Act, which
forbids the use of federal resources for electoral purposes, and
another law protecting military service members from discrimination.
Iglesias, who is in the Naval Reserve, says he believes his
termination violated the Hatch Act and the Uniformed Services
Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.
"I recognize the inherent power of the president to remove his people
- but he can't do it for just any reason," Iglesias said in the
interview. "There are some reasons you can't remove someone." Those
reasons include an unwillingness to cooperate with a plan to help one
political party over another, he said.
In talking with investigators, Iglesias circled back to Goodling's
handwritten notes, obtained last month by the House and Senate
Judiciary committees, which included a list of reasons for the eight
firings.
Next to Iglesias' name, she wrote: "Domenici says he doesn't move
cases" and later the words "absentee landlord." Domenici has
acknowledged calling Iglesias last fall but says he applied no
pressure. He had been upset with what he perceived as Iglesias'
inaction, and he also called Gonzales, Rove and President Bush.
Goodling's "absentee landlord" complaint, repeated later by others in
the department, galls Iglesias. The former prosecutor says his only
absence besides routine vacation was for required service - up to 45
days a year - in the Naval Reserve.
"It was absolutely irritating to have a 33-year-old noncareer Justice
Department official say these things and not do her due diligence to
check them out," he said.
He said he believed it was a breach of the law to get rid of a
prosecutor because he was completing required military service.
When the department first asked him to resign, Iglesias says he was
"content to leave quietly." But the 49-year-old, who was a model for
the character played by Tom Cruise in the movie "A Few Good Men," said
he had become increasingly irate as he learned about the pressures
that might have led to his forced resignation and as he heard the
public reasons offered to explain his departure.
Despite Justice Department denials, he insists: "There was an
illegitimate basis for their effort to remove me. It was political."