Jason Leopold: Iglesias Testimony Could Damage GOP

David Iglesias, the former US attorney for New Mexico who was fired last year along with eight other federal prosecutors, will testify Wednesday before the House Ethics Committee about a phone call he received from Representative Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico), who queried Iglesias about the status of public corruption cases he was pursuing in the state.

In a brief interview Monday, Iglesias said he will testify in a closed-door session of the Ethics Committee about the call he received from Wilson last October. The committee has opened a preliminary investigation into allegations that Wilson violated House ethics rules by calling Iglesias to find out about corruption cases involving Democrats weeks before last year's midterm elections. Wilson faced a tough reelection campaign last fall.

Iglesias said he received similar inquiries last year from New Mexico's Republican senator, Pete Domenici, who is facing a separate probe by the Senate Ethics Committee. Congressional ethics rules prohibit lawmakers from contacting federal agency officials during ongoing probes. The investigation into Wilson's contacts with Iglesias marks the first time in more than a decade that the House Ethics Committee has launched an investigation of a member of Congress. The committee has been virtually inactive over the years, even as numerous Republican and some Democratic members of Congress were found to be involved in a wide range of scandals.

"The House Ethics Committee has been inactive for years; they sat silent through the Abramoff investigation, through Congressmen Bob Ney and Duke Cunningham going to jail," said Mary Boyle, communications director for the nonprofit government watchdog group Common Cause. "There has been an unspoken commitment between members of Congress: 'I won't file an ethics complaint against you if you don't file one against me.' Common Cause has been advocating for an independent Ethics Commission because Congress has proved that it cannot police itself."

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, another nonprofit government watchdog group that filed ethics complaints against WIlson sand Domenici, agreed with Boyle.

"In the past, the Congressional ethics committees have been loathe to police the conduct of members of Congress," Sloan said. "Members of Congress are still leaving it to the Justice Department to force members to behave ethically."

Iglesias testified before Congress in March that his refusal to provide Wilson and Domenici with details of his investigations played a role in his firing last December.

"I felt leaned on," Iglesias told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in March. "I felt pressure to get these matters moving."

About six weeks after the telephone calls Iglesias received from Wilson and Domenici, he was fired. Justice Department officials told Iglesias his dismissal was being carried out to give someone else an opportunity to serve as US attorney. However, evidence has surfaced implying that Iglesias and other US attorneys were fired for partisan political reasons.

Wilson has publicly acknowledged that she phoned Iglesias last year to inquire about ongoing probes involving Democrats, but she disputed Iglesias's characterization that the phone calls were meant to pressure the former US attorney to secure indictments prior to the election. Wilson also denied that her inquires played a part in Igesias's dismissal.

Iglesias testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March that he received a phone call from Wilson while he was in Washington, DC dealing with Justice Department matters. Wilson's phone call, Iglesias said, came two weeks before Domenici telephoned him at home. He said the call was brief. Wilson had started the conversation with some small-talk and then queried him about the status of sealed indictments.

"She asked me, 'what can you tell me about sealed indictments?'" Iglesias said. "The second she said any question about sealed indictments, red flags went up in my head, We specifically cannot talk about indictments until they are made public in general. It's like calling up a [nuclear] scientist ... to talk about those secret codes. The launch codes."

Iglesias said he was "evasive" and "nonresponsive" to Wilson's questions.

In an interview with Truthout in May, Iglesias said he believe a "smoking gun" exists that will lead directly to White House political adviser Karl Rove and blow the US attorney scandal wide open. News reports said Domenici had complained to Rove about Igleisas and sought Rove's assistance in having Iglesias fired.

"I believe somewhere on an RNC computer - on some server somewhere - there's an email from Karl Rove stating why we need to be axed," Iglesias said.

Iglesias said Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and perhaps other officials are likely responsible for placing his name and the names of his colleagues on a list of US attorneys to be fired purely for partisan reasons.

Iglesias added that, in addition to pressure from Domenici and Wilson, he was also pressured by Republican Party operatives to pursue individual cases of voter fraud.

He said that beginning in 2005, his office had come under pressure when a close confidant of Karl Rove had alleged there was widespread voter fraud in New Mexico. Iglesias said he had investigated those allegations tirelessly and found zero evidence to back them up. He added that, based on evidence that had surfaced thus far and "Karl Rove's obsession with voter fraud issues throughout the country," he now believes GOP operatives had wanted him to go after Democratic-funded organizations in an attempt to swing the 2006 midterm elections to Republicans.

Truthout reporter Matt Renner contributed to this story.

Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.

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