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February 28, 2007

Obstruction or Simple Corruption?

T
he recently fired former U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, David Iglesias, spoke out today and -- without naming names -- suggested that he was pressured by two New Mexico lawmakers in Congress to speed up an indictment against a local Democrat in time for the past November election. No indictment was returned then or since.

The suspects are GOP Senator Pete Domenici and GOP Rep. Heather Wilson -- who was in a pretty tight race at the time.

No need to say that this administration, which fired Iglesias, will invest no time or energy in examining whether these contacts with the former U.S. Attorney were merely inappropriate or potentially criminal. See 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1503 (obstruction of justice). In fact, there may be a case to be made that if the White House, or its DOJ minions, fired Iglesias in retaliation for not playing nice with the local Repubs, then the responsible decider himself, or herself, violated or conspired to violate Section 1503. (More on that in another post.)

Certainly, Congress has been rooting around in this matter.

But what seems worth asking is whether, if the Democrat[ ] Party takes the White House in '08, a grand jury investigation will be opened to look into these firings to see if obstruction, or any other criminal offense, was committed.

Obviously, firing a U.S. Attorney for not persuading a grand jury to indict someone on the eve of an election to aid his party in retaining its Congressional advantage is nothing like lying about sex with an intern. I mean, hell, we're only talking about abusing the justice system to gain a political advantage over the opposing political party -- something that hasn't happened since . . . Nixon.

But if I were the Attorney General in '09 for a Democrat[ ] president -- or even just a lowly Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, like John Yoo was on 9/11 -- I think I'd recommend to my boss that the firing of David Iglesias be investigated. Let the chips fall where they may.

Posted by shertaugh at February 28, 2007 6:05 PM

Comments

just a heads-up. This post is linked in Mike's Blog Round Up at C&L

Looking forward to an assessment on the Obstruction issue. Amazing, eh? Who would have thought back in 2000 that we'd wondering about this factual application of the Obstruction statute in the not so distant future...

Posted by: BQ at March 1, 2007 11:55 AM