E-mail questioning why Iglesias was ‘shy about doing his job on Madrid’ was about an FBI probe of Madrid, not the 2006 election, Wilson says
E-mails released today may appear to indicate that someone in the White House had the race between former U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., and Democratic challenger Patricia Madrid in mind when discussing former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias’ job performance in the weeks before he was fired.
But if Wilson is to be believed, the FBI was investigating Madrid at the time, and a reference to Madrid in the e-mails had to do with that probe, not the election.
The e-mail in question was sent from White House staffer Scott Jennings to White House Political Director Karl Rove on Oct. 15, 2006.
“… The US Attorney in PA has no trouble going after (former Rep. Curt) Weldon, so why should the US Attorney in New Mexico be shy about doing his job on Madrid,” it states.
The e-mail was among thousands of pages of documents released to the public today by the House Judiciary Committee following its investigation into the 2006 firings of Iglesias and several other U.S. attorneys. The committee’s chairman, John Conyers, D-Mich., said the documents, which include e-mails and transcripts of testimony from Rove and Harriet Miers, prove that “Karl Rove and his cohorts at the Bush White House were the driving force behind several of these firings, which were done for improper reasons.”
“When Mr. Iglesias said his firing was a ‘political fragging,’ he was right,” Conyers said in a news release.
In an interview, Iglesias agreed, saying Jennings’ e-mail and others in a chain started by Wilson “confirm my worst fear, that Heather wanted me to disregard my role as a law-enforcement officer and act as a political operative.”
“Heather wanted me to file a politically advantageous prosecution to help her out, but we had to stay out of politics, and they never understood that,” he said.
E-mail came the day before phone call to Iglesias
Wilson and former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R.N.M, separately called Iglesias in October 2006 to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation into the stealing of $4.2 million in taxpayer money in the metro court scandal, which involved a high-ranking Democrat. At the time, Wilson was in a tough re-election battle against Madrid that she won weeks later by fewer than 1,000 votes out of about 211,000 cast.
Iglesias alleges that Domenici and Wilson pressured him to speed indictments against former state Senate President Manny Aragon and others involved in the case in an attempt to sway voters, a charge both deny. Days after the election, Iglesias was fired.
A special prosecutor is currently investigating whether obstruction of justice or other charges should be filed against anyone involved in the U.S. attorney firings and the congressional investigations into the firings.
Wilson’s phone call, Iglesias said in the interview, came a day after she started the e-mail chain that involved Jennings on the morning of Oct. 15. Wilson’s e-mail, sent to two of her staffers and then-Domenici Chief of Staff Steve Bell, included an Associated Press article about an FBI investigation into allegations against Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania.
“FBI or those close to them are talking about public corruption cases opngoing (sic) in other states,” Wilson wrote in the e-mail.
The e-mail was forwarded to Jennings by Bell, who wrote, “Seems like other USAttorneys can do their work even in election season… And FBI has already admitted they have turned over their evidence to the USA in NM and are merely awaiting his action.”
Jennings forwarded the e-mail to Rove, along with his own message about Madrid. (To read the e-mails, click here and scroll to page 15.)
Madrid under investigation
Wilson, who is considering running for governor next year, did not immediately respond to a message sent via Facebook. But she provided a statement to the Albuquerque Journal indicating that the documents released today “confirm that I did not have any communication with the Administration concerning anything related to Mr. Iglesias’ performance before the final decision was apparently made to dismiss him.”
Wilson pointed to a letter she released in September 2008. The letter, written in response to an inquiry from James Meade in the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), states that her Oct. 15, 2006 e-mail was not related to the U.S. House race but was related to “an FBI inquiry concerning my opponent, Attorney General Patricia Madrid, which occurred while she was running for Congress in 2006.”
The letter states that the FBI asked in June 2006 for information about Madrid’s connection to the political action committee Justice for America. Earlier, Wilson, Domenici and former U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce filed a related complaint with the Federal Election Commission, the letter states.
The letter contains no other details about the probe.
From Wilson’s letter to Meade:
“The AP story on October 15, 2006 caught my eye because the FBI, or someone close to the FBI, had leaked information about an investigation of Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania to the media. I believed it was possible we would see a similar leak from law enforcement concerning Mrs. Madrid and that we could be asked by the media to comment on it.
“My staff had contingency press guidance that, if asked, we would confirm that we had received an inquiry from the FBI about Attorney General Madrid and we were cooperating with law enforcement. The recipients of my (Oct. 15, 2006) e-mail knew about the FBI inquiry and the contingency press guidance. This e-mail was intended to be a ‘heads up’ to them. “
The probe of Madrid was not revealed publicly until Wilson’s 2008 letter to Meade was released to the media, but even then the Meade letter was not widely covered by journalists.
In an interview, Madrid said she heard in 2006 from “a number of sources… that the FBI was threatening me.”
“If there was an investigation of me, I’m sure that they were put up to it by Karl Rove, Domenici and Heather Wilson. They instigated all of that,” Madrid said, adding that any allegations made against her were baseless.
“I guarantee you, if the FBI and Iglesias and Karl Rove had had anything on me, they would have used it. They didn’t. They had nothing,” she said.
A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that Wilson’s call to Iglesias came 2-3 days before the e-mail.