{"id":1353,"date":"2007-03-05T21:55:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-06T03:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/03\/wilson-admits-calling-iglesias-denies-pressuring-him\/"},"modified":"2007-03-05T21:55:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-06T03:55:00","slug":"wilson-admits-calling-iglesias-denies-pressuring-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/03\/wilson-admits-calling-iglesias-denies-pressuring-him\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilson admits calling Iglesias, denies pressuring him"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Rep. Heather Wilson<\/a>, R-N.M., admitted tonight that she called former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in October to complain about the speed of public corruption scandals, but says she didn\u2019t pressure Iglesias to issue indictments. <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

She joins Sen. Pete Domenici<\/a>, R-N.M., in admitting to the call and has a similar explanation for how it happened.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The statement was released to the Washington Post<\/a> hours before Iglesias is set to testify about allegations that the two members of Congress tried to pressure him to speed indictments in a massive public corruption probe in time to sway voters in the November 2006 election.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The Post also reported that the Senate Ethics Committee has begun a \u201cpreliminary inquiry\u201d into the allegations against Domenici.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Wilson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>, the Post reported, denied the allegations made by Iglesias. She appears to be walking a fine line: Iglesias says she pressured him to speed indictments, and she says she called to complain about the speed of investigations.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cI did not ask about the timing of any indictments and I did not tell Mr. Iglesias what course of action I thought he should take or pressure him in any way,\u201d Wilson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> said in the statement to the Post. \u201cThe conversation was brief and professional.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The Post reported that the phone calls to Iglesias \u201cappear to put (Domenici and Wilson) in conflict with congressional ethics rules, which forbid such contacts to federal agency officials regarding \u2018quasi-judiciary\u2019 investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Wilson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> said in her statement to the Post that many constituents had complained about \u201cthe slow pace of federal prosecutions\u201d in public corruption cases and was told by one constituent that \u201cIglesias was intentionally delaying corruption investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Wilson<\/st1:city><\/st1:place> told the Post she is sorry that the purpose of her call may have been \u201cmisperceived\u201d by Iglesias, but said she thought it was \u201cimportant for Mr. Iglesias to receive this information and, if necessary, have the opportunity to clear his name.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\n

Domenici said Sunday he urged the Justice Department to fire Iglesias. Wilson<\/st1:City> told the Post his firing occurred \u201cwithout input from me,\u201d and Justice officials told the newspaper they aren\u2019t aware of any contact from Wilson<\/st1:City><\/st1:place> about Iglesias.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

A prior version of this posting incorrectly reported that Wilson<\/st1:place><\/st1:City> said she had input into the firing.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., admitted tonight that she called former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in October to complain about the speed of public corruption scandals, but says she didn\u2019t pressure Iglesias to issue indictments. She joins Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., in admitting to the call and has a similar explanation for how it happened. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}