Ex-Sen. Domenici Under Increased Scrutiny in US Attorney Firings Probe

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Iglesias said he told Domenici "no."-

"I'm sorry to hear that," Domenici replied, according to Iglesias, who added that Domenici abruptly hung up the phone on him.

"I felt sick afterward . . . I felt leaned on, I felt pressured to get these matters moving," Iglesias said in testimony before a congressional committee.

Domenici was the subject of Senate Ethics Committee probe over the call he made to Iglesias about the timing of indictments, a call that the Senate Ethics Committee said created an "appearance of impropriety"- in a formal admonishment of the six-term senator.

According to last year's inspector general report on the U.S. Attorney firings, New Mexico Republican Party operative Mickey Barnett complained to former White House political adviser Karl Rove in October 2006 that Iglesias had been slow to secure an indictment against Aragon.

In March 2006, a newspaper article identified Aragon as the target of the probe.

In an e-mail to Rove on Oct. 2, 2006, Barnett sent a copy of another article published the same day in the Albuquerque Tribune that had identified Aragon as the target of the corruption probe. The article quoted an FBI spokesman as saying the probe had been completed from the standpoint of local federal law enforcement and turned over to Iglesias's office.

Karl,

This article confirms what I mentioned Saturday. An FBI agent told me more than six months ago that their investigation was done and been turned over to the US Attorney a long time ago. He said agents were totally frustrated with some even trying to get out of New Mexico. I can put you or anyone you designate with lawyers knowledgeable about the US Atty [sic] office--including lawyers in the office--that will show how poorly it is being run.

However, Armando Rujio, who was then the assistant U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, told Inspector General Fine's office that the Aragon investigation was far from complete, despite statements to the contrary from the local FBI spokesman published in the Albuquerque Tribune in October 2006.

Rujio said "a great deal of work remained to be done before the case would be ready to indict. Subpoenas for documents were outstanding, additional subpoenas had to be issued, witnesses remained to be interviewed."-

Rujio "told us that no one with any knowledge of the investigation would have described it as complete at that time,"- Fine's report said.

But Rujio acknowledged that O'Neal and other FBI officials in New Mexico thought the courthouse case should have been indicted right after "-the completion of a trial involving another case, and that the FBI case agents were unhappy with the [U.S. Attorney's Office] decision not to assign another prosecutor to the courthouse case after"- the end of a trial in a previous, unrelated case.

In an interview with Fine's office, Barnett said the FBI agent he referred to in his e-mail to Rove was the same agent who was handling his background investigation for the Postal Service Board of Governors.

But according to Barnett, the local FBI agent was not assigned to the courthouse case, and Barnett said the information he received did not come from anyone who had first-hand knowledge of the case.

On Oct. 4, 2006, two days after Barnett sent an e-mail to Rove, Domenici called Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty "expressing concern about Iglesias's lack of fitness for the job of U.S. Attorney,"- according to Fine's report.

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Jason Leopold is editor of the online investigative news magazine The Public Record, http://www.pubrecord.org, and the author of the National Bestseller, "News Junkie," a memoir. Visit www.newsjunkiebook.com for a preview. He is also a two-time (more...)

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