Did somebody get to New Mexico GOP Chairman Allen Weh after the McClatchy scoop broke last night?
Here’s what Weh told McClatchy:
In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.
“Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?” Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.
“He’s gone,” Rove said, according to Weh.
“I probably said something close to ‘Hallelujah,'” said Weh.
Here’s what Weh subsequently told the AP:
Weh told The Associated Press later Saturday that “Rove has little or nothing to do with this.”
“This is a personnel action, firing an incompetent United States attorney who should have been fired” earlier, Weh told the AP. “He absolutely was a disgrace to the Department of Justice.”
He said his conversation at the White House with Rove came “after the fact, after the termination had occurred.”
“When I talked to Karl it was at a White House briefing for state party chairmen after a reception the day before,” Weh told the AP. “The termination had already occurred.”
Nothing to see here, folks, now move along.
But when you get right down to it, reading the two pieces side by side, Weh isn’t saying much different. He’s simply trying to spin the conclusion you should draw from what he’s saying.
Did the AP ask Weh whether he had heard from the White House after the McClatchy piece broke, or did Weh figure it out on his own?
