Alberto Gonzales walked an absurdly fine line explaining the firing of U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias.
Some quick background: On three different occasions, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), evidently perturbed at Iglesias’ lack of haste in indicting Democrats, called Gonzales to complain about Iglesias’ handling of public corruption cases. The calls took place in September of 2005, January of 2006, and again in April of that year. Gonzales has been careful to say that they did not talk about a specific case — just public corruption cases in general (and, he added for the first time today, “voter fraud cases generally”). Gonzales has said that it was because of these calls that he was “not surprised” to see Iglesias’ name on the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired.
But under persistent questioning by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Gonzales admitted that when he visited Iglesias’ district in July of 2006, he didn’t talk with Iglesias about his handling of public corruption or voter fraud cases at all. So apparently it wasn’t such a burning issue.
And Schiff questioned Gonzales about a statement that his spokesman Brian Roehrkasse made back in March, during the media frenzy over Sen. Domenici’s October call to Iglesias. The frenzy, you’ll remember, was over a call Sen. Domenici had made to Iglesias wanting to know if Iglesias would be indicting a state Democrat on corruption charges before the election.
When addressing Domenici’s calls to Gonzales then, Roehrkasse seemed to indicate that the calls hadn’t had anything to do with a corruption case. Domenici “expressed general concerns about the performance of U.S. Attorney Iglesias and questioned whether he was up to the job,” Roehrkasse said. And “at no time” in those calls to Gonzales had the senator mentioned “this corruption case.”
But according to Gonzales’ testimony, Domenici had indeed called to complain about Iglesias’ handling of corruption cases.
So, don’t you think that Roehrkasse’s was a misleading statement? Rep. Schiff wanted to know.
Gonzales answered that “there was no mention of a corruption case” during Domenici’s calls. They talked generally about corruption cases, not about a particular case. And so: ” I don’t think that was misleading.”
