Was it Heather Wilson (R-NM) who helped get US Attorney David Iglesias fired?
As we first reported earlier this afternoon, Rep. Steve Pearce, the other Republican member of Congress from New Mexico, denies he called Iglesias to nudge him to drop an indictment on a state Democrat just in time for the November election.
We called Wilson for comment at the same time. And we haven’t gotten a response. Now we learn that the Post hasn’t gotten their calls to Wilson returned either.
Now, yesterday when we reported that Iglesias had emailed a friend telling him that his firing was a “political fragging”, we picked that story up from the blog of Joe Monahan, a New Mexico politics insider.
A short time ago TPM Reader BL sent us a link to this post on Monahan’s blog from December 20th. It’s about Iglesias’s ouster, but before the fired US Attorney issue caught on nationally. And it includes this passage …
There was another angle that surfaced too. That one had ABQ GOP Congresswoman Heather Wilson egging on Justice to axe Iglesias. Was she unhappy with the Vigil prosecution that played a role in her campaign? Was she displeased that the U.S. attorney failed to come with indictments in the investigation of the construction of two Bernalillo county courthouses in time for her to use in her difficult re-election battle with Democrat Patsy Madrid? Those were the questions being posed in light of her rumored involvement in the Iglesias matter, coming as it did from reliable legal sources.
So it seems like Wilson’s meddling in this matter was at least being traded as scuttlebutt well before Iglesias made his accusations. She doesn’t seem inclined to deny was one of the two callers. And she was involved in a super tight race last Fall against Democrat Patricia Madrid.
I pretty much guarantee that Iglesias’s explosive claims are the story in all New Mexico politics today. We first called Wilson’s office just before 2 PM and we’ve placed repeated calls since then. The Post apparently get an answer either. And a staffer in Wilson’s DC office just told us that Wilson’s spokesperson, Bryce Dustman, is in the office today.
So if Dustman can deny that Wilson was one of the two members of Congress who called him, we’re all ears and we’re waiting by the phone.
