So let’s review where we are. For weeks now we’ve been chronicling the story of the unprecedented firings of eight US Attorneys around the country. From the outset, the pattern of firings was highly suspicious. Attracting most 
notice was the fact that one of the firees was San Diego US Attorney Carol Lam who was in the midst of what is arguably one of the most important public corruption cases in American history when she got the boot.
Today, though, the other shoe dropped — possibly one of many to come. One of the fired US Attorneys, David Iglesias of New Mexico, came forward and said he believes he was fired because he didn’t play ball and rush an indictment of a New Mexico Democrat prior to the November election.
If Iglesias got canned because he wasn’t willing to tip the scales of justice in favor of the GOP, it’s awfully hard to figure that Lam wasn’t fired for what has always seemed to be the most logical reason — because she was bagging too many corrupt Republicans and getting too deep into the CIA.
Now, when Iglesias had his news conference this morning, McClatchy reports that he said that “two members of Congress separately called in mid October to inquire about the timing of an ongoing probe of a kickback scheme and appeared eager for an indictment to be issued on the eve of the elections in order to benefit the Republicans.”
Iglesias wouldn’t name those members of Congress. But we want to know who they are.
Logic suggested we contact the three Republican members of the New Mexico congressional delegation: Reps. Pearce and Wilson and Sen. Domenici. We contacted the offices of each. Pearce denied that he was a caller. Wilson and Domenici have yet to respond.
Given the connection to the election, we’ve also contacted members of the House leadership — specifically, Reps. Blunt, Boehner, Cantor, Hastert, Reynolds and Sensenbrenner. We also called Sen. Dole. So far we’ve only heard back from Cantor, who denies being a caller.
Now, to be crystal clear, no inference should be drawn from the fact that we called these members of the leadership. It could have been any Republican member of Congress. (In theory, it could be a Democrat. But in the nature of the case that doesn’t make sense.) The leadership seemed the logical place to start since they’d be most closely involved in managing the election campaign. Same with the New Mexicans — we only called them because they’re from the state in question.
Now, it’s hard for us to place a couple hundred calls. So we’re looking for your tips and leads. Do you think you know which member of Congress might have been likely to have made those calls? If you’ve got a hunch, drop us a line and let us know. We want to smoke these folks out.
