US attorney Iglesias (NM) was fired after Bush decided to accomodate Sen. Domenici

The sequence of events that put David Iglesias (U.S. attorney, New Mexico) on the list to be fired in December included a demand by six term Senator Domenici (NM- R) of Bush that he direct Gonzales to fire him. The story is reported today in the Albuquerque Journal (and is excerpted by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo.)

Alberto Gonzales thought highly of David Iglesias, and told Sen. Domenici that he would only fire Iglesia if George Bush told him to. So Sen. Domenici called Karl Rove and asked him to go to George Bush and get Iglesias fired. Karl did so, and President Bush then directed Alberto Gonzales to fire him. Iglesias was fired as part of the eight U.S. attorneys fired In December 2006.

It's clear that Iglesias was fired for not bringing indictments against Democrats just before the November 2006 election. Iglesias was unwilling to give in to the pressure from both Sen. Domenici and Rep. Wilson to bring purely political cases to indictment in the manner done by Steve Biscupic of Wisconsin.

My previous post on the David Iglesias story is here:

• Ex-New Mexico US attorney David Iglesias is not happy
  March 20, 2007

My previous posts on the Steve Biscupic story:

• US Atty Biscupic (Wisc) saved his job by prosecuting Georgia Thompson
  April 14, 2007
• Georgia Thompson was convicted by right-wing media
  April 13, 2007,
• NY Times gets it right! See editorial today.
  April 09, 2007, and
• Wisconsin US attorney rammed through fake corruption case of Democrat before last Governor's election.
  April 06, 2007.

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Addendum 12:41 PM
Josh Marshall ties up all the loose threads and tells what is important about the Iglesias firing story:

No one disputes that Domenici's call to Iglesias was at best inappropriate. But there's been a lack of direct evidence that Iglesias's refusal to bow to political pressure led directly to his firing. Now we have have that evidence. And it's not Kyle Sampson or even Alberto Gonzales who Domenici went to to get sign off for Iglesias's ouster. It was right to the president. And the available evidence now points strongly the conclusion that the final decision to fire David Iglesias. [was made by George W. Bush.]

Wilson's excuse for calling US Atty does not hold up.

New Mexico Rep. Heather Wilson (NM 01 - R) offered her excuse for why she called the United States Attorney for New Mexico David C. Iglesias just before the November election. She say it was a "heads up" to let him know that she had gotten complaints that he had "bottled up" the corruption investigation of the New Mexico State Democrats. This was just prior to the November 2006 election, when Rep. Wilson was considered one of the most endangered Republican Congresspersons running. She won by only 826 votes.

Talking Points Memo is following this quite closely and has a number of articles on both Heather Wilson and Sen. Pete Domenici (NM - R) in this case.

The Senate is holding hearing on the case of the eight fired US Attorneys tomorrow morning. Surprisingly, Sen. John Cornyn (TX - R), the ranking minority member of the Senate Ethics Committee and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee is likely to miss the hearing tomorrow. Cornyn was expected to be one of the strongest defenders of the Bush White House and its Attorney General.