Retiring Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., created an appearance of impropriety when he called a federal prosecutor in New Mexico to inquire about the timing of corruption indictments, the Senate ethics committee said Thursday.

The committee criticized Domenici in a letter to the senator, but it recommended no punishment.

[...]

“The committee finds no substantial evidence to determine that you attempted to improperly influence an ongoing investigation,” the committee letter said.

“The committee does find that you should have known that a federal prosecutor receiving such a telephone call, coupled with an approaching election which may have turned on or been influenced by the prosecutor’s actions … created an appearance of impropriety that reflected unfavorably on the Senate.”

It looks like New Mexico’s senior senator is brushing the letter aside, and he’s heading on his way out anyway, but still, it’s interesting to see such strong language come out of the committee.

Iglesias’s case is in the crosshairs of all three investigations. Testifying before Congress, he alleged last year that Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) pressured him to accelerate an investigation of a Democratic politician in New Mexico ahead of Wilson’s tight reelection bid. Iglesias said he did not plan to bring charges before the November elections, and was fired in December 2006. The administration says it was not satisfied with his pursuit of voter-fraud cases.

Public records show that the Senate ethics committee spent nearly $5,000 to send three staff members to Albuquerque in March and July last year.

I’m sure Rep. Steve Pearce welcomes the news.

Yet another set of e-mails relating to the firing of the US Attorneys has been released by the DOJ. Included were some e-mails relating to David Iglesias.  The interesting of which was the “draft talking points” on why he was fired.

Still no e-mails saying why he was REALLY fired, though it has been clear for weeks politics played a very large role in his firing.

You probably recognize the right-wing talking points, but here it is when they are actually discussing it.  The e-mail is from Brian Roehrskasse to Monica Goodling, William Moschella, and Richards Hertling.  It was CC’d to Courtney Elwood, Kyle Sampson and Tasia Scolinos. You can find it on page 36 the sixth set of e-mails released last night.

You’ll have to follow the link to LP’s blog to find out what was in the e-mails (and stay tuned, LP has promised more), but here’s a teaser:

I just spoke to Kyle on the plane and have incorporated his input as well as edits from Courtney and Tasia.  The McClatchy story is below — I think it comes from an interview rather than a press conference.

Please send me you [sic] final comments now so I can begin to use these talking points.  Thanks.
DRAFT Talking Points

The House Judiciary Committee, by a vote of 32-6, just authorized a subpoena for Monica Goodling’s testimony and an offer of immunity.

As former U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias pointed out yesterday, Goodling should prove to be a very valuable witness to investigators. Since Goodling acted as the liaison to the White House at the Justice Department, communications from Karl Rove or other White House officials are likely to have gone through her. As Iglesias put it, she has “the keys to the kingdom.”

Some back info here.

Tonight on MSNBC, fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias revealed new key details about the Official of Special Counsel’s (OSC) probe into Karl Rove and other White House officials reported today by the Los Angeles Times.

Iglesias said that on April 3, he filed a Hatch Act complaint with the OSC, charging that Karl Rove and others may have broke the law by firing him over his failure to initiate partisan-motivated prosecutions. Iglesias said he subsequently spoke with OSC chief Scott Bloch, who made clear that he was planning to launch an investigation.

TPM Muckraker today had more on the investigation, which will examine Karl Rove’s involvement in several possible Hatch Act violations:

Bloch (who is, by the way, a Bush appointee) seems to have combined a host of investigations — 1) whether U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias was wrongly terminated due to his Navy reserve service, and 2) the White House’s use of RNC-issued email accounts to conduct government business, and 3) Rove’s and his deputy’s presentations to federal employees about Republican electoral prospects — into one big stew pot of wrongdoing.

Of all three, Rove’s now-infamous briefings would seem to be the most fertile investigatory ground for Bloch.

More details about Bloch were revealed this afternoon (also via TPM Muckraker):

But government watchdogs have accused Bloch himself of similar behavior. In April 2005, they and others complained the White House appointee had allowed his office to “sit on” a complaint that then-White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice used government funds to travel in support of President Bush’s re-election bid.

By contrast, they said, Bloch ordered an immediate on-site investigation of a complaint that Bush’s challenger for the White House, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., improperly campaigned in a government workplace, which had been filed around the same time.

But let’s not get distracted by Alberto Gonzales. He’s just a cog. In almost every case, what we’re talking about here is Gonzales’s willingness to take orders from the White House — most importantly from Karl Rove and President Bush — on firing US Attorneys for corrupt purposes and using the Justice Department to suppress Democratic turnout in swing states. Mr. Gonzales is a secondary issue. The real players are in the White House.

Indeed. And we still don’t have any response (that I know of) from Sen. Pete Domenici on whether he called Bush personally to complain about former US Attorney David Iglesias.

Gonzales could not recall details about his conversation with Karl Rove about voter fraud, although he testified that he did have such a conversation. He said that it covered three jurisdictions — New Mexico, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. He could not recall when or where or how it had occurred, only that it was in the fall of 2006.

He pinpointed the date of his conversation with President Bush about those same three jurisdictions as happening on October 11.

He also revealed that, when he spoke with Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) in the fall of 2005 about David Iglesias, that Domenici said that Iglesias “was in over his head.” Domenici was concerned that Iglesias didn’t have personnel for public corruption cases. Domenici never requested that Iglesias be removed, Gonzales said — he just questioned whether Iglesias was capable.

When pressed by Leahy, Gonzales could not say precisely why Iglesias was fired, nor when Iglesias’ name appeared on the list.

Heath Haussamen has more at his place:

His statements shed some light on the timeline related to Iglesias’ firing. U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., called Iglesias on Oct. 16. Iglesias alleges Wilson inquired about potential sealed indictments in the Bernalillo County Metro Courthouse investigation and pressured him to issue indictments. Wilson admits the call but says she didn’t ask about sealed indictments or pressure Iglesias.

Gonzales says the next day is the first potential day Iglesias was added to the firing list. Then Domenici called Iglesias about the case on Oct. 27. Iglesias alleges the senator also pressured him on indictments, but Domenici says that isn’t true.

UPDATE — 10:32 am: Glenn Greenwald has some interesting observations on the testimony:

…the reason some Congressional Republicans beyond this Committee have called for Gonzales’ resignation, is not because they suddenly decided that it is important that the Justice Department act ethically or that lying to Congress is a bad thing. Instead, it is because they have long disliked Gonzales because they perceive that he has been insufficiently aggressive in enforcing immigration laws — they see him as a symbol of all that they dislike in what they perceive to be the Bush administration’s lax enforcement efforts. Some of them are dissatisfied because they perceive he has been insufficiently aggressive in enforcing pornography laws.

Republican hostility towards Gonzales and even calls for his resignation are, in most (though not all) cases, motivated by pre-existing dissatisfaction that has nothing to do with the scandal in question. That is one of the ironies here — that a Republican administration that never wanted aggressive enforcement of immigraiton laws (and therefore defended its U.S. attorneys from complaints voiced by Congressional Republicans about lax enforcement) is now attempting to pretend that it fired some of these U.S. attorneys because they did not enforce the immigration laws aggressively enough.

For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush’s popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

It’s a lenghty piece, including some very interesting tidbits:

In November 2004, Arizona residents passed Proposition 200, the toughest state voter ID law to date, which requires applicants to provide proof of citizenship and voters to produce a photo ID on Election Day. The Voting Rights Act state requires states to show that such laws wouldn’t impede minorities from voting and gives the Justice Department 60 days to approve or oppose them.

Career voting rights specialists in the Justice Department soon discovered that more than 2,000 elderly Indians in Arizona lacked birth certificates, and they sought their superiors’ approval to request more information from the state about other potential impacts on voters’ rights. Spakovsky and Sheldon Bradshaw, the division’s top deputy and a close friend of top Gonzales aide Kyle Sampson, a former Bush White House lawyer, denied the request, said one of the former department attorneys.

Check the whole thing. While you’re at it, do you remember all the claims of voter fraud made by Republicans during the last few elections cycles? I’m late to the party in mentioning it, but here’s the gist:

In 2002, DOJ changed their guidelines to make it easier to prosecute voter fraud. They made it a priority to find voter fraud cases. They appointed a clean slate of U.S. Attorneys loyal to the Republican Party. They set up training classes to help prosecutors charge and win voter fraud cases. But after all that, they managed to demonstrate fraud in a grand total of only 86 cases over four years. And even then, many of the cases of confirmed fraud were simply mistakes, while virtually none of them were actually designed to affect the outcome of an election.

So in four years of concerted effort, the Bush Justice Department managed to come up with maybe half a dozen cases of actual voter fraud. In other words, two or three per election cycle. Mostly in rural districts for low-level offices. And because of this, we’re supposed to believe that it’s a high priority to spend millions of dollars on voter ID laws that plainly do nothing except make it harder for poor people to vote.

“At the request of our Ranking Minority Member, Lamar Smith, I have announced a one-week delay in the Committee vote to apply for immunity for Monica Goodling. It is my hope that a short delay, agreed to in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation, will enable the Minority to join us in taking this critical step in our efforts to uncover the truth about why the U.S. Attorneys were terminated and what it means for the integrity of federal law enforcement. I continue to believe that Ms. Goodling would be a key witness in our investigation.”

Background here.