The Icing Is Iglesias: His firing is reason alone for Congress to impeach Gonzales.

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By Frank Bowman
Posted Thursday, May 17, 2007, at 6:18 PM ET

~snip~ But if Congress wants more, it need look no further than the firing of David Iglesias, former U.S. attorney in New Mexico. The evidence uncovered in Gonzales' Senate and House testimony demonstrates that he fired Iglesias not because of a policy disagreement or a management failure, but because Iglesias would not misuse the power of the Department of Justice in the service of the Republican Party. To fire a U.S. attorney for refusing to abuse his power is the essence of an impeachable offense.

Iglesias is by now familiar as the former military lawyer and Tom Cruise character inspiration who drew the wrath of home-state Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M. The administration first claimed that he was dismissed for "performance-related reasons" along with the other seven fired U.S. attorneys. This is demonstrably untrue. Iglesias was appointed New Mexico's U.S. attorney in 2001, and thereafter earned a stellar reputation.

Tellingly, Iglesias wasn't included on any list of candidates to be fired drawn up by former Gonzales Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson until Nov. 15, 2006, eight days after the midterm elections. Which brings us to the real reason for Iglesias' belated inclusion in the purge: his refusal to use his office to help Republicans win at the polls. While the basic outline is familiar, the details are less so.

In 2004, New Mexico Republicans made the specter of voter-registration fraud a major campaign issue. Republican activists filed a civil lawsuit asking that first-time voters be required to present a photo ID. The case was speedily dismissed. Republicans next approached the U.S. Attorney's office with allegations of criminal voter fraud centered on the voter-registration efforts of community-organizing groups like ACORN. Iglesias announced that a bipartisan voter-fraud task force would investigate. The next day, Mickey Barnett, a former Republican national committeeman, e-mailed Iglesias to say that he should just file charges immediately—that is, before the election. ~more~

http://www.slate.com/id/2166469/nav/tap1/

via http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/05/4465_gonzo_goes_not.html

[Kagemusha]

1. Honestly they need to find evidence of actual abuse of power

not the firing of someone for refusing to conduct abuse of power.

That'd be a start. This is still a circumstantial case.

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2. Justice Dept. Is Criticized by Ex-Official on Subpoenas

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: June 1, 2006

Subpoenas issued last month to reporters for The San Francisco Chronicle were criticized yesterday by a former chief spokesman for Attorney General John Ashcroft as a "reckless abuse of power."

The former spokesman, Mark Corallo, made similar statements in an affidavit filed in federal court yesterday. He said Mr. Ashcroft's successor, Alberto R. Gonzales, had acted improperly in issuing the subpoenas.

"This is the most reckless abuse of power I have seen in years," Mr. Corallo said in an interview. "They really should be ashamed of themselves." ~snip~

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/washington/01chronicle.html?ex=1306814400&en=0ed3dcf07233d389&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

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3. Our View: Abuse of power echoes through White House

May 17, 2007 6:00 AM

The latest revelations coming from the U.S. Department of Justice show more reasons why Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez should resign.

According to testimony before Congress Tuesday, there was near mutiny in the top levels of government over the president's attempt to force the Justice Department to find that it was legal for the federal government to read international e-mails and listen to phone calls of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism.

The White House attempted to ram through reauthorization of the then-secret surveillance program while then Attorney General John Ashcroft was gravely ill and in the hospital, former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey told Congress Tuesday. ~snip~

he case is another example of the Bush administration's abuse of power, its disdain for the rule of law, its disregard for the role of Congress and its unwillingness to accept limits to its own authority. ~snip~

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070517/OPINION/705170305/-1/rss36

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4. Padilla Case Shows Abuse Of Power

Cohen: Government Has A Lot Of Explaining To Do, In And Out Of Court
Nov. 22, 2005

~snip~ Padilla may or may not be guilty of the crimes with which he has been charged or, for that matter, other crimes with which he has not been charged. But whether he is or he isn’t, the Administration’s public posture in his case has been scandalous. A U.S. citizen was captured while coming off a plane and detained for more than three years without fundamental constitutional rights.

He was accused of a particularly heinous crime, loudly and publicly, but never charged with one. And then, when the courts started to close in and seriously question his confinement, the executive branch did an about face and found a smaller case and a lesser cause and a less serious charge to indict him with.

You don’t have to be sympathetic to Padilla to acknowledge how dangerous a precedent that sets. You don’t have to be a lukewarm supporter of the government’s legal war on terror to comprehend how vulnerable that makes all of us. You don’t have to be a bleeding heart to be concerned that if it can happen once it can happen again and again and again.

Jose Padilla is a poster child all right. But he is not a poster child for home-bred jihadist terror. Instead, Padilla is a poster child for unrestrained executive branch power, exercised injudiciously, in a way that threatens us all. ~snip~

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/22/opinion/courtwatch/main1070025_page2.shtml

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5. Supporting Torture is not Gonzales' Greatest Sin

January 6, 2005
A Contempt for Civil Rights
By BRIAN J. FOLEY

Focusing on torture as the main objection to Alberto Gonzales' taking over as Attorney General distracts us from his greater sin: his attempt to give the president the power to imprison Americans incommunicado and indefinitely, without recourse to courts or lawyers. Such contempt for our civil rights shows that Gonzales cannot be trusted to protect them.

The White House, with Gonzales as legal adviser, argued for this unchecked and arbitrary power in two cases, all the way up to the US Supreme Court. Those cases concerned Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, Americans whom President Bush suspected were "enemy combatants" and threw into military prisons. Both men had no way to question the grave accusations against them.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court rejected the Administration's claim to such power last June and ordered that Hamdi be given a hearing (it avoided that issue in Padilla's case based on procedural grounds). When the government was required to prove its case against Hamdi, it released him instead, revealing that it had lacked any legitimate basis for locking him away for over two years. (Despite its lack of evidence, the government forced him to renounce his US citizenship and deported him to Saudi Arabia.)

What happened to Hamdi is outrageous. But the greater outrage is that the Administration ever argued for such power in the first place. The safeguards that the president tried to strip from us are part of the fundamental "due process" of law that our Constitution requires before the government can take our life, liberty or property. Due process is not a privilege to be given or removed at the government's behest, but a right that belongs to the citizenry, part of the bargain for delegating our powers to our government. ~snip~

http://www.counterpunch.org/foley01062005.html

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6. Alberto Gonzales Violates the Constitution - Approves .. Search of Office of a Member of Congress

Alberto Gonzales Violates the Constitution - Approves Unprecedented Search of Office of a Member of Congress

Reported by Marie Therese - May 23, 2006

Last night during FOX's On the Record host Greta van Susteren and her guests discussed the fact that Alberto Gonzalez, Attorney General of the United States and the highest law enforcer in the land, authorized a search warrant at the Rayburn House Capitol Building at 7:00 PM Saturday May 20th in violation of 218 years of separation of powers guaranteed by the Constitution.

Van Susteren and three members of her panel of lawyers - Jim Hammer, Jeff Brown and Bernie Grimm - all agreed that Alberto Gonzalez had gone too far. Both Dennis Hastert and Nancy Pelosi have condemned the action. None of the FOX News legal eagles had a problem with that part of the search warrant that authorized a search of Jefferson's home. However, van Susteren said the search of the Congressman's Capitol Hill office is the first action of its kind in the history of the Congress. ~snip~

http://www.newshounds.us/2006/05/23/alberto_gonzales_violates_the_constitution_approves_unprecedented_search_of_office_of_a_member_of_congress.php

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7. Number Of White House Officials Allowed To Intervene In DoJ Cases Jumps By 10,325 Percent

During the Clinton administration, there were just four people in the White House — the President, the Vice President, the White House Counsel, and the Deputy White House Counsel — who could participate in discussions with the Justice Department “regarding pending criminal investigations and criminal cases.” There were just three Justice Department officials authorized to talk with the White House. This arrangement was intended restrict political interference in the administration of justice.

Yesterday in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that it was important that the Justice Department “be independent from” the White House. But as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) pointed out, the firewalls that had existed during the Clinton administration have been ripped down. In the Bush administration, the rules have been rewritten so that 417 White House officials and 30 Justice Department officials are eligible to have discussions about criminal cases. ~snip~

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/20/whitehouse-gonzales/

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8. How to Handle a Lawless Attorney General

~snip~ The Congress has the power to withdraw that consent via the process of impeachment.

If Gonzales refuses to do the honorable thing and resign of his own accord, and if Bush refuses to cause his appointee to surrender control of the Department of Justice, Congress is fully empowered to force the hand of the Attorney General.

The Constitution is clear on this point. "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors," reads Section 4 of Article 2.

Congress has a rich and healthy history of withdrawing its consent and aggressively challenging lawbreaking attorneys general. In 1923, after Republican political fixer Harry Micajah Daugherty turned the Department of Justice into a den of iniquity, the great Montana populist Senator Burton K. Wheeler led progressives in a fight to bring Daugherty down for protecting the oil profiteers involved in the Teapot Dome scandal and a host of other wrongs. The Attorney General and his allies in the Department of Justice fought back by securing an indictment against Wheeler on trumped up charges, but the progressive reformers stood their ground. ~snip~

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=175382

[Kagemusha]

9. Sigh...

All right already, geez.

What you're trying to prove is not worth wasting the bandwidth of 7 posts on me. Sorry. My point was very simply that firing a US Attorney for not abusing power is pretty much totally besides the point to the actual abuse of it. But that got um, lost. Sorry.

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10. Iglesias Reveals He Filed Complaint Against Rove, Leading To Special Counsel Probe

~snip~ Iglesias said that on April 3, he filed a Hatch Act complaint with the OSC, charging that Karl Rove and others may have violated 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. Despite suggestions that the White House may have initiated the OSC investigation to obstruct parallel congressional probes, Iglesias expressed confidence in Bloch. ~snip~
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/24/iglesias-matthews/

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11. Special counsel office launches Hatch Act probe of White House

By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press April 25, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal investigative unit has launched a probe into allegations of illegal political activity within the executive branch of government, including a White House office led by President W. Bush's close adviser, Karl Rove.

The new investigation, which began several weeks ago, grew out of two other investigations still under way at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel: the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias from the state of New Mexico and a presentation by Rove aide J. Scott Jennings to political appointees at the General Services Administration on how to help Republican candidates in 2008.

``We're in the preliminary stages of opening this expanded investigation,'' Loren Smith, a spokesman for the special counsel's office, an independent investigative and prosecutorial agency, said Tuesday. ``The recent suggestion of illegal political activities across the executive branch was the basis we used to decide that it was important to look into possible violations of the Hatch Act.''

The office, led by Scott J. Bloch, enforces the Hatch Act, a 70-year-old law that bars federal employees from engaging in political activities using government resources or on government time. ~snip~

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0407/042507ap1.htm

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12. An 'Absentee' U.S. Attorney Fights Back

By Chitra Ragavan
Posted 5/17/07

Of the nine U.S. attorneys who were summarily fired last year, one who has raised some of the most troubling questions about partisan politics is David Iglesias, the federal prosecutor in New Mexico. Iglesias, who received a strong performance review and had the solid support of his boss, then Deputy Attorney General James Comey, has alleged that he was fired because he refused to file voter fraud charges against prominent Democrats before the November elections in order to help New Mexico Republicans in Congress.

Iglesias has said he received phone calls from Republicans Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson before the elections asking about the status of a case.

That's why Iglesias's three-hour meeting Wednesday with investigators from the Office of Special Counsel should be of some concern to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other Justice and White House officials involved in his dismissal. The special counsel, Scott Bloch, is charged with ensuring that federal agencies don't violate federal laws, including the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act, which prevents discrimination against military service members, and the Hatch Act, which protects federal employees from being coerced into partisan political activity. Iglesias is a captain in the Naval Reserve, where he has served for 18 years. At issue is a handwritten note by former Gonzales aide Monica Goodling, obtained by congressional investigators, describing Iglesias as an "absentee landlord" who was worth replacing.

"I had determined that the only thing Goodling could be referring to," Iglesias told U.S. News, "is my military duty." ~snip~

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070517/17iglesias.htm

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13. Iglesias speaks out about attorney firings

By LA TIMES
May 18, 2007

~snip~ The Iglesias case has attracted special attention because the Bush administration has had difficulty defending his dismissal as being nonpolitical, especially after he revealed that two Republican members of Congress had called him before November’s election to ask about a corruption case against New Mexico Democrats.

Iglesias’ account of the lunch meeting with Rogers, not previously reported, raises new questions about political pressures applied to U.S. attorneys related to voter fraud and other matters. ~snip~

This week, another fired U.S. attorney who felt pressure on voter-fraud cases, John McKay of Seattle, said he thought that the interference with Iglesias and other prosecutors amounted to “possible obstruction of justice” and predicted that a criminal inquiry would be launched. He said he felt pressure to bring voter-fraud charges in his district after a Democratic governor was elected in Washington by a 129-vote margin. ~snip~

“I recognize the inherent power of the president to remove his people — but he can’t do it for just any reason,” Iglesias said in the interview. “There are some reasons you can’t remove someone.” Those reasons include an unwillingness to cooperate with a plan to help one political party over another, he said. ~snip~

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/58711.html