Ex-Sen. Domenici Under Increased Scrutiny in US Attorney Firings Probe

8 May 2009 // It appears that former New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici has come under increased scrutiny over his role in the politically motivated firing of the state's former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias.

In recent weeks, Nora Dannehy, the acting U.S. Attorney in Connecticut who was appointed special prosecutor last year to probe whether Bush administration officials involved in Iglesias's firing and the dismissals of eight other federal prosecutors broke any laws, interviewed Scott O'Neal, the assistant FBI special agent in charge of the Albuquerque field office, according to legal sources who requested anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding the probe.

Legal sources said Dannehy’s questions to O’Neal were “tough” and the FBI agent was left feeling “uncomfortable” at the end of the interview.

It is believed the interview centered on an alleged briefing O'Neal and his boss gave to Domenici shortly before the 2006 midterm elections regarding the status of a federal corruption probe launched in 2005 involving a prominent New Mexico Democrat and whether Iglesias intended to secure an indictment against the individual before Election Day.

Domenici had a particular interest in seeing an indictment in the corruption case filed before the elections and had, according to Iglesias, pressured him to secure one before New Mexico residents went to the polls. Legal sources said Domenici may have used information he received during the alleged briefing to make a case to White House and Justice Department officials that Iglesias should be removed as the state's U.S. Attorney.

These sources added that Domenici was allegedly told by O'Neal and another FBI special agent that they had completed the corruption probe earlier in the year and that Iglesias should have secured indictments.

Dannehy is said to be collecting evidence against Domenici that may lead to obstruction of justice charges, legal sources said, but it's unclear how the FBI's alleged briefing to the senator, if that was the substance of Dannehy's interview with O'Neal, would fit into an obstruction case.

In February, a federal grand jury empaneled by Dannehy subpoenaed the former Republican senator’s documents and had issued subpoenas to secure testimony from ex-Bush administration officials who played a role in the attorney firings.

Iglesias’s refusal to bow to pressure by Republicans to secure indictments in the corruption probe prior to the 2006 midterm election played a major role in the decision by high-ranking Justice Department officials to place him on a list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired, according to a Justice Department inspector general’s report issued last year.

The alleged briefing to Domenici about the status of the corruption probe would have required Iglesias's approval and according to his former colleagues and two Justice Department sources neither FBI agent O’Neal nor his superiors made a formal request.

The U.S. Attorney’s manual prohibits “personnel of the Department of Justice shall not respond to questions about the existence of an ongoing investigation or comment on its nature or progress, including such things as the issuance or serving of a subpoena, prior to the public filing of the document.”

Domenici’s attorney, Lee Blalack, did not return messages left for him at his Washington, D.C. law office. Iglesias, who is now prosecuting cases at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, was also unavailable for comment. O'Neal also did not return calls for comment.

In congressional testimony in March 2007, Iglesias said he received telephone calls from Domenici and then-Rep. Heather Wilson, (R-NM), in October 2006 inquiring about the timing of an indictment against former state senator Manny Aragon, a Democrat, and other Democrats who were involved in a courthouse construction project.

According to Iglesias’s testimony, Domenici called Iglesias at home and asked whether the indictments “are going to be filed before [the] November” midterm elections.

Iglesias said he told Domenici “no.”

"I'm sorry to hear that," Domenici replied, according to Iglesias, who added that Domenici abruptly hung up the phone on him.  

"I felt sick afterward . . . I felt leaned on, I felt pressured to get these matters moving," Iglesias said in testimony before a congressional committee.

Domenici was the subject of Senate Ethics Committee probe over the call he made to Iglesias about the timing of indictments, a call that the Senate Ethics Committee said created an “appearance of impropriety” in a formal admonishment of the six-term senator.

According to last year’s inspector general report on the U.S. Attorney firings, New Mexico Republican Party operative Mickey Barnett complained to former White House political adviser Karl Rove in October 2006 that Iglesias had been slow to secure an indictment against Aragon.

In March 2006, a newspaper article identified Aragon as the target of the probe.

In an e-mail to Rove on Oct. 2, 2006, Barnett sent a copy of another article published the same day in the Albuquerque Tribune that had identified Aragon as the target of the corruption probe. The article quoted an FBI spokesman as saying the probe had been completed from the standpoint of local federal law enforcement and turned over to Iglesias’s office.

Karl,

This article confirms what I mentioned Saturday. An FBI agent told me more than six months ago that their investigation was done and been turned over to the US Attorney a long time ago. He said agents were totally frustrated with some even trying to get out of New Mexico. I can put you or anyone you designate with lawyers knowledgeable about the US Atty [sic] office – including lawyers in the office – that will show how poorly it is being run.

However, Armando Rujio, who was then the assistant U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, told Inspector General Fine’s office that the Aragon investigation was far from complete, despite statements to the contrary from the local FBI spokesman published in the Albuquerque Tribune in October 2006.

Rujio said “a great deal of work remained to be done before the case would be ready to indict. Subpoenas for documents were outstanding, additional subpoenas had to be issued, witnesses remained to be interviewed.”

Rujio “told us that no one with any knowledge of the investigation would have described it as complete at that time,” Fine’s report said.

But Rujio acknowledged that O’Neal and other FBI officials in New Mexico thought the courthouse case should have been indicted right after” the completion of a trial involving another case, “and that the FBI case agents were unhappy with the [U.S. Attorney’s Office] decision not to assign another prosecutor to the courthouse case after” the end of a trial in a previous, unrelated case.  

In an interview with Fine’s office, Barnett said the FBI agent he referred to in his e-mail to Rove was the same agent who was handling his background investigation for the Postal Service Board of Governors.

But according to Barnett, the local FBI agent was not assigned to the courthouse case, and Barnett said the information he received did not come from anyone who had first-hand knowledge of the case.

On Oct. 4, 2006, two days after Barnett sent an e-mail to Rove, Domenici called Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty “expressing concern about Iglesias’s lack of fitness for the job of U.S. Attorney,” according to Fine’s report.

On Oct. 15, 2006, the report said, “Rep. Wilson sent an article to Domenici’s chief of staff, Steve Bell, noting public corruption prosecutions in states other than New Mexico.”

Bell, who is also under scrutiny by Dannehy for the role he played in Iglesias’s dismissal, “forwarded the complaint to the White House, stating that other U.S. Attorneys were able to ‘do their work in an election season.’”

“The next day Wilson called Iglesias inquiring whether he was delaying public corruption investigations,” Fine’s report noted. Ten days later, around October 26, Senator Domenici called Iglesias about the courthouse case, and asked Iglesias if an indictment would be filed “before November.”

“Several days later, on November 7, [2006], Iglesias appeared on [a] list for the first time” of U.S. Attorneys selected for dismissal. The list was sent to the White House on Nov. 15, 2006

“Yet, even before the list was transmitted, the White House had apparently been informed that Iglesias’s name had been included on it,” the inspector general’s report said.

The report noted that Domenici had phoned then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on three occasions beginning in 2005 to complain about Iglesias’s handling of the courthouse case involving Aragon and other corruption probes and Iglesias’s handling of alleged voter fraud cases.

“From September 2005 through April 2006, Senator Domenici telephoned Attorney General Gonzales on three occasions to complain about Iglesias’s performance as U.S. Attorney: on September 23, 2005, January 31, 2006, and April 6, 2006,” the inspector general’s report said.

Gonzales was vague about the substance of the calls but said it “concerned Iglesias’s handling of voter fraud and public corruption matters.”

Separately, legal sources knowledgeable about the probe, said Dannehy has already obtained “damaging” testimony from former Justice Department officials regarding Gonzales’s and McNulty’s role in the U.S. Attorney firings, specifically, testimony that suggests both men perjured themselves before Congress when testifying about the matter and were far more involved in the planning of the firings than they had previously let on.

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee two years ago, Gonzales said, “[n]ot having the confidence of the senior senator and the senior leadership in the Department was enough for me to lose confidence in Mr. Iglesias . . .”

McNulty testified before Congress in February 2007 that the prosecutor firings were "performance related," an allegation he knew to be untrue. Documents released by the Justice Department showed that Gonzales and McNulty participated in an hour-long meeting with Sampson and three other officials on Nov. 27, 2006 - about two weeks before the U.S. Attorneys were fired - to review the plan to fire them.

Fine’s report, which was prepared jointly with H. Marshall Jarrett, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, said Domenici’s refusal to be interviewed about his role in Iglesias’s dismissal “hindered” his probe.

One of the key findings of Fine’s report was that Domenici helped “engineer” iglesias’s firing via unsubstantiated complaints about his work to senior Bush administration officials, including Karl Rove, Gonzales, and McNulty.

“We concluded,” Fine’s report said, “that complaints from New Mexico Republican politicians and party activists to the White House and the Department about Iglesias’s handling of voter fraud and public corruption cases led to his removal.”

Domenici, who said he had decided to retire from the Senate because he was suffering from a brain disease known as frontotemporal lobar degeneration, or FTLD, a deterioration of brain tissue that can lead to personality changes, difficulty with speech and dementia, was named a senior fellow earlier this year with the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The organization said Domenici will "provide counsel on all [Bipartisan Policy Center] initiatives, primarily working with the National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP) focusing on nuclear and non-carbon forms of energy, and the National Transportation Policy Project (NTPP)."

According to the group's website, the center "was established in 2007 by former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George Mitchell to provide a forum where tough policy challenges can be addressed in a pragmatic and politically viable manner. We seek to develop policy solutions that make sense for the nation and can be embraced by both parties."