Home > Political Ranting > Notes on Marshall, Part I

Notes on Marshall, Part I

March 7th, 2007

Damn. There is just so much out there. Just limited to the fired US Attorney scandal, there is pre-hearings and post-hearings. Here is what Marshall reported about the scandal before the hearings started, boiled down; in the next post, what was reported on the hearings themselves.

Here Marshall points out that Domenici’s claim again Iglesias is based upon “public accounts” of Iglesias not moving on cases quickly enough, but Domenici says it’s immigration and drug cases. However, the only public account that spoke of unhappiness about Iglesias was a December 2006 Albuquerque Journal article which noted that Domenici was in trouble for not pushing more public corruption investigations–which were, in Iglesias’ case, exclusively against Democrats. But Iglesias could not move fast enough on those cases because his office was overwhelmed with immigration and narcotics cases.

Furthermore, DOJ statistics show that contrary to Domenici’s claims, Iglesias actually accelerated work on cases–increasing the number of cases his office handled, and shortening the time needed to process each case. When Iglesias took over in his office, cases took 4.6 months to finish; in 2005, Iglesias had cut that down to 3.7. Furthermore, when Iglesias took over, the had been handling 1,548 cases per year; by 2005, Iglesias had that up to 2,915, nearly double what his predecessor had accomplished. So how was Iglesias “not moving fast enough,” or not getting enough work done?

Meanwhile, Heather Wilson, in another in a series of “not my fault” apologies, now says that her “constituents” were complaining to her of the slow pace of corruption cases–but since the cases were only against Democrats, that means that Wilson is referring to partisan Republicans complaining that the US Attorney wasn’t hitting Democrats hard or fast enough for their liking. Not exactly solid grounds for dismissal.

But Iglesias was contacted by Wilson and then Domenici both within ten days, asking about the latest corruption case against a Democrat during an election season, and Iglesias says it will happen when process goes forward naturally, not when Republican politicians want it for campaign dirt. Then five weeks later Iglesias is told he’ll be canned.

Now, just before they have been called to testify in Congress, prosecutors are being threatened by the administration, which claims it will release “previously undisclosed details about the reasons they were fired.” A not-very-veiled threat that if you testify against us, we’ll smear your ass.

Meanwhile, Darryl Issa (of Recall Gray Davis fame) is trying to cover his own ass, trying to lay the groundwork for firing Carol Lam. The reason: she didn’t do enough work on border crime. However, readers of Marshall’s page note that Domenici seems to be claiming that Iglesias was fired for doing too much immigration work, so there’s yet another inconsistency. But what an inconsistency: in New Mexico, where Democrats were being prosecuted, there wasn’t enough corruption work; in California, where Republicans were being prosecuted, there was too much corruption work. Interesting division there.

But the scandal may be widening. A former federal prosecutor from Maryland says that he was forced out of his office in 2005 for investigating associates of the Republican governor’s in corruption cases; Thomas M. DiBiagio says that “There was direct pressure not to pursue these investigations.” He did not mention it earlier because he thought his was an isolated case, but is speaking now in light of new information about widespread abuse.

But there’s more, in the next post.

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  1. Tim Kane
    March 7th, 2007 at 14:36 | #1

    First I want to say, nice concise post. Also you made a nice summarization there at the end of the third paragraph from the bottom. Brilliant: where there was Republican corruption cases, there was too much work done on corruption, where there was Democratic corruption cases, there wasn’t enought work done on corruption cases. Good job, Luis

    Second: This is perhaps Talkingpointsmemos finest work to date. His first impact work was done on the Trent Lott comments supporting Strom Thurmond.

    Then, he did fundementally important work on combating Bush’s assault on Social Security. In the war of the Republican/wingnut ascendancy this was perhaps the equivalent of the battle of Britain. If Bush succeeded in dismantling Social Security, then the United States goes the way of Mexico become a oversized Banana Republic, complete with window dressing democratic institutions run by a junta of economic elite riding roughshod over the masses with the support of religious institutions. This was the breech, and Joshua Marshall and his blog site were fundementally instrumental in thwarting the republican effort.

    Now we are at the point of about 1943 in our WWII analogy of the war of the Republican ascendancy. At this point the bad guys cannot prevail in their agenda, but their still very strong – controling the Executive branch and the Judicial branch of the government, and are good for another two years in the executive branch, and much longer in the judiciary.

    And now comes his work on the US Attornies’ massacre. Here the issue was dead. The massacre was probably the last bit of nasty work done by the Bush administration before he was confronted by an opposing majority in the legislature, which they should have been anticipating, but probably, mentally, couldn’t. Now comes the landing on North Africa, and the battle of Al Alemien – as Churchill said, it was the begining of the end, but perhaps, the end of the beginning.

    This story was dead, Josh Marshall kept at it, and now there are hearings in both houses of congress. The evidence has been damning, and as you said, is beginning to spread. One small additional point, what Josh Marshall called the other foot, is what about all those U.S. attorney’s who weren’t fired? How many of them gave in to the pressure? This has three legs to it… (1) The attorney’s fired in the massacre, (2) Attorney’s fired in the past, and (3) Attorney’s that didn’t get fired because they did what the administration wanted. I wager there’s more of the latter than the former, though probably only a subset will be provable.

    Good work Luis, Great work Josh.

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