Bad Bushie

by digby

This is rich. From TPM:

…the White House has said that U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico was removed in part due to his handling of voter fraud complaints. That’s backed up by the numerous instances of powerful New Mexico Republicans (including Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM)) complaining to Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and President Bush about Iglesias’ decision not to prosecute certain cases of voter fraud. What does this mean? It means that Iglesias must have been lauded by the Justice Department for his handling of voter fraud cases. And not just lauded — but cited as an example for U.S. attorneys across the country. From The Washington Post:

One of the U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration after Republican complaints that he neglected to prosecute voter fraud had been heralded for his expertise in that area by the Justice Department, which twice selected him to train other federal prosecutors to pursue election crimes. David C. Iglesias, who was dismissed as U.S. attorney for New Mexico in December, was one of two chief federal prosecutors invited to teach at a “voting integrity symposium” in October 2005. The symposium was sponsored by Justice’s public integrity and civil rights sections and was attended by more than 100 prosecutors from around the country, according to an account by Iglesias that a department spokesman confirmed. Iglesias, a Republican, said in an interview that he and the U.S. attorney from Milwaukee, Steven M. Biskupic, were chosen as trainers because they were the only ones identified as having created task forces to examine allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 elections. An agenda lists them as the panelists for a session on such task forces at the two-day seminar, which featured a luncheon speech by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. According to Iglesias, the agency invited him back as a trainer last summer, just months before a Justice official telephoned to fire him. He said he could not attend the second time because of his obligations as an officer in the Navy Reserve.

I think TPM is too professional here to cut to the chase and speculate wildly. But I’m not.

The “voter fraud” issue is actually not one that the administration used as a primary excuse for the firings and for very good reason. It is the one for which Rove is most likely to have been directly interested. It has to do with his personal portfolio, after all — stealing elections. We only knew that failing to prosecute trumped up “voter fraud” is likely one of the reasons some of these people were fired because the Washington state US Attorney brought it up as a possiblity— and we know that Rove had a fetish about the issue.

This article reveals that Iglesias was a high profile “voter fraud” US Attorney who even ran a special task force to investigate the 2004 election. We know that he failed to find evidence of criminal wrongdoing — and we know that Karl wasn’t happy. Here’s what he said about New Mexico last April at that Republican National Lawyers Association meeting:

I mean, Bernalillo County, New Mexico will have a problem after the next election, just like it has had after the last two elections.

I mean, I remember election night, 2000, when they said, oops, we just made a little mistake; we failed to count 55,000 ballots in Bernalillo; we’ll be back to you tomorrow.

We did not previously know that Iglesias was a specialist in the field, which makes the interference even more damning for the administration. It’s quite clear that Rove refused to take no for an answer, even when the person who was refusing to indict was someone of impeccable credentials. That and his alleged failure to indict a Democrat before the election put him in the category of “bad Bushie.” He had to go.

Remember what Rove also said before those lawyers last spring:

Well, I learned all I needed to know about election integrity from the college Republicans.

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