April 16, 2007

Bush Personally OK'ed Iglesias Firing

After a revealing article in the Albuquerque Journal, the "purge" scandal now goes all the way to the Prez:
No one disputes that Domenici's call to Iglesias was at best inappropriate. But there's been a lack of direct evidence that Iglesias's refusal to bow to political pressure led directly to his firing. Now we have that evidence. And it's not Kyle Sampson or even Alberto Gonzales whom Domenici went to to get sign off for Iglesias's ouster. It was right to the president. And the available evidence now points strongly to the conclusion that the final decision to fire David Iglesias came from the President of the United States.
Basically, Iglesias was under fire to dish dirt on Dems ahead of the 04 election, but refused. A week after the election, Bush told Iglesias' boss to fire him.

UPDATE: You know, reading TPM is a bit like watching a great drama unfold on your TV screen. But this is real, and it's therefore a million times better when the good guys seem to be winning.
This is curious. The day's big story... did not contain any reaction from the White House or the Department of Justice....

Sen. Domenici had a conversation about firing Iglesias with President Bush himself. That places the president at the center of the story and marks him as the likely 'decider', shall we say, in Iglesias's ouster. If there were any way for the White House to deny that such a call had occurred, they'd do it. But it's mid-Sunday evening and there hasn't been a peep. So I think we can be pretty certain that that call did take place as claimed...

It appears now that Alberto Gonzales will stand before Congress on Tuesday with all of the Administration's cover stories about the U.S. attorney purge littered around his feet like so many rejected scripts....

Late word from the White House and DOJ in response to the Albuquerque Journal article... As this close reading TPM Reader notes... You can drive a Halliburton convoy through that White House denial.
As they say, get out the popcorn. Tomorrow's Gonzales testimony is going to be interesting. I just hope the Democrats are up-to-date on the latest from TPM.

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