We’re now well past the point where anyone can pretend that Iglesias wasn’t fired because he refused to use his office to advance the interests of the New Mexico Republican party by indicting Democrats. The evidence, at this point, is overwhelming and beyond dispute. Indeed, it’s not even being disputed, as you can glean pretty clearly from tomorrow’s stories in the Times and from McClatchy. Rather than continuing to deny it, state party leaders are giving on the record interviews in which they make the case for the rightness of their attempts to get Iglesias fired for not indicting enough Democrats.
Here’s the New York Times story, which begins:
The snow-dusted mesas and million-dollar adobes look enchanting as ever, but the political landscape here has shifted sharply since the Justice Department ousted a onetime Republican darling as United States attorney in New Mexico after party loyalists complained that he was not tough enough on crooked Democrats.
David C. Iglesias is the man out of a job. But political experts here are also assessing the damage to New Mexico’s two most powerful Republicans, Representative Heather A. Wilson, who won a re-election squeaker on an ethics platform in November, and the state’s six-term senior senator, Pete V. Domenici, Mr. Iglesias’s original champion and the man New Mexicans often call St. Pete.
McClatchy’s report begins:
Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state’s U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.