Off Scott-Free
One of the lower profile parts of the US Attorneys scandal which was in the news awhile ago was the role of Pete Domenici, the republican Senator from New Mexico. We all know about how Alberto Gonzales worked as a loyal Bushie to politicize the Justice Department. We know how Karl Rove worked to install croneys there, and at all Federal government agencies, and use them to republican political advantage. What many people are not aware is that one of the incidents which started the whole ball rolling of getting this in the news was when Sen. Domenici directly called a US Attorney, and pressured him to begin a bogus investigation of Democratic politician in the middle of an election.
One would think that this is really, really, a criminal abuse of power. A sitting Senator, directly calls a US Attorney, and puts major pressure on him to use the courts to smear an opponent. No real question right? Well, in this topsy-turvey Bush black is white and white is black world, you'd be wrong...
Ooh, that must sting. For ringing up his state's U.S. attorney at bedtime to interrogate him about whether that high-profile corruption case against a prominent state Democrat will result in an indictment before the election, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) has been branded with the dreaded QA: that's right, qualified admonition.
The Senate ethics committee says it left no stone unturned in coming to this conclusion, including interviewing "current and former executive branch officials and attorneys," but that the "Committee finds no substantial evidence to determine that [Domenici] attempted to improperly influence an ongoing investigation." The key word there being "substantial."
The U.S. attorney, David Iglesias, who was of course fired a little more than a month after Domenici's call, testified that the call made him sick. And so the committee says that Domenici "should have known" better -- that such a call would create an "appearance of impropriety." But appearance of impropriety aside, maybe the good senator was just looking for an update. You know, just ringing up the local prosecutor at home to see how things are going.
