we cut out the middleman

From TPM:

Out of all the issues raised in today's Albuquerque Journal story on the Iglesias firing and any potential sourcing questions, the central fact asserted is that after Sen. Domenici's pressure call to Iglesias and before Iglesias's name appeared on the firing list, Sen. Domenici had a conversation about firing Iglesias with President Bush himself.

The ABQ Journal article has it all (minus a named source on the point and a WH denial of the charge), but the gist is so:

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) pressured US attorney David Iglesias to bring a politically charged and baseless voter “fraud” prosecution in an attempt to influence close November 2006 congressional elections. Iglesias refused.

Sometime just after the November elections, Domenici calls Gonzales, Rove, and, most importantly, President George Bush to complain about Iglesias’s recalcitrance.

David Iglesias does not show up on the (now public) list of US attorneys to be fired that was drawn up by Justice in October of 2006. Iglesias is one of the eight attorneys fired on December 7, 2006.

By law, only the President of the United States has the authority to fire a US attorney.

Is everybody with me here? President Bush made sure that Iglesias was dismissed because Sen. Domenici complained that Iglesias didn’t do enough to tamper with an election.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will be on the hot seat tomorrow when he goes to Capitol Hill to testify—and he should be properly filleted (and, soon after, removed)—but AG AG is just the middleman. In the end, it is the White House, President Bush and Karl Rove, that made these bold moves in attempt to politicize the attorneys and corrupt the electoral process.

As they say, developing. . . .