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In retrospect, the U.S. attorney from New Mexico should not have been placed on the firing list, Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, said Thursday. “In hindsight, I would not have [put him on the list],” Sampson said in response to a question by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has been leading the investigation into the controversial firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year. The concession came in the last few minutes of an all-day Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Sampson faced six hours of aggressive questioning from senators on both sides of the aisle into his and other officials’ roles in the firings.Schumer was questioning Sampson on why Iglesias was not on a list of prosecutors to be fired in mid-October, but by mid-November he had been added. Sampson could not pinpoint why Iglesias ended up on the list. However, he said he was “not aware of” complaints from Republicans about Iglesias’s handling of a politically charged case “being the motivating factor” for his firing. Iglesias has argued in various public statements and in the press that his firing was politically driven. He said he felt threatened after two New Mexico members of Congress called him in mid-October to inquire about the status of an investigation into a courthouse construction project involving Democrats and whether he would bring indictments in that case before or after the election. Just weeks before last year’s election, Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), who was in the middle of the re-election fight of her life, and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) called Iglesias. Iglesias’s accounts of the calls differ from Domenici and Wilson’s accounts. The Senate Ethics Committee has opened an investigation into Domenici’s call. The House ethics committee has not indicated whether it will open its own investigation. |
