Amid the excitement of contempt charges and more lies from Gonzales and Mueller’s exposure of those lies, the House Judiciary Committee released a report detailing what the USA Purge investigation has found to date. I’ll do a more comprehensive review of what’s in it and what’s not. The most incendiary thing in there (although it’s not presented as such, yet) is the implication that DOJ conducted a seemingly coordinated cover-up of the reasons for David Iglesias’ firing.
You’ll recall that the first reasons given for his firing was that he was an "absentee landlord," because his reserve service and other duties took him away from the office so much that his First Assistant USA was doing his job. Later, stories of complaints from New Mexico Republicans came out–but those complaints were usually placed early in the process–in 2005. Slowly, the news of calls from Heather Wilson and Senator Domenici came out. But most of the document dumps–particularly as they pertained contacts with Alberto Gonzales–focused on those earlier contacts.
The report suggests that this focus on earlier calls may have been deliberate deception.
Other statements of concern [with regards to inaccuracy] by the Attorney General include his testimony regarding calls received from Senator Domenici in late 2005 and early 2006. The Attorney General testified that, in those calls, the Senator criticized the performance of David Iglesias, which was useful testimony for hte Administration because it suggested that Senator Domenici had concerns about Mr. Iglesias well before the controversy surrounding the 2006 election. But Department documents and testimony of other witnesses strongly indicate that the calls actually concerned the Senator’s request that more resources be provided to Mr. Iglesias’ district. Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Will Moschella, for example, was present during each of these calls and testified that he understood them all to be focused on the Senator’s concern that more resources be provided to Mr. Iglesias. Mr. Moschella further testified that the Attorney General never relayed to him that the calls were critical of Mr. Iglesias. Supporting Mr. Moschella’s recollections of the calls, the email scheduling of one of these calls states, "Senator Domenici would like to talk to the AG regarding his concerns about staffing shortages in the U.S. Attorney’s office (District of NM). And in fact, in response to the Senator’s concern, new prosecutorial resources were provided to Mr. Iglesias in July 2006. (14)