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Published on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 by TalkingPointsMemo

Rove Personally Pressed for Iglesias Firing

Docs Show Rove Pushed For Iglesias Firing

by Zachary Roth

Perhaps the key takeaway from the just released documents on the U.S. attorney firings is this:

Karl Rove (left) and former US attorney David Iglesias. (TPM File) Karl Rove claimed recently that he and his staff acted merely as a conduit for passing on concerns about David Iglesias. But it's now clear that Rove's office pushed from 2005 for Iglesias to be canned, and was intimately involved in the decision.

For instance, the documents show:
• In May 2005, Rove's top aide, Scott Jennings, wrote in an email: "I would really like to move forward with getting rid of" Iglesias.

• The following month, Harriet Miers wrote in an email that the White House had made a "decision" to fire Iglesias.

• A "very agitated" Rove told Miers in a 2006 phone call that Iglesias was a "serious problem and he wanted something done about it," according to Miers's testimony.

• Jennings also claimed in an October 2006 email that Iglesias had been "shy about doing his job on Madrid." That was a reference to Patricia Madrid, the Democratic challenger to Rep. Heather Wilson in 2006, and to the fact that Iglesias had declined to prosecute vote fraud claims, when doing so might have boosted Wilson's chances.

The line about merely being a conduit doesn't seem to be holding up.

 

© 2009 TalkingPointsMemo
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