I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias watched Patrick Fitzgerald with a sense of what could have been Tuesday. The hard-charging Fitzgerald is the U.S. attorney whose investigation led to the arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich earlier today.
Iglesias, as many know, wound up at the center of the U.S. attorney firings that cost former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales his job and hurt the reputation of the U.S. Department of Justice.
But before that Iglesias and Fitzgerald sat on the same Department of Justice committee under former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Iglesias recalled a moment a few years back when he had just scored a guilty plea from former state Treasurer Michael Montoya and the U.S. attorney’s office was investigating former state Senate President Pro Tem Manny Aragon. Aragon eventually pleaded guilty to four charges of corruption but long after Iglesias was gone.
“I actually talked to Pat Fitzgerald during the Manny Aragon situation — I didn’t tell him details,” Iglesias recalled in an interview Tuesday afternoon. “His comment was really telling. He said it doesn’t get any better than this for a prosecutor.”
Iglesias obviously never got to see the Aragon situation through.
Iglesias was fired after top Republicans in New Mexico complained to the White House and to top Justice Department officials about how the U.S. attorney’s office in New Mexico was mishandling voter fraud investigations. They also complained about that he was moving too slowly on corruption investigations.
A recent Department of Justice report severely criticized how the department handled the U.S. attorney firings in 2006. Iglesias’ firing alone received its own 50-page chapter, the longest for any U.S. attorney fired. Also coming in for criticism were U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson and U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, both R-N.M., whose calls to Justice officials to complain about Iglesias were cited as the primary reason for Iglesias’ removal in the report.
“I just wish they would have let me do my job,” Iglesias said of those who had complained about the slowness of his prosecution of Aragon. “When you have these types of investigations you have to cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i.’”
