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.
Why haven’t the New York Times and Washington Post been following up on the DOJ’s decision not to prosecute Richardson? The conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation wants to know. Short answer: It was never really their story.
Hans Von Spakovsky, a former Department of Justice official who blogs on the Heritage Foundation site, cites two facts in his argument that the Richardson case isn’t getting the examination needed from the two big national news outlets.
One is the quote from an anonymous source from the Associated Press piece that says, “It’s over. There’s nothing. It was killed in Washington.” The other is the letter U.S. Attorney Doug Fouratt sent to defense attorneys in the case, which said that the government’s decision not to prosecute “should not to be interpreted as an exoneration” of Richardson.
It’s not that those two big papers haven’t written about the government’s decision, but it probably hasn’t been what Von Spakovsky wanted to hear.
The New York Times did quote New Mexico Republican Party Chair quotes Harvey Yates Jr. asking in a statement, “Was this decision made contrary to the advice of experienced, nonpolitical, career prosecutors and the F.B.I.?”
The Washington Post reported that those who decided to drop the case were “career prosecutors” who “concluded that no indictment was warranted.”
The Heritage Foundation did not point out the letter sent by former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova, who said Fouratt’s letter was “stupid” and that he “should be fired” for sending it. DiGenova was a U.S. attorney under Ronald Reagan; Fouratt was promoted by George W. Bush.
At any rate, it wasn’t the New York Times or the Washington Post that followed this story most closely. We did, but we were often scooped by Bloomberg, which broke a number of stories on the scandal we call GRIPgate.
Albuquerque Journal investigative reporter Mike Gallagher drove the story hard, and this morning he had a good analysis of the tussle between right and left:
The law is pretty clear: Political contributions don’t equal bribes unless there is some strong evidence that there was more to it. The ultimate decision here was that there wasn’t a criminal case. The legal bar in these cases is high. Whether it’s too high and whether the facts here cleared that bar will be the subject of backroom debates for some time to come.
