The Latest Email Dump: Growing Evidence of an Iglesias Cover-Up
by emptywheel

DOJ dumped another stash of emails while I was at YKos. Unlike the other late-in-the-scandal email dumps, this one doesn't consist primarily of emails listed on Kyle Sampson's list of withheld emails. These are new, previously unidentified emails. That's not surprising, necessarily, since this dump comes from the Deputy Attorney General's office, not the Attorney General's office (where Sampson worked). I'm curious though why this dump came when it did, since other document dumps appeared to be tied to the testimony of individuals (that is, they released the Monica-related emails before she testified, and the Miers/Taylor emails before they were scheduled to testify). In this case, the dump may be related to Paul McNulty's departure.

But I think it much more likely (since half of these emails pertain to Will Moschella, and not McNulty) that these emails are a response to HJC's interim report on the USA scandal, specifically regarding allegations relating to David Iglesias' firing.

HJC's Allegations of an Iglesias Firing Cover-Up

As I wrote when the report came out, the most incendiary allegation in the report is that DOJ conspired to keep the reasons behind David Iglesias' firing secret. It included Gonzales in this claim, but also asserted that Will Moschella and Paul McNulty may have specifically tried to cover up the actions from fall 2006 that resulted in Iglesias' firing. The report specifically alleged that Moschella and McNulty downplayed the import of an October 2006 call from Senator Domenici.



Even while Gonzales misrepresented the purpose behind some spring 2006 calls:

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 the 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.

The Emails Pertaining to an Iglesias Cover-Up

I think many--though not all (I'll come back to those)--emails in this dump are an attempt to respond to those allegations. Consider how these emails flesh out the chronology on contacts regarding Domenici and Iglesias (previously-released emails are italicized):

December 14, 2006: Email between Sampson and Goodling listing (though it is redacted) the White House's choice to replace Iglesias. Domenici is not sure of the choice.

December 19, 2006: Domenici calls McNulty; the call slip is checked off, suggesting McNulty returned the call.

December 21, 2006: Domenici Chief of Staff Steve Bell calls, first DAG McNulty, but when he learns McNulty is unavailable, he speaks to Moschella. He then calls Andrea Looney, Special Assistant to President Bush, at the White House. Emails recording these calls suggest that Bell wanted a "nonpartisan" task force on corruption. Moschella responded to that request by referring to the new USA who would be appointed.

January 8, 2007: Domenici submits four names as his choice to replace Iglesias; his top choice is either Rogers (a Republican hack instrumental in getting Iglesias fired) or Peifer

February 28, 2007, 10:17 to 11:21: Scott Jennings emails Karl Rove, Fred Fielding, Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson and others, passing on a message from Domenici's Chief of Staff Bell, that Iglesias is about to reveal the Heather Wilson and Pete Domenici complaints about his non-indictment of Aragon in fall 2006. This conversation takes place just as DOJ is preparing Will Moschella to testify before HJC. Courtney Elwood passes on that email to Goodling, Roehrkasse, Scolinos, and Hertling. At the end of the email chain, Goodling tells Roehrkasse to come upstairs to the prep room.

February 28, 2007, 12:37 to 2:47: Discussion about talking points to respond to Iglesias' allegtations. The exchange starts when Brian Roehrkasse sends his draft talking points to Elwood, Goodling, Sampson, Moschella, and Hertling. The talking points read:

• * United States Attorneys never are removed in an effort to retaliate against them or interfere with or inappropriately influence a public integrity investigation. Furthermore, in the last six years, the Department has demonstrated its extremely strong record rooting out public corruption including prosecuting a number of very high profile cases.
• * David Iglesias served since 2001 as U.S. Attorney in New Mexico and had a lengthy record from which to evaluate his performance. Our decision was based on performance-related concerns including issues associated with the overall management of the office among others during his 5 1/2 years as U.S. Attorney in New Mexico.
• * U. S. Attorneys [as directed by the U.S. Attorney Manual] are aware that all Congressional calls are to be directed to the Department of Justice's Office of Legislative Affairs and no one in the Department was aware of the specific details of the conversations between former U.S. Attorney Iglesias and members of the New Mexico Congressional delegation.
  If asked ONLY whether the main Justice Department or the White House was contacted about the performance of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias:
• * The Department is occasionally contacted about the performance of U.S. Attorney's by home-state Senators and gives those comments the appropriate consideration. However, we will not discuss specific conversations between members and the Department on these occasions.

February 28, 2007, 12:49: Elwood provides the following to Roehrkasse:

1. 1. To say USAs "never" are removed to retaliate goes beyond this Administration; remember that Nixon fired the A.G.; so we can cabin it temporally.
2. 2. Doesn't [sic] say "no one in the Department was aware of the specific details of the conversations between U.S. Iglesias and members of the New Mexico Congressional delegation," indicate that we knew of the calls generally--which supports Iglesia's [sic] claims. I'd delete that and perhaps say, if true, that there is no evidence that any calls from members were rec'd by OPA.
3. 3. I'd think hard about including that last bullet.

February 28, 2007, 12:51: Roehrkasse sends to McNulty; if there was content in the accompanying email, it is totally redacted.

February 28, 2007, 1:10: Marisa Taylor, the McClatchy reporter breaking this story, sends Roehrkasse a story on Iglesias' allegations, offering to update the story with a response form the department.

February 28, 2007, 1:26: Roehrkasse writes the clique noting he has incorporated input from Sampson, Scolinos, and Elwood. The new talking points read (changes are in bold):



February 28, 2007, 1:30: McNulty responds to previous draft asking:

Is it over the top to say that we are disappointed that David would make such an unfounded allegation (assuming he says what is being reported he will say)?

February 28, 2007, 1:54: McNulty forwards latest talking points to Bill Kelley, at the White House, noting that Iglesias has hinted there will be indictments "very soon"--thereby violating grand jury secrecy.

February 28, 2007, 2:06: After receiving a response from Kelley, McNulty responds again with an email that remains totally redacted.

February 28, 2007, 2:22: Roehrkasse provides the final talking points. Only the third bullet has changed:



February 28, 2007, 2:43, 2:47: McNulty and Kelley exchange this last set of talking points.

March 2, 2007: Nancy Scott Finan sends an email to the clique asking about a press release, signed off by the White House, describing Domenici's contacts with Alberto Gonzales. She asks for a copy for Domenici's office.

March 4, 2007: Domenici issues a statement about his contact with Iglesias and DOJ, which includes:



March 4, 2007, 4:55 to 7:03 PM: Sampson, in a panic, contacts Gonzales scheduler Andrew Beach about calls and visits Gonzales had with Domenici had in 2006. Beach comes back with meetings between Gonzales and Domenici in July 2005 and July 2006.

March 4, 2007, 7:01 PM to 7:09 PM: Brian Roehrkasse, Will Moschella, Kyle Sampson, and Tasia Scolinos discuss a statement regarding Domenici's contacts with Alberto Gonzales. Roehrkasse's draft reads:



Moschella responds twice, first suggesting Roehrkasse check with McNulty as well, and later asking,

Can we strike "public corruption?" I don't think he mentioned public corruption or any other type of case.

To which Roehrkasse responds,

Will, I'll call you in a moment.

My Analysis

Keep in mind this is still YKos cold and exhaustion impaired, so I'm going to have circle back onto these issues and do a tighter argument about them later, but here's my first impressions, which primarily relate to the February 28 and March 4 panics:

In it's evolving February 28 talking points, DOJ offers up two details:

1. 1. A flat denial that "Iglesias was asked to resign because he failed to bring an indictment over a courthouse construction contract." Given everything we've read in the last weeks about Gonzales' wild parsing about which program he was lying about, I think we can assume this is more of the same kind of parsing, an attempt to deny the specific claim without denying that Iglesias was fired because he refused to bring indictments generally. Not to mention the fact that, if the reason was also because he failed to bring voter fraud cases, this statement would be completely correct.
2. 2. The statement that: "The Department is occasionally contacted about the performance of U.S. Attorney's by home-state Senators and gives those comments the appropriate consideration. [IF PUSHED] We will not discuss specific conversations between members and the Department on these occasions."
   For the life of me, I don't know why they brought this up at all, since it invites the follow-ups about calls leading up to the firings. Though the question which the bullet is designed to answer--"whether the main Justice Department or the White House"--would fit in with a suggestion I made earlier: Much of this effort is an attempt to distract attention away from the White House, Domenici's call to which immediately preceded Iglesias' addition to the firing list. That is, by admitting that DOJ had spoken with Domenici, they were trying to distract attention from the possibility that the WH--and even George Bush--had spoken to him too. Given the centrality of discussions of Domenici to DOJ calls in the March 4 panic, I think this is what they were trying to do.

The March 4 panic seems to start on Friday, March 2, when Domenici's office asks for a statement from DOJ signed off on by the White House. There's no mention of such a statement (which would have been a Friday document dump) at TPMM, which I trust caught everything from this period of time. Which suggests something damning: The Sunday, March 4 Domenici statement was likely issued in coordination with the White House.

Which might explain the panic that sets in for Kyle Sampson, his attempt to find out when Gonzales met with Domenici ASAP. Now, somewhere, there is an email parsing wildly about meeting versus calling (I'll look for it later). Which might explain why--even after Sampson learned of the two dates Gonzales met with Domenici, including one later in 2006--he only mentioned Domenici's phone calls.

But now look at the neat spin about those phones, in January and April of 2006. Domenici says the following about them:



First, he places the contacts with DOJ much earlier, in 2004 and 2005. He admits a later contact, several months before the October 2006 call with Iglesias, in which he called for Iglesias' firing--but he doesn't say whether it was in person or via the phone. And with his spinning, he invents a reason that ties his staffing concerns to his desire to fire Iglesias, which gets him out of admitting that the call he admits to making in October 2006 about the Aragon case was the final reason behind his call to fire Iglesias.

Now compare that with Gonzales' and Moschella's testimony:



Gonzales and Moschella are talking about different dates than Domenici, closer in time to the firing. Gonzales seems to miss an interim step Domenici made in his story--to suggest that resource concerns were behind the larger concerns about performance. But Moschella apparently testified that that those resource concerns never translated into a general concern about Iglesias' performance. In other words, Moschella says those calls had nothing to do with the firing.

Finally, now look at the talking point DOJ put together on these meetings:



Now in some ways this talking point closely matches Domenici's and Gonzales' statements, in that it ties what appear to be resource issues into a performance issue implicating Iglesias. But it uses a third set of dates, even while ignoring the face-to-face meetings between Gonzales and Domenici!!

More importantly, look at how closely the events surrounding this email match Moschella's eventual testimony. In response to reading this talking point, Moschella specifically says there was no discussion of public corruption. At which point, Roehrkasse tells him he'll call to talk him through that bit, presumably because he doesn't want to do it via email. This strongly supports the claim they were engaged in a strategy of distraction. The different responses place the conversations on three different sets of dates, none of them including the face-to-face meetings, and none of them those later dates immediately preceding the firings. The general story about them only varies about the degree to which they emphasize resources with no related Iglesias performance concern (Moschella) and a specific concern about Iglesias' productivity (Gonzales and Domenici).

But for some reason, DOJ wants to include a reference to public corruption in its statement, even though no one alleges that there was a discussion of public corruption at that time. Apparently in concert, DOJ, the White House, and Iglesias Domenici appear to be trying to deny the importance of Domenici's calls (to Gonzales, but also to Rove and Bush) later in the year, by having these innocuous conversations substitute for the later ones, by using a denial about the earlier calls substitute for a denial about the later calls.

I think HJC is honing in on a cover-up, including evidence of the way the White House was centrally involved in that cover-up.

Noonan, do you know a link to the vidio stream from YK?

I would love to watch it.

Or maybe a transcript

I'll work on it once I get a few articles posted.