Senate ethics panel admonishes Domenici

The Senate Ethics Committee admonished Sen. Pete Domenici (N.M.) Thursday for contacting a U.S. attorney in his home state during a wide-ranging corruption probe, closing an investigation that clouded the Republican’s six-term Senate career.

{mosads}The light punishment came after the committee found “no substantial evidence” that Domenici tried to influence attorney David Iglesias when he contacted him to inquire about the status of a 2006 investigation into corruption charges on a state Democratic official. A possible indictment could have buoyed the re-election hopes of Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.). Iglesias charged that Domenici and Wilson were pressuring him to wrap up the investigation before that November’s elections, a violation of ethics rules.

In a letter to Domenici, the committee said it focused its inquiry narrowly on the phone call to Iglesias, who was one of nine U.S. attorneys later fired by the Bush administration.

The committee, which spent nearly $5,000 to send three staff members to Albuquerque in March and July last year to investigate the matter, said that Domenici’s phone call to Iglesias, in advance of an upcoming election, “created an appearance of impropriety that reflected unfavorably on the Senate.”

The Ethics Committee’s review is hardly an end to the firings of the U.S. attorneys. Both chambers are pursuing contempt of Congress charges against White House officials for refusing to testify on the matter, and the Justice Department’s inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility have launched far-reaching probes. 

Several people close to that investigation told The Hill in January that the internal inquiry was looking at a wide-range of questions, including whether senior Justice officials lied to Congress, violated the criminal provisions in the Hatch Act, tampered with witnesses preparing to testify to Congress, obstructed justice, took improper political considerations into account during the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys and created widespread problems in the department’s Civil Rights Division.

Domenici’s involvement will likely be revisited in that internal review. The senator is retiring at the end of the year, and Wilson is pursuing his seat in Congress.