MTP Transcript for Mar. 25, 2007

MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: the battle over the U.S. attorneys. The Democrats vote to subpoena the White House staff. The president stands by his attorney general.

(Videotape)

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: He’s got support with me. I support the attorney general.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: This morning, exclusive interviews with two of the U.S. attorneys who lost their jobs, David Iglesias of New Mexico and John McKay of Washington state.

Then, two key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Democrats’ assistant leader, Dick Durbin of Illinois and the Republicans’ ranking committee member, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

And former basketball star and United States Senator Bill Bradley re-enters the political debate with his new book, “The New American Story.”

But first, there’s a robust debate in Washington over why eight Republican U.S. attorneys were replaced by the Bush administration. And joining us this morning are two of those attorneys, David Iglesias and John McKay.

Welcome both. I want to begin our conversation by sharing an e-mail from January of ‘05 from the chief of staff to the attorney general, and it says, “We would like to replace 15” to “20 percent of the current U.S. attorneys—the underperforming ones.

“The vast majority of U.S. attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc., etc.”

Mr. McKay, do you believe that you were replaced because you were not a “loyal Bushie”?

FMR. U.S. ATTY. JOHN McKAY: No, I don’t think that’s, that’s right, Tim. First of all, we all tried to do our jobs in the best way that we can based on the evidence. I think all United States attorneys try to do that. My office had recently received a very outstanding evaluation for the work that the men and women in Seattle do here on behalf of the United States government. So we’re more interested in being loyal to, to where the evidence goes in criminal cases and not in politics.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Iglesias, the White House, the counselor Dan Bartlett, was talking about you...

FMR. U.S. ATTY. DAVID IGLESIAS: Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: ...particularly and personally, and this is what he said, “White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said Iglesias was fired for ‘lack of leadership.’ Bartlett said the government was specifically frustrated when the corruption trial of former state Treasurer Robert Vigil” in New Mexico “ended in a conviction on just one of 23 counts.

“‘It was a devastating loss for the government,’ Bartlett told reporters.”

And yet, the former number two in the attorney general’s office, James Comey, said this, that you were a “fired up guy. David Iglesias was one of our finest and someone I had a lot of confidence in as deputy attorney general.” Why the disparity in views?

MR. IGLESIAS: Well, getting back to the Vigil trial, that was an historic case for my district. We’d never prosecuted a case, a public corruption case of that size. We got four indictments, four convictions. Mr. Vigil, the former state treasurer, is going to do three years in the federal penitentiary. Is that a devastating loss? I don’t think so. Mr. Comey has a better idea of what I was doing because he was my direct supervisor. Mr. Bartlett was never my supervisor.

MR. RUSSERT: What did you think when you heard Mr. Bartlett’s comments?

MR. IGLESIAS: Well, I thought, “He’s out of touch. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” He’s looking at talking points. He doesn’t know the facts underlying what we do as U.S. attorneys, and especially in my case.

MR. RUSSERT: The fact that you only got one of 23 counts didn’t disturb you?

MR. IGLESIAS: Well, it was a little bit of a disappointment, but frankly, had he been convicted of 10 out of 23 counts, I doubt he would have done a lot more time.

MR. RUSSERT: You wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times, and I want to share that with our viewers and come back and talk about it. “Politics entered my life with two phones calls that I received last fall, just before the November election. One came from” Republican “Representative and the other from Senator [Pete] Domenici, both Republicans from my state, New Mexico.

“Ms. Wilson asked me about sealed indictments pertaining to a politically charged corruption case widely reported in the news media involving local Democrats. Her question instantly put me on guard. Prosecutors may not legally talk about indictments, so I was evasive. Shortly after speaking to Ms. Wilson, I received a call from Senator Domenici at my home. The senator wanted to know whether I was going to file corruption charges—the cases Ms. Wilson had been asking about—before November. When I told him that I didn’t think so, he said, ‘I am very sorry to hear that,’ and the line went dead.” He hung up on you?

MR. IGLESIAS: That’s right.

MR. RUSSERT: Did you feel intimidated by those phone calls?

MR. IGLESIAS: Pressured, leaned on, yes, because of the timeline, because of the fact that they were in a—in a—or Congresswoman Wilson was in a tight race at that time. I think she was behind. The, the local press had given significant coverage of this subsequent corruption matter. I couldn’t talk about it to anybody, much less members of Congress.

MR. RUSSERT: Had a congressman or a senator ever called you about a case prior to that?

MR. IGLESIAS: No. I’d received letters identifying that—the constituent, and I responded to those. Those are typically after the fact, people who are unhappy with the sentence. But I’d never gotten any contact regarding a pending matter, much less something that had been widely reported like that.

MR. RUSSERT: When you receive phone calls like that, do you have an obligation to report to your superiors that you received them?

MR. IGLESIAS: I do. Under the U.S. attorney manual. And I’ve given that up. I, I should have reported it right away.

MR. RUSSERT: Why didn’t you?

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