It turns out that the election fraud perpetrated in New Mexico in 2004 was a concern to Democrats as well as as Republicans (Hat tip: American Spectator). In fact, it was a big enough deal that recently released documents by the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary show that Senator Jeff Bingaman’s (D-NM) office called not once, but twice before the election in 2004 to determine the status. See the released supporting documentation below:
So, what does this all mean? Well, the folks over at the American Spectator have this take:
Is there anything wrong with this? Probably not. But it shows that it can be an entirely innocent and normal thing for senators to inquire, during election season, about the status of investigations with political ramifications. It takes at least some of the sting out of the breathless allegations against Domenici.
Granted, there are two differences in the cases. First, Domenici called Iglesias directly, whereas it was Bingaman’s chief of staff who called and it was to the legislative affairs office at Justice, not to Iglesias, that he made his call. Second, there is no evidence that Bingaman did anything further that could be interpreted as putting political pressure on Iglesias or on DoJ, whereas it appeared that Domenici forwarded his complaints to the White House.
But the fact remains that it is just flat-out inaccurate to assert that senators are necessarily out of line to express concern about politically tinged investigations. The Democrats’ pretense to the contrary is not just hypocritical, but a rank descent into character assassination of a sort that can, by tying up resources, distract attention from the actual job of law enforcement.
For those of you out there who are trying to pretend voter fraud did not occur in 2004, please take special note that it was Democrat County Clerk Mary Herrera “who asked to meet about 3,000 suspicious registrations.” And, the lack of prosecutorial action by David Iglesias in after a year’s passage is what led to Senator Domenici’s well documented first complaint in September of 2005 to the Department of Justice.