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Senate Ethics Committee Intensifies Probe of Domenici
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| Parent(s) |
Candidate
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Sep 19, 2007 08:30pm |
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| Category | Investigation |
| News Date | Thursday, September 20, 2007 02:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Over the past couple of weeks, the Ethics Committee has been interviewing witnesses - including staffers from the US attorney's office in New Mexico - who were privy to a phone call Domenici made to Iglesias last November in which he asked the former federal prosecutor about the timing of an indictment against Manny Aragon, a prominent former New Mexico state senator and the subject of a federal corruption probe, according to the senior staffers. Congressional ethics rules prohibit lawmakers from contacting federal agency officials during ongoing probes.
According to some senior staffers working for lawmakers who sit on the Ethics Committee, the six-month preliminary investigation into Domenici has turned up enough evidence to open a formal, public investigation into the New Mexico senator, having determined that Domenici acted inappropriately and that he may have violated Senate Ethics rules when he called Iglesias to ask whether Aragon would be indicted before the state's voters went to the polls last year.
But it's unclear if the Ethics Committee will end up launching a formal probe. A sticking point, Ethics Committee staffers say, is the long-standing "ethics truce" between Democrats and Republicans that dates back to the mid-1990s where lawmakers from both political parties agreed not to file ethics complaints against each other. |
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