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July 29, 2010 |
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| November 30, 2009 |
By: Brian Baxter |
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etired U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico has paid more than $700,000 to seven law firms to defend his alleged role in the firing of former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in 2007, and he isn’t happy about it.
The former senator told the Albuquerque Journal the fees were “outlandish,” but “you can’t do without [lawyers] because you don’t know where these things can turn.”
Domenici’s campaign committee, People for Pete, listed $705,043 in legal fees related to the ethics investigation, The Associated Press reported, citing disclosures in an October 2008 report to the Federal Election Commission. Most of those fees were paid to O’Melveny & Myers, which received $602,054.
In September 2008, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, now of Debevoise & Plimpton, appointed career federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy to investigate the firings. A Justice Department report released that month found “significant evidence” that several U.S. attorneys were fired in late 2006 for political reasons.
Domenici’s lead lawyer is O’Melveny litigation partner K. Lee Blalack II in Washington. He has represented several prominent politicians in legal trouble, including former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on his sale of stock from a blind trust and former U.S. Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in a public corruption investigation that ended with an eight-year prison sentence.
Since his dismissal as New Mexico’s U.S. attorney, Iglesias said he planned to abandon politics for a media job. He’s penned an Op-Ed for The New York Times, being profiled by The Washington Post, granting numerous interviews about his firing and recently telling Esquire he thinks waterboarding is torture but supports military commissions for terror trials.
For his part, Domenici announced in October 2007 that he would retire at the end of his term after he was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease.
Brian Baxter reports for The American Lawyer, an ALM affiliate of the Daily Business Review.
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