The walls come falling in on the US Attorneys story

Check this out. (Forwarded by Reality Based Educator.)

Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state's U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

"Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.

"He's gone," Rove said, according to Weh.

I'm not an expert on the legalities in these firings. As I understand it, they can fire them at any time without reason.

However, any actions taken to influence their prosecutions may well be illegal, and the evidence is mounting that Rep. Heather Wilson, Sen. Pete Domenici, the chairman of the New Mexico Republican party, and elements in the White House were all attempting to exert pressure to get indictments against Democrats before the 2006 election.

And, take a look at how the original case against the Democrats in New Mexico was introduced,

On Sept. 30, nine donors were summoned to Weh's house for a $5,000-a-plate luncheon with Rove.

Among them was Paul Kennedy, a former state Supreme Court justice who had advised state lawmakers on whether to impeach the state treasurer.

Kennedy also represented the accountant who went to the FBI and U.S. attorney's office with the initial evidence implicating Democrats in the courthouse corruption case.

He acknowledges that he thought indictments of Democrats would help Wilson's re-election, and possibly hurt Democrats all the way up to Gov. Bill Richardson. But he also insists that's not what was driving his impatience - that it was a matter of the serving the public interest.

Also, the NYTimes adds more. A coordinated effort,

Mickey D. Barnett, another top Republican lawyer in the state, who once served as an aide to Mr. Domenici in Congress and represented the Bush campaign in New Mexico in the 2000 and 2004 elections, said he had also complained.

“I would say to Pete (Domenici) and Heather (Wilson): ‘Look, you guys have some influence; I don’t have any influence. Can we get something done?’ ” Mr. Barnett said.

(In the grand scheme of the breakdown of a coverup, we're at the point where secondary characters begin to tell their stories for self protection, ("I only did this, but he did THAT,") and just beginning the section where primary characters offer partial revelations of truth in a desperate attempt to make it go away. ("What I did was unethical, but not illegal")

These things break open when someone from Group A, in an effort at exculpation, throws a member of Group B under the bus.)

Hearings next week.