Last week's testimony by Kyle Sampson, former Chief of Staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, renewed questions about the role played by Senator Pete Domenici and Representative Heather Wilson in the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, The Hill reports. In what appear to be violations of the ethics rules in their respective chambers, both of those members of Congress called Iglesias about a pending case. CREW has asked for ethics committee investigations of Domenici and Wilson. Sampson's testimony reinforces our argument that ethics violations occurred:

Under intense Democratic questioning during the hearing, Sampson admitted that he regretted placing Iglesias’s name on the list of those slated for dismissal. He also said Gonzales had informed him that he had received a complaint from Rove that three U.S. attorneys, including Iglesias, were not doing enough to pursue voter-fraud cases. Justice Department e-mails and Sampson’s testimony also show that sometime between Oct. 17 and Election Day, Iglesias’s name was added to the list along with three names that were redacted in the e-mails.

Domenici and Wilson, who was running in a tight reelection race, called Iglesias just a few weeks prior to the Nov. 7 election. Iglesias said they called to inquire about whether he was going to issue indictments in a pending high-profile corruption investigation involving a Democrat in New Mexico, a line of questioning he said was both improper and threatening.

Domenici and Wilson dispute the nature of the calls; the Senate Ethics Committee has opened an investigation into the matter, while members of the House ethics panel have refused to comment on whether they’ve launched a probe.

“There’s a lot that we don’t know yet between when Sen. Domenici hung up the phone and when David Iglesias was fired,” said Steve Dettelbach, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner at Baker & Hostetler LLP. Dettelbach served as counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) from 2001 to 2003 and spent 15 years as a career prosecutor at the Department of Justice under both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

The House Ethics Committee investigation cannot proceed without a complaint filed by a sitting member. Unfortunately, to date, that has not happened.