Yesterday Senator Pete Domenici, Republican from New Mexico, all but admitted that he had broken congressional ethics regulations, confessing that he had indeed called the then-U.S. Attorney for his state, David Iglesias, to ask him about the status of an investigation into corruption by a former Democratic official. As Dan Eggen explained on the front page of The Washington Post today,

Legal experts say it violates congressional ethics rules for a senator or House member to communicate with a federal prosecutor regarding an ongoing criminal investigation.

With his statement, Domenici seemed to throw his colleague and protoge, GOP Rep. Heather Wilson, under the bus, because Wilson had also been fingered the previous week by Iglesias as having tried to apply political pressure on him to bring an indictment against his Democratic target before the November elections so that her chances at reelection might be increased (she only won by fewer than 1,000 votes).

But now Wilson, who was caught flatfooted by both the allegations by Iglesias (she previously pled "no comment" in the court of public opinion, a non-denial if there ever was one) and by yesterday's statement by Domenici, has also admitted to running afoul of Congress' ethics standards. Paul Kane and Dan Eggen have the story, also for The Post.

Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) acknowledged today that she contacted a federal prosecutor to complain about the pace of his public corruption investigations, as the Senate Ethics Committee signaled that it had opened a preliminary inquiry into a similar communication by the state's senior senator, Pete V. Domenici (R).

[...]

The lawmakers' telephone calls to Iglesias appear to put them in conflict with congressional ethics rules, which forbid such contacts to federal agency officials regarding "quasi-judiciary" investigations.

The Senate Ethics Committee released a statement Monday evening declining to address the allegations against Domenici, but noted that any time a legitimate complaint is filed against a senator it begins a preliminary inquiry. The statement, from the chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the committee's ranking member, noted that preliminary inquiries can lead to more expansive investigations.

Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, a liberal-leaning advocacy group, filed a complaint with the committee against Domenici on Monday.

This story has legs, alright. Already, the senior Justice Department official who notified the U.S. attorneys that they had been fired has announced his resignation, and committees in both the Senate and the House will hold hearings and listen to testimony from the purged prosecutors tomorrow morning. Combined with the ethics filing by CREW (the complaint and accompanying press release are available here), I'd say this story will likely be among the most watched for at least some time to come. And for two Republican members of Congress up for reelection in 2008 in a state and district, respectively, that are quite balanced between the two parties (if not slightly Democratic-leaning), that's just about the worst news imagineable.

[For more coverage of this story here on MyDD, check out posts on how this might affect the races in New Mexico's first congressional district and the state's 2008 Senate race, as well as the already weakened New Mexico GOP. Also, take a listen to the last fifth or so of this week's MyDD Blog Talk Radio -- about 48 minutes into the program -- for a discussion of the scandal.]