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Bush Has Congressman's Documents Seized By FBI Sealed

Posted on: Friday, 26 May 2006, 00:02 CDT

WASHINGTON _ Seeking to quell a rebellion in Congress, President Bush took the extraordinary step Thursday of sealing for 45 days all the documents the FBI seized from Rep. William Jefferson's Capitol Hill office as part of a bribery investigation against the New Orleans Democrat.

Bush acted after an ugly confrontation developed between the administration and House leaders, including Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., over the constitutionality of the FBI's Saturday night raid in the House's Rayburn Office Building.

In a statement, the president said the 45-day period "will provide both parties more time to resolve the issues in a way that ensures that materials relevant to the ongoing criminal investigation are made available to prosecutors in a manner that respects the interests of a co-equal branch of government."

In a letter to the administration on Wednesday, Hastert and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., charged that the Justice Department, in conducting the raid, had violated the doctrine of separation of powers between Congress and the executive branch and the debate and speech clause in the Constitution. They said the documents should be returned, even if the government is conducting a criminal investigation.

An obviously angry Hastert went one step further, saying in a radio interview with WGN in Chicago that it appeared administration officials had leaked a false story to ABC News on Wednesday suggesting he was under investigation in a congressional lobbying scandal in an apparent effort to intimidate him.

When asked later if the leak was retaliatory, Hastert said, "All I'm saying is, here are the dots. People can connect the dots any way they want to. I thought it was an interesting sequence of events."

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the government did not leak information to undermine Hastert. "I got pretty categorical denials," Snow said.

In response to the ABC report, the Justice Department denied the speaker was under investigation.

Hastert had even sought a private audience with the president to complain about the FBI raid. Not all members of Congress agreed with the speaker, however, and several said in statements that they saw nothing wrong with a raid seeking to uncover criminality.

Still, the raid was widely criticized on Capitol Hill by both Democrats and Republicans. It was the first time in the 219 years of the House that the executive branch raided the office of a member of Congress. The department said it acted to obtain a search warrant after Jefferson, an eight-term congressman, refused to comply with a subpoena for various documents.

Abner Mika, White House counsel under President Bill Clinton and a former House member, praised the president's action. "I think it is a reasonable, temporary solution to the problem," he said. Mikva, who also was a federal judge, raised doubts about whether the constitutional provisions cited by Hastert and Pelosi cover illegal activity by a House member.

Charles Tiefer, a professor of government and law at the University of Baltimore and a former lawyer in the House counsel's office, said, "It's historic, striking, extraordinary and represents a classic effort by the chief executive to balance several of his responsibilities _ on the one hand, to respect a coordinate branch of government, and at the same time to take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

Tiefer, scheduled to testify at a House Judiciary Committee hearing next week on the FBI raid, said he could not recall a president intervening by sealing seized papers.

"The overtones of a police raid like that directly on the Capitol grounds for the first time in history _ especially with FBI agents slamming the door on the lawyer for the House, when she just wanted to watch what they were doing_bring to mind some of the aspects of living in a police state," Tiefer said.

Bush said the documents would remain in the custody of Solicitor General Paul Clement, who heads a separate office in the Justice Department and is not involved in the corruption probe involving Jefferson.

Bush did not cite a precedent for his action, but the president clearly was in a box, seeking to defend his own government's action even as numerous Republicans on Capitol Hill were riled over the raid.

"Let me be clear," Bush said. "Investigating and prosecuting crime is a crucial executive responsibility that I take seriously. Those who violate the law _ including a member of Congress _ should and will be held to account. This investigation will go forward and justice will be served."

According to FBI statements filed in court, Jefferson, the first black congressman to be elected from Louisiana since Reconstruction, accepted $100,000 in bribes, and $90,000 in cash had been found in his freezer at his Washington apartment.

Two businessmen have pleaded guilty to bribing Jefferson to promote a business venture, but the congressman has denied allegations of wrongdoing.

Pelosi, who has alleged that the Republican majority is guilty of a "culture of corruption" as the result of lobbying scandals, pushed Jefferson on Wednesday to resign his seat on the House Ways and Means Committee. But the congressman refused to do so, saying he needed to represent his city as it tries to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.

The Jefferson scandal, however, has given Republicans a way to counter Democratic charges about a culture of corruption under GOP control of Congress. That scandal involved influence-peddling by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the resignation of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

The speaker and Pelosi said House counsel Geraldine Gennet would meet with the Justice Department to resolve what to do with the papers seized in the raid on Jefferson's office.

A Justice Department official familiar with the negotiations with Congress said House leaders put the agency in an untenable position by demanding return of the Jefferson documents.

"Do you think there's any way the Justice Department would give incriminating documents back to an entity that the target is connected to? No way," said the source, who requested anonymity because of the delicacy of discussions between the House and the executive branch.

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(Chicago Tribune correspondents Naftali Bendavid and Andrew Zajac contributed to this report.)

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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune.

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Source: Chicago Tribune

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