-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
> FUTURE INTIMIDATION IS THE REAL RISK OF THE JEFFERSON RAID
>
> By Norman J. Ornstein
> American Enterprise Institute, May 30, 2006
> http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.24459/pub_detail.asp
>
> Let us stipulate one thing at the beginning: Whatever the other
> side of the story, if investigators are not lying and did find
> $90,000 in Rep. William Jefferson’s freezer, and if they do have
> the Louisiana Democrat on videotape saying what they say he said,
> then he is a scoundrel, plain and simple. But when it comes to the
> FBI raid on Jefferson’s office, that observation or reality is
> immaterial. What the FBI and Justice Department did is indeed a
> constitutional outrage, outrageous enough to have prompted the
> astonishing joint statement by Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and
> House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
>
> Resident Scholar Norman J. Ornstein
> There are reasons--good and sound reasons--behind the
> Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause and the broader sensitivity
> it embodies. The balance of power between the branches is delicate,
> and any overreach has to be checked. Immense damage or mischief can
> be done by a president, or an executive branch official or agency,
> trying to intimidate Congress as a whole, to damage or destroy a
> political enemy in Congress or to sidetrack a Congressional
> investigation.
> Try to imagine a Congress that has a real and robust sense of its
> own institutional identity. (I know, try hard.) That is, a Congress
> that would currently be doing an aggressive investigation about why
> the Justice Department dropped its own investigation into the
> approval by its lawyers of the National Security Agency wiretaps,
> that would ask who denied investigators security clearance and why,
> and what the circumstances were surrounding the department’s
> approval. One that might be doing additional investigations into
> the NSA’s use of phone records, into the department’s involvement
> in the Texas re-redistricting case, into its approval of the
> Georgia plan to require ID cards for voting and into other
> sensitive matters. Or one taking a hard look at the FBI’s near-
> billion-dollar, multiyear fiasco trying to update its computer
> systems.
> Now imagine an FBI or a Justice Department not very happy with the
> nature or direction of that kind of investigation. Were there not
> constitutional and historical boundaries around the ability of
> investigators and prosecutors to intrude on Congress and its
> Members, threats against lawmakers, seizure of their records or
> other methods could be used to sidetrack the investigations or
> intimidate the leaders. Of course, the same thing could be done
> with the IRS or other agencies. We have had enough difficult and
> emotional confrontations between presidents and Congresses to see
> how combustible these things can be, especially if a president or a
> major administration official is threatened with impeachment or
> political devastation.
> The Speech or Debate Clause does not preclude prosecution of
> criminal offenses; Members of Congress are not kings or queens.
> Plenty have been sent to the slammer before. Given the multiple
> investigations going on now, involving names such as Jack Abramoff,
> Mitchell Wade and Brent Wilkes, former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-
> Calif.) and Jefferson, plenty more may end up in the slammer before
> long. If they did something to violate the public trust, I will be
> among the first to send them off with great fanfare. I applaud the
> Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department for its
> independence, assertiveness and indefatigability for going after
> Democrats and Republicans alike.
> But there are limits to what can and should be done in a case of
> this sort, and the weekend raid goes well beyond those limits.
> There is a reason why this kind of action has never--I repeat,
> never--been taken before. This conclusion seemed so open-and-shut
> to me that I might not have written about it if it weren’t for the
> editorials in The New York Times and The Washington Post pooh-
> poohing the action.
> The Post said it was not a big deal, even while saying that the
> Justice Department did not act “perfectly.” But in their
> description of that imperfect behavior, the Post made clear why
> this is so outrageous. The editorial reads, “It would have been
> preferable to find some way to consult with Congressional leaders
> before the search. If that wasn’t possible, it would have been
> preferable to seal the office and find a way to consult with House
> officials and have them present for the search. The ‘filter team’
> may not have been the best way to protect Congressional prerogatives.”
> All true, and all pointing out just how over the line the behavior
> of the attorney general, the Justice Department and the FBI was in
> this case. It is clear from that Post editorial that there was no
> compelling urgency to break precedents that held for more than 200
> years. Going into the office the way they did was wrong; doing so
> with only executive branch officials to screen the materials and
> make sure that they did not fall within the purview of the Speech
> or Debate Clause--without anyone from Congress present--showed
> utter contempt for the Separation of Powers.
> It was always possible to seal the office, to call Congressional
> leaders beforehand, to work in a different fashion that was
> sensitive to the Constitution while ensuring that the evidence was
> secure. The Justice Department, for its own reasons--could it be to
> send a message to other Members of Congress that the corruption
> investigation will soon morph into something much bigger, perhaps
> to get the public more whipped up about Congressional miscreance--
> chose deliberately to use the most extreme approach.
> I would be the last to argue that lawmakers have some kind of
> unlimited immunity; in fact, I yield to no one in my outrage about
> the behavior of many Members, staffers and others over the past
> several years, and my hope that they get the justice they deserve.
> No papers or offices are sacrosanct. To pick the limiting case, if
> a murder were committed in a Congressional office, it would not be
> immune from entry or search. On many occasions, Congressional
> papers have been subpoenaed and used in criminal investigations and
> trials. But there is a right way and a wrong way to move toward
> justice, and this was the wrong way.
> The president’s decision to seal for 45 days everything taken from
> the office is a good step, whether he did so to mollify an angry
> Speaker or because he was acknowledging that the DOJ overstepped.
> But this issue will not go away, especially with the explosive leak
> to ABC News suggesting that the Speaker might himself be worried
> about his own status in the ongoing investigations into Abramoff.
> That leak itself is a troubling sign of the kind of intimidation
> that undergirded the fears of the framers who enshrined the Speech
> or Debate Clause in the first place. I have no idea how widely the
> net will be cast in Congress, though the actions of prosecutors
> suggest that it might be expansive indeed. But the Speaker did not
> need any fear of his own fate to react the way he did to the
> Jefferson raid. I am glad he did, and glad he took his own
> unprecedented step, joining with Minority Leader Pelosi to stand up
> for Congress.
> Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI.
>
> -----------------------
>
> House chairman to question Gonzales about Jefferson raid
> BIPARTISAN GROUP CONDEMNS SEARCH OF LAWMAKER'S OFFICE
>
> Associated Press, May 30, 2006
> http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/30/congress.raid.ap/
> WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Judiciary Committee Chairman James
> Sensenbrenner said Tuesday he will summon Attorney General Alberto
> Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller before his panel to
> explain their decision to raid a lawmaker's office for the first
> time in history.
> "I want to have Attorney General Gonzales and FBI Director Mueller
> up here to tell us how they reached the conclusion they did," said
> Sensenbrenner, one of President Bush's most loyal House allies.
> Sensenbrenner's hearings, which began Tuesday, are examining
> whether the May 20 raid violated the Constitution.
> Calling the decision to authorize the raid "profoundly disturbing,"
> Sensenbrenner signaled that he would not be among the lawmakers
> backing off their criticism of the Bush administration. Any
> progress in talks between House and Justice Department lawyers in
> crafting guidelines for future criminal investigations of Congress
> would not deter Sensenbrenner from calling the administration to
> account for weekend search of Rep. William Jefferson's offices.
> "They didn't get it right this time," Sensenbrenner said.
> For his part, Gonzales has said that the search of Jefferson's
> offices was legal and necessary because the Louisiana Democrat had
> not cooperated with investigators' other efforts to gain access to
> evidence. An affidavit on which the search warrant was based said
> investigators had found $90,000 stashed in the freezer of
> Jefferson's house.
> The Justice Department filed court papers Tuesday opposing the
> congressman's demand that property seized in the office raid be
> returned. Such a step would be "fundamentally inconsistent with the
> bedrock principle that 'the laws of this country allow no place or
> employment as a sanctuary for crime,"' the papers said, quoting
> language from a near-century-old Supreme Court case.
> Jefferson's interpretation would remove courts from their
> traditional role of ruling on privilege claims and would subvert
> the principle that members of Congress are not immune from ordinary
> criminal procedures, the department said in U.S. District Court in
> the District of Columbia.
> While not defending Jefferson, Sensenbrenner made clear his
> opposition to the raid on constitutional grounds, titling Tuesday's
> hearing "Reckless Justice: Did the Saturday Night Raid of Congress
> Trample the Constitution?"
> Calling it the first of three hearings into the matter,
> Sensenbrenner was not mollified by President Bush's order last week
> to seal the case, nor behind-the-scenes negotiations since then
> toward establishing a procedure for future searches.
> At the session, Democrats said a member of the Bush administration,
> and not just legal experts, should have been called before the
> panel to answer for the raid.
> "We've never been told why the search had to be done in the middle
> of the night," noted ranking Democrat John Conyers of Michigan.
> "We've never learned why the member in question was not permitted
> to have his attorneys present while his offices were searched for
> some 18 hours."
> The hearing comes more than a week after the FBI conducted an
> overnight raid of the Rayburn House Office Building suite of Rep.
> William Jefferson, D-Louisiana, as part of a bribery investigation,
> without giving House leaders advance notice. House Speaker Dennis
> Hastert and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a rare joint
> statement last week protesting the raid as a violation of
> constitutional separation of powers protections.
> One witness at the hearing, former Rep. Bob Walker, R-Pennsylvania,
> said Congress should play hardball in seeking answers to its
> questions by subpoenaing administration documents authorizing the
> raid.
> "The American people should be deeply concerned that a decision to
> conduct a raid on Congress was made consciously and evidently at
> high levels inside the Justice Department and the FBI," Walker told
> the panel.
> "If the Rayburn raid was a precedent for coming attractions and
> intimidating tactics, the way Congress responds initially must be
> improved."
> House and Justice Department lawyers are trying to agree on
> guidelines for any future searches in criminal investigations --
> including the FBI's influence-peddling probe centered around
> convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
> Across the Capitol meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-
> Tennessee, joined his Democratic counterpart, Minority Leader Harry
> Reid of Nevada, over the weekend in declining to criticize the FBI
> for the raid. Frist said he does not believe the law enforcement
> agency violated the separation of powers.
> Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This
> material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
>
> ---------------
> FRIST BACKS SEARCH OF CONGRESSMAN'S OFFICE
> In a Break With His House Counterparts,
> Frist Says FBI
> Search of Congressman's Office Is OK
>
> By NEDRA PICKLER
> The Associated Press
>
> WASHINGTON - In a break with his counterparts in the House, the
> Senate's leader said Sunday the FBI was within its right to search
> the office of a congressman accused of bribery.
> "No House member, no senator, nobody in government should be above
> the law of the land, period," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said.
>
> Frist, R-Tenn., was responding to the search conducted May 20-21 in
> the office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. FBI agents carted away
> computer and other records in their pursuit of evidence that
> Jefferson accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for
> helping set up business deals in Africa.
>
> It was the first time that a warrant had been used to search a
> lawmaker's office in the history of the Congress.
>
> House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Democratic leader Nancy
> Pelosi of California responded with a rare joint statement,
> protesting that the FBI had not notified them and that the search
> violated the Constitution's separation of power protections.
>
> Frist said he examined the provision closely and talked the issue
> over with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He concluded that the
> FBI acted appropriately.
>
> "I don't think it abused separation of powers," Frist said on "Fox
> News Sunday.
>
> "I think there's allegations of criminal activity, and the American
> people need to have the law enforced."
>
> The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which plans a
> hearing Tuesday on the constitutionality of the search, said the
> FBI overstepped its authority. Rep. James Sensenbrenner compared
> the search of a congressman's office to a Capitol Police raid of
> the Oval Office.
>
> "This debate is not over whether Congressman Jefferson is guilty of
> a criminal offense," Sensenbrenner said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
> "He cannot use the constitutional immunity of Congress to shield
> himself from that or any evidence of that. But it is about the
> ability of the Congress to be able to do its job free of coercion
> from the executive branch."
>
> Hastert complained directly to President Bush and demanded that the
> FBI return the materials. Bush struck a compromise Thursday,
> ordering that the documents be sealed for 45 days until
> congressional leaders and the Justice Department agree on what to
> do with them a move that Frist said he supported "to let things
> settle down."
>
> Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said
> there needs to be "hard look" at whether the FBI violated the
> Constitution. But he said the FBI has raided judge's chambers
> before, so there is precedent for crossing branches of government
> for searches.
>
> He also said he wasn't sure the "speech and debate" protections in
> Article 1, Section 6 of the Constitution were violated, as some of
> have argued.
>
> That section states that members of Congress "shall in all cases,
> except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from
> arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective
> houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any
> speech or debate in either house, they shall not be questioned in
> any other place."
>
> "I'm not sure that you can stretch it to apply to this situation,"
> Durbin said. "In the next several weeks, we ought to take a hard
> look at it. I'm not going to rule it in or out at this moment."
>
> Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
> material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
> Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
>
>
> ----------MailBlocks_8C85235105768A6_1634_268_MBLK-M12.sysops.aol.com
> Content-Type: text/html; charset="utf-8"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
> <HTML><BODY><DIV style='font-family: "Verdana"; font-size: > 10pt;'><DIV><STRONG><FONT size=4>FUTURE INTIMIDATION IS THE REAL
> RISK OF THE JEFFERSON RAID <BR></FONT></STRONG> <BR>By Norman
> J. Ornstein <BR>American Enterprise Institute, May 30, 2006 <BR><A > href="http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.24459/
> pub_detail.asp">http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.
> 24459/pub_detail.asp</A> </DIV>
> <DIV> <BR>Let us stipulate one thing at the beginning:
> Whatever the other side of the story, if investigators are not
> lying and did find $90,000 in Rep. William Jefferson’s freezer, and
> if they do have the Louisiana Democrat on videotape saying what
> they say he said, then he is a scoundrel, plain and simple. But
> when it comes to the FBI raid on Jefferson’s office, that
> observation or reality is immaterial. What the FBI and Justice
> Department did is indeed a constitutional outrage, outrageous
> enough to have prompted the astonishing joint statement by Speaker
> Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-
> Calif.). </DIV>
> <DIV> <BR>Resident Scholar Norman J.
> Ornstein <BR>There are reasons--good and sound reasons--
> behind the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause and the broader
> sensitivity it embodies. The balance of power between the branches
> is delicate, and any overreach has to be checked. Immense damage or
> mischief can be done by a president, or an executive branch
> official or agency, trying to intimidate Congress as a whole, to
> damage or destroy a political enemy in Congress or to sidetrack a
> Congressional investigation. </DIV>
> <DIV>Try to imagine a Congress that has a real and robust sense of
> its own institutional identity. (I know, try hard.) That is, a
> Congress that would currently be doing an aggressive investigation
> about why the Justice Department dropped its own investigation into
> the approval by its lawyers of the National Security Agency
> wiretaps, that would ask who denied investigators security
> clearance and why, and what the circumstances were surrounding the
> department’s approval. One that might be doing additional
> investigations into the NSA’s use of phone records, into the
> department’s involvement in the Texas re-redistricting case, into
> its approval of the Georgia plan to require ID cards for voting and
> into other sensitive matters. Or one taking a hard look at the
> FBI’s near-billion-dollar, multiyear fiasco trying to update its
> computer systems. </DIV>
> <DIV>Now imagine an FBI or a Justice Department not very happy with
> the nature or direction of that kind of investigation. Were there
> not constitutional and historical boundaries around the ability of
> investigators and prosecutors to intrude on Congress and its
> Members, threats against lawmakers, seizure of their records or
> other methods could be used to sidetrack the investigations or
> intimidate the leaders. Of course, the same thing could be done
> with the IRS or other agencies. We have had enough difficult and
> emotional confrontations between presidents and Congresses to see
> how combustible these things can be, especially if a president or a
> major administration official is threatened with impeachment or
> political devastation. </DIV>
> <DIV>The Speech or Debate Clause does not preclude prosecution of
> criminal offenses; Members of Congress are not kings or queens.
> Plenty have been sent to the slammer before. Given the multiple
> investigations going on now, involving names such as Jack Abramoff,
> Mitchell Wade and Brent Wilkes, former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-
> Calif.) and Jefferson, plenty more may end up in the slammer before
> long. If they did something to violate the public trust, I will be
> among the first to send them off with great fanfare. I applaud the
> Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department for its
> independence, assertiveness and indefatigability for going after
> Democrats and Republicans alike. </DIV>
> <DIV>But there are limits to what can and should be done in a case
> of this sort, and the weekend raid goes well beyond those limits.
> There is a reason why this kind of action has never--I repeat,
> never--been taken before. This conclusion seemed so open-and-shut
> to me that I might not have written about it if it weren’t for the
> editorials in The New York Times and The Washington Post pooh-
> poohing the action. </DIV>
> <DIV>The Post said it was not a big deal, even while saying that
> the Justice Department did not act “perfectly.” But in their
> description of that imperfect behavior, the Post made clear why
> this is so outrageous. The editorial reads, “It would have been
> preferable to find some way to consult with Congressional leaders
> before the search. If that wasn’t possible, it would have been
> preferable to seal the office and find a way to consult with House
> officials and have them present for the search. The ‘filter team’
> may not have been the best way to protect Congressional
> prerogatives.” </DIV>
> <DIV>All true, and all pointing out just how over the line the
> behavior of the attorney general, the Justice Department and the
> FBI was in this case. It is clear from that Post editorial that
> there was no compelling urgency to break precedents that held for
> more than 200 years. Going into the office the way they did was
> wrong; doing so with only executive branch officials to screen the
> materials and make sure that they did not fall within the purview
> of the Speech or Debate Clause--without anyone from Congress
> present--showed utter contempt for the Separation of Powers. </DIV>
> <DIV>It was always possible to seal the office, to call
> Congressional leaders beforehand, to work in a different fashion
> that was sensitive to the Constitution while ensuring that the
> evidence was secure. The Justice Department, for its own reasons--
> could it be to send a message to other Members of Congress that the
> corruption investigation will soon morph into something much
> bigger, perhaps to get the public more whipped up about
> Congressional miscreance--chose deliberately to use the most
> extreme approach. </DIV>
> <DIV>I would be the last to argue that lawmakers have some kind of
> unlimited immunity; in fact, I yield to no one in my outrage about
> the behavior of many Members, staffers and others over the past
> several years, and my hope that they get the justice they deserve.
> No papers or offices are sacrosanct. To pick the limiting case, if
> a murder were committed in a Congressional office, it would not be
> immune from entry or search. On many occasions, Congressional
> papers have been subpoenaed and used in criminal investigations and
> trials. But there is a right way and a wrong way to move toward
> justice, and this was the wrong way. </DIV>
> <DIV>The president’s decision to seal for 45 days everything taken
> from the office is a good step, whether he did so to mollify an
> angry Speaker or because he was acknowledging that the DOJ
> overstepped. But this issue will not go away, especially with the
> explosive leak to ABC News suggesting that the Speaker might
> himself be worried about his own status in the ongoing
> investigations into Abramoff. </DIV>
> <DIV>That leak itself is a troubling sign of the kind of
> intimidation that undergirded the fears of the framers who
> enshrined the Speech or Debate Clause in the first place. I have no
> idea how widely the net will be cast in Congress, though the
> actions of prosecutors suggest that it might be expansive indeed.
> But the Speaker did not need any fear of his own fate to react the
> way he did to the Jefferson raid. I am glad he did, and glad he
> took his own unprecedented step, joining with Minority Leader
> Pelosi to stand up for Congress. </DIV>
> <DIV>Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at
> AEI.<BR> <BR>-----------------------</DIV>
> <DIV> </DIV>
> <DIV><STRONG><FONT size=4>House chairman to question Gonzales about
> Jefferson raid<BR>BIPARTISAN GROUP CONDEMNS SEARCH OF LAWMAKER'S
> OFFICE</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
> <DIV> </DIV>
> <DIV>Associated Press, May 30, 2006<BR><A href="http://www.cnn.com/ > 2006/POLITICS/05/30/congress.raid.ap/">http://www.cnn.com/2006/
> POLITICS/05/30/congress.raid.ap/</A></DIV>
> <DIV>WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Judiciary Committee Chairman James
> Sensenbrenner said Tuesday he will summon Attorney General Alberto
> Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller before his panel to
> explain their decision to raid a lawmaker's office for the first
> time in history.</DIV>
> <DIV>"I want to have Attorney General Gonzales and FBI Director
> Mueller up here to tell us how they reached the conclusion they
> did," said Sensenbrenner, one of President Bush's most loyal House
> allies. Sensenbrenner's hearings, which began Tuesday, are
> examining whether the May 20 raid violated the Constitution.</DIV>
> <DIV>Calling the decision to authorize the raid "profoundly
> disturbing," Sensenbrenner signaled that he would not be among the
> lawmakers backing off their criticism of the Bush administration.
> Any progress in talks between House and Justice Department lawyers
> in crafting guidelines for future criminal investigations of
> Congress would not deter Sensenbrenner from calling the
> administration to account for weekend search of Rep. William
> Jefferson's offices.</DIV>
> <DIV>"They didn't get it right this time," Sensenbrenner said.</DIV>
> <DIV>For his part, Gonzales has said that the search of Jefferson's
> offices was legal and necessary because the Louisiana Democrat had
> not cooperated with investigators' other efforts to gain access to
> evidence. An affidavit on which the search warrant was based said
> investigators had found $90,000 stashed in the freezer of
> Jefferson's house.</DIV>
> <DIV>The Justice Department filed court papers Tuesday opposing the
> congressman's demand that property seized in the office raid be
> returned. Such a step would be "fundamentally inconsistent with the
> bedrock principle that 'the laws of this country allow no place or
> employment as a sanctuary for crime,"' the papers said, quoting
> language from a near-century-old Supreme Court case.</DIV>
> <DIV>Jefferson's interpretation would remove courts from their
> traditional role of ruling on privilege claims and would subvert
> the principle that members of Congress are not immune from ordinary
> criminal procedures, the department said in U.S. District Court in
> the District of Columbia.</DIV>
> <DIV>While not defending Jefferson, Sensenbrenner made clear his
> opposition to the raid on constitutional grounds, titling Tuesday's
> hearing "Reckless Justice: Did the Saturday Night Raid of Congress
> Trample the Constitution?"</DIV>
> <DIV>Calling it the first of three hearings into the matter,
> Sensenbrenner was not mollified by President Bush's order last week
> to seal the case, nor behind-the-scenes negotiations since then
> toward establishing a procedure for future searches.</DIV>
> <DIV>At the session, Democrats said a member of the Bush
> administration, and not just legal experts, should have been called
> before the panel to answer for the raid.</DIV>
> <DIV>"We've never been told why the search had to be done in the
> middle of the night," noted ranking Democrat John Conyers of
> Michigan. "We've never learned why the member in question was not
> permitted to have his attorneys present while his offices were
> searched for some 18 hours."</DIV>
> <DIV>The hearing comes more than a week after the FBI conducted an
> overnight raid of the Rayburn House Office Building suite of Rep.
> William Jefferson, D-Louisiana, as part of a bribery investigation,
> without giving House leaders advance notice. House Speaker Dennis
> Hastert and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a rare joint
> statement last week protesting the raid as a violation of
> constitutional separation of powers protections.</DIV>
> <DIV>One witness at the hearing, former Rep. Bob Walker, R-
> Pennsylvania, said Congress should play hardball in seeking answers
> to its questions by subpoenaing administration documents
> authorizing the raid.</DIV>
> <DIV>"The American people should be deeply concerned that a
> decision to conduct a raid on Congress was made consciously and
> evidently at high levels inside the Justice Department and the
> FBI," Walker told the panel.</DIV>
> <DIV>"If the Rayburn raid was a precedent for coming attractions
> and intimidating tactics, the way Congress responds initially must
> be improved."</DIV>
> <DIV>House and Justice Department lawyers are trying to agree on
> guidelines for any future searches in criminal investigations --
> including the FBI's influence-peddling probe centered around
> convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.</DIV>
> <DIV>Across the Capitol meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Bill
> Frist, R-Tennessee, joined his Democratic counterpart, Minority
> Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, over the weekend in declining to
> criticize the FBI for the raid. Frist said he does not believe the
> law enforcement agency violated the separation of powers.</DIV>
> <DIV>Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This
> material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
> redistributed.<BR> </DIV>
> <DIV>---------------</DIV>
> <DIV><STRONG><FONT size=3>FRIST BACKS SEARCH OF CONGRESSMAN'S
> OFFICE<BR>In a Break With His House Counterparts, </FONT></STRONG></ > DIV>
> <DIV><STRONG><FONT > size=3> &nb
> sp; &
> nbsp;  
> ; &nb
> sp; Frist Says FBI Search of Congressman's Office Is OK</FONT></ > STRONG></DIV>
> <DIV> </DIV>
> <DIV>By NEDRA PICKLER<BR>The Associated Press</DIV>
> <DIV> </DIV>
> <DIV>WASHINGTON - In a break with his counterparts in the House,
> the Senate's leader said Sunday the FBI was within its right to
> search the office of a congressman accused of bribery. </DIV>
> <DIV>"No House member, no senator, nobody in government should be
> above the law of the land, period," Senate Majority Leader Bill
> Frist said.</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>Frist, R-Tenn., was responding to the search conducted May
> 20-21 in the office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. FBI agents
> carted away computer and other records in their pursuit of evidence
> that Jefferson accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in
> exchange for helping set up business deals in Africa.</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>It was the first time that a warrant had been used to
> search a lawmaker's office in the history of the Congress.</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Democratic
> leader Nancy Pelosi of California responded with a rare joint
> statement, protesting that the FBI had not notified them and that
> the search violated the Constitution's separation of power
> protections.</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>Frist said he examined the provision closely and talked
> the issue over with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He concluded
> that the FBI acted appropriately.</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>"I don't think it abused separation of powers," Frist said
> on "Fox News Sunday.</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>"I think there's allegations of criminal activity, and the
> American people need to have the law enforced."</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which plans
> a hearing Tuesday on the constitutionality of the search, said the
> FBI overstepped its authority. Rep. James Sensenbrenner compared
> the search of a congressman's office to a Capitol Police raid of
> the Oval Office.</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>"This debate is not over whether Congressman Jefferson is
> guilty of a criminal offense," Sensenbrenner said on NBC's "Meet
> the Press." "He cannot use the constitutional immunity of Congress
> to shield himself from that or any evidence of that. But it is
> about the ability of the Congress to be able to do its job free of
> coercion from the executive branch."</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>Hastert complained directly to President Bush and demanded
> that the FBI return the materials. Bush struck a compromise
> Thursday, ordering that the documents be sealed for 45 days until
> congressional leaders and the Justice Department agree on what to
> do with them a move that Frist said he supported "to let things
> settle down."</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the
> Senate, said there needs to be "hard look" at whether the FBI
> violated the Constitution. But he said the FBI has raided judge's
> chambers before, so there is precedent for crossing branches of
> government for searches.</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>He also said he wasn't sure the "speech and debate"
> protections in Article 1, Section 6 of the Constitution were
> violated, as some of have argued.</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>That section states that members of Congress "shall in all
> cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be
> privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of
> their respective houses, and in going to and returning from the
> same; and for any speech or debate in either house, they shall not
> be questioned in any other place."</DIV>
> <DIV><BR>"I'm not sure that you can stretch it to apply to this
> situation," Durbin said. "In the next several weeks, we ought to
> take a hard look at it. I'm not going to rule it in or out at this
> moment."</DIV>
> <DIV> </DIV>
> <DIV>Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
> material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
> redistributed.</DIV>
> <DIV>Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures</DIV>
> <DIV> <BR></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>
>
> ----------MailBlocks_8C85235105768A6_1634_268_MBLK-
> M12.sysops.aol.com--
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