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For Democrats, a Scandal of Their Own    [

    FBI Raid on Lawmaker's Office Is Questioned
    By Dan Eggen and Shailagh Murray
    The Washington Post

    Tuesday 23 May 2006

Democrat Jefferson denies wrongdoing.

    An unusual FBI raid of a Democratic congressman's office over the weekend prompted complaints yesterday from leaders in both parties, who said the tactic was unduly aggressive and may have breached the constitutional separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government.

    Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), who is at the center of a 14-month investigation for allegedly accepting bribes for promoting business ventures in Africa, also held a news conference in which he denied any wrongdoing and denounced the raid on his office as an "outrageous intrusion." Jefferson, who has not been charged with a crime, vowed to seek reelection in November.

    "There are two sides to every story; there are certainly two sides to this story," Jefferson said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "There will be an appropriate time and forum when that can be explained."

    The Saturday raid of Jefferson's quarters in the Rayburn House Office Building posed a new political dilemma for the leaders of both parties, who felt compelled to protest his treatment while condemning any wrongdoing by the lawmaker. The dilemma was complicated by new details contained in an 83-page affidavit unsealed on Sunday, including allegations that the FBI had videotaped Jefferson taking $100,000 in bribe money and then found $90,000 of that cash stuffed inside his apartment freezer.

    Republican leaders, who previously sought to focus attention on the Jefferson case as a counterpoint to their party's own ethical scandals, said they are disturbed by the raid. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said that he is "very concerned" about the incident and that Senate and House counsels will review it.

    House Speaker L. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) expressed alarm at the raid. "The actions of the Justice Department in seeking and executing this warrant raise important Constitutional issues that go well beyond the specifics of this case," Hastert said in a lengthy statement released last night.

    "Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night, crossing this Separation of Powers line, in order to successfully prosecute corruption by Members of Congress," he said. "Nothing I have learned in the last 48 hours leads me to believe that there was any necessity to change the precedent established over those 219 years."

    House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement that "members of Congress must obey the law and cooperate fully with any criminal investigation" but that "Justice Department investigations must be conducted in accordance with Constitutional protections and historical precedent."

    Relations between the two Democrats have been rocky. Pelosi refused to appoint Jefferson to the chairmanship of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after the 2002 election, and early this month she called for an investigation of his case by the House ethics committee. Last week, the committee announced it would investigate Jefferson and Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), who is also the subject of a federal corruption probe.

    Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, asked about the raid during an unrelated news conference in Washington, declined to discuss the case in detail but said "the executive branch intends to work with the Congress to allay" any concerns.

    "I will admit that these were unusual steps that were taken in response to an unusual set of circumstances," Gonzales said. "I'll just say that."

    About 15 FBI agents, wearing suits, entered Jefferson's office in the Rayburn House Office Building about 7:15 p.m. Saturday and left about 1 p.m. Sunday. Authorities said it was the first time the FBI had raided a sitting congressman's office.

    The FBI is investigating allegations that Jefferson, acting as a member of Congress, took hundreds of thousand of dollars in bribes to promote high-tech business ventures in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana. Two people - Brett Pfeffer and Vernon L. Jackson - have pleaded guilty to bribing Jefferson to promote iGate Inc., a Louisville-based company that was marketing Internet and cable television technology in Africa.

    Jefferson and his wife, Andrea, are targets of the probe, and the government is moving closer to deciding whether to indict, according to those familiar with the probe.

    Legal experts were divided on the legality and propriety of the FBI's raid, but many argued that it could raise serious evidentiary problems for prosecutors at trial. In scores of cases of alleged congressional wrongdoing, federal prosecutors and FBI agents have most commonly sought to issue subpoenas for documents rather than conducting an impromptu raid on congressional property, experts said.

    At issue is the "speech or debate" clause of the Constitution - language intended to shield lawmakers from intimidation by the executive branch. Historically, courts have interpreted the clause broadly, legal experts said.

    Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), in an e-mail to colleagues with the subject line "on the edge of a constitutional confrontation," called the Saturday night raid "the most blatant violation of the Constitutional Separation of Powers in my lifetime." Gingrich urged President Bush to discipline or fire "whoever exhibited this extraordinary violation."

    Many legal experts and defense lawyers agreed with Gingrich. Charles Tiefer, a University of Baltimore law professor who served as solicitor and deputy general counsel of the House for 11 years, called the raid "an intimidating tactic that has never before been used against the legislative branch."

    "The framers, who were familiar with King George III's disdain for their colonial legislatures, would turn over in their graves," Tiefer said.

    Washington defense lawyer Stanley M. Brand, a former general counsel for the House who has represented numerous lawmakers accused of wrongdoing, also questioned the government's strategy.

    "This is really an over-the-top move, and it could create some real blowback problems for them in the courts," Brand said.

    But Viet D. Dinh, a former assistant attorney general in the Bush administration who is now a Georgetown University law professor, said that "the raid on his offices itself does not define a constitutional issue."

    The constitutional privilege for lawmakers does not "expand to insulate everything that goes on in a congressional office, especially if there's allegations of abuse of process or bribery," Dinh said. ". . . The fine line is whether or not it relates to a legislative process or not, not whether they've raided his office."

    The legal debate and protests acted as something of a diversion for Jefferson, whose political future becomes more precarious with every new development. He recently drew a Republican opponent, New Orleans lawyer Joseph M. Lavigne, who announced his candidacy in late April, and others are likely to jump in before the Aug. 11 filing deadline.

    Jefferson's case also complicates what Democrats had hoped would be one of their more potent election-year arguments: that a culture of corruption instigated by former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and some lawmakers and congressional aides has infected the GOP, and that Democrats would usher in a new era of honest leadership.

    "As bad as people want to say the Abramoff situation was, it didn't lead to any House offices getting raided," said Carl Forti, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

    Jefferson had taken a defiant and assertive stance in recent appearances, but he appeared softer-spoken and more hesitant yesterday. "There's a criminal investigation going on regarding this, and my lawyers have advised me not to discuss, and I will not discuss any of the alleged facts in the case," he said, wringing his hands as he faced the cameras. "That would be extraordinarily foolhardy to avoid their advice."

    Jefferson said of his political future: "I expect to run for reelection, but that's a matter that's down the road."

    John Maginnis, editor of the Louisiana Political Fax Weekly newsletter, says he is always surprised when politicians get caught in such acts of malfeasance. "It's not a very good reflection on the state to have your congressman accused of taking bribes at the same time Louisianans are trying to get money out of the federal government," Maginnis said, referring to the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

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    Staff writers Allan Lengel and Linton Weeks and research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.

 

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    For Democrats, a Scandal of Their Own
    By Carl Huse
    The New York Times

    Tuesday 23 May 2006

    Washington - Democrats' plans to make Republican corruption a theme of their election strategy this year have been complicated by accusations of wrongdoing in their own ranks, leading the party to try on Monday to blunt the political effects of the unfolding case against Representative William J. Jefferson.

    Democratic leaders sought to distance the party from Mr. Jefferson, the Louisiana Democrat who has been accused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. In doing that, the leaders tried to draw a distinction between the accusations against him and what they said was a much broader pattern among Republicans of trading legislative influence for campaign donations, trips and other perks.

    Mr. Jefferson appeared on Capitol Hill to deny any wrongdoing. Facing a bank of television cameras down the hall from his Congressional office, which was raided by federal agents on Saturday night, Mr. Jefferson said that he would not resign and that he expected to be cleared.

    In court documents made public on Sunday, the F.B.I. said Mr. Jefferson had taken bribes to help a small technology company win federal contracts and to help it with business deals in Africa. The F.B.I. said he had concealed $90,000 from the scheme in the freezer of his home in Washington.

    "There are two sides to every story," Mr. Jefferson said, without providing any details.

    For all the intense partisanship that has surrounded the wave of legal and ethical cases on Capitol Hill, the Jefferson case brought some Democrats and Republicans together on one point: that the all-night search conducted by the F.B.I. raised questions about whether the executive branch had violated the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers by carrying out a raid on the official office of a member of Congress.

    Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said Monday that he had concerns about the constitutionality of the search and was seeking a legal opinion. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader in the House, said that "Justice Department investigations must be conducted in accordance with constitutional protections and historical precedent." Some House Republicans said they were also disturbed by the way the search was handled.

    "I think it is really outrageous," said Representative David Dreier, the California Republican who is chairman of the Rules Committee.

    The constitutional question aside, some Democrats acknowledged that the headline-grabbing case involving a colleague they know as Jeff had the potential to dilute one of their core political arguments against the Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

    No prominent Republican spoke out against Mr. Jefferson on Monday. But Democrats harbored no hope that Mr. Jefferson would not become part of a Republican counterattack against Democratic efforts to portray the Republicans as a party that had lost its ethical bearings.

    "There is no doubt that the charges, the conduct of any Democrat, is going to be raised by those who question our attacks on a culture of corruption as a way to divert attention from that," said Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas and a vocal critic of Representative Tom DeLay, the former majority leader.

    Mr. DeLay stepped down from his leadership post and announced he would leave Congress after he was indicted in Texas on charges that he had used campaign contributions illegally and came under partisan fire for his ties to Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who has pleaded guilty in a wide-ranging public corruption inquiry.

    Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Mr. Jefferson's situation was that of an individual who had yet to be charged formally. The Democratic case against Republicans, he suggested, went to a pattern of trading influence for personal gain within an incestuous world of revolving-door staff members, lobbyists and campaign fund-raisers that Republicans helped establish.

    "They are different scales," Mr. Emanuel said. "One is a party outlook and operation; the other is an individual's action. They have institutional corruption."

    Even before the case against Mr. Jefferson became public, Republicans were pointing to ethical questions about the activities of another Democrat, Representative Alan B. Mollohan of West Virginia, who is under F.B.I. scrutiny for his personal finances and his efforts to steer millions of dollars to nonprofit organizations that he helped control.

    On Monday, Democratic leaders were considering steps to isolate Mr. Jefferson, including the possibility of removing him from his seat on the Ways and Means Committee. Ms. Pelosi had already endorsed the idea of an ethics inquiry against Mr. Jefferson, and one was initiated last week.

    Mr. Jefferson said he intended to "continue to represent the people who have sent me here to try to respond to their needs and their issues." He said he expected to seek re-election, though potential challengers were emerging in New Orleans.

    Mr. Jefferson also called the search, evidently the first ever executed at an official Congressional office, an intrusion into the separation of powers. But Ms. Pelosi suggested the lawmaker bore some responsibility.

    "Members of Congress must obey the law and cooperate fully with any criminal investigation," Ms. Pelosi said in a statement. "If they don't, they will be held accountable."

    Late Monday evening, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert issued a statement highly critical of the search.

    "Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night, crossing this separation of powers line, in order to successfully prosecute corruption by members of Congress," Mr. Hastert said, promising to seek a means to restore "the delicate balance of power."

    Donald Ritchie, a historian with the Senate, said his office could find no record of a similar search, though the homes and business offices of lawmakers had been searched in the past.

    At an unrelated news conference, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales called the search "unusual steps that were taken in response to an unusual set of circumstances; I'll just say that."

    In their affidavit, federal prosecutors said they had adopted special procedures in the raid to minimize the likelihood that any politically sensitive materials unrelated to the inquiry would be seized in paper form or from office computers.

    Lawmakers under federal investigation have in the past raised their special status under the Constitution in an effort to thwart charges with mixed results, with prosecutors sometimes narrowing the case in response, though the Supreme Court has also refused to consider such claims.

    In 2002, Mr. Jefferson sought to join the House leadership by becoming the chairman of the Democratic campaign committee, citing his fund-raising record. But Ms. Pelosi chose her fellow Californian, Representative Bob Matsui, who died in January 2005, and her relationship with Mr. Jefferson has been somewhat strained since.

    Mr. Jefferson's problems were generating wisecracks on Capitol Hill about cold cash and freezing assets. As in the case of Randy Cunningham, a California Republican jailed after a bribery conviction this year, fellow lawmakers also expressed amazement at the purported goings-on.

    "If the allegations are true," Mr. Doggett said, referring to Mr. Jefferson, "he has no place here."