Source:
Washington PostJustice Dept. Says It Makes Lawmakers Invulnerable
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 21, 2007; Page A03
The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision limiting law enforcement searches of congressional offices, arguing that the sweep of the ruling last summer may kill ongoing public corruption investigations.
Acting Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre, in a petition filed this week, urged the high court to weigh in on how far the "speech or debate" clause of the Constitution goes in insulating members of Congress from legal action. In the meantime, he said, "investigations of corruption in the nation's capital and elsewhere will be seriously and perhaps fatally stymied."
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was handed down in August in the case of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), whose office was searched in 2006 by FBI agents investigating possible bribery. A three-judge panel ruled that under the Constitution, the FBI is barred from "a location where legislative materials
inevitably to be found," unless the member consents.
Justice Department lawyers called the ruling an "unprecedented expansion" of the speech-or-debate clause, which they said protects legislative acts but does not shield non-legislative materials that may show criminal activity. The appeals court found that FBI agents reviewed protected legislative records in the course of searching for criminal evidence ...
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/20/AR2007122002197.html
Jefferson to tell judge about interview
He felt he couldn't leave FBI meeting
Thursday, December 20, 2007
By Bill Walsh
ALEXANDRIA, VA. -- U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, is expected to take the witness stand today to challenge FBI agents' accounts that he was free to leave what turned into a damaging interview before a search of his home in 2005 as part of their public corruption probe.
It will be the first time the congressman will testify in the 2 1/2-year investigation that has cast him as the mastermind in a web of international bribery schemes and triggered a 16-count indictment against him in June. Jefferson has pleaded innocent.
Jefferson is expected to tell a U.S. District Court judge that he felt coerced into making statements to the agents that the government plans to use against him at trial in February ...
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