Corruption Disruption

[MavKikiNYC]

WTF am I missing here?

Are Hastert and Pelosi suggesting that members of Congress WHO HAVE BEEN CAUGHT RED-HANDED in criminal activities should not be subject to subpoeanas or searches by the FBI?

Give me a f*cking break.

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May 24, 2006
House Leader Demands F.B.I. Return Documents

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:44 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In rare, election-year harmony, House Republican and Democratic leaders jointly demanded on Wednesday that the FBI return documents taken in a Capitol Hill raid that has quickly grown into a constitutional turf fight beyond party politics.

''The Justice Department must immediately return the papers it unconstitutionally seized,'' House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement.

After that, they said, Democratic Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana must cooperate with the Justice Department's bribery investigation against him.

The leaders also said the Justice Department should not look at the documents or give them to investigators in the Jefferson case.

The developments capped a day of escalating charges, demands and behind-the-scene talks between House leaders and the Justice Department that ended with no resolution, according to officials of both parties.
House officials were drafting a joint resolution frowning on the raid. And Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., announced a hearing next week titled, ''Reckless Justice: Did the Saturday Night Raid of Congress Trample the Constitution?''

Constitutional confrontation aside, Pelosi said Jefferson should resign from the powerful Ways and Means committee. He refused.

At the same time, Jefferson filed a motion asking the federal judge in the case to order the FBI to return the material it seized from his office.

The Justice Department dug in, repeating that the raid was carried out only after Jefferson refused to comply with a subpoena and only then with a search warrant signed by a judge.

''The actions were lawful and necessary under these unique circumstances,'' said Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

The constitutional fight was set in motion last Saturday night, when the FBI raided Jefferson's legislative office in pursuit of evidence against him in an investigation of whether he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in a bribery deal.

Historians say the search was the first of its kind in Congress' 219-year history. Reaction has crossed party lines and brought in all three branches of government.

Hastert, Pelosi and several other leaders of both parties in the Senate say the weekend raid violated the Constitution's separation of powers doctrine.

''These constitutional principles were not designed by the founding fathers to place anyone above the law,'' Hastert and Pelosi said. ''Rather, they were designed to protect the Congress and the American people from abuses of power, and those principles deserve to be vigorously defended.''

Not all lawmakers agreed.

''These self-serving separation of power arguments'' have no basis in law, said Sen. David Vitter, R-La., in a letter to GOP leaders. He noted that search warrants had previously been served on members' homes, including Jefferson's.

''A distinction that would treat searches in their offices completely differently is superficial and baseless,'' Vitter wrote. ''The American people will come to one conclusion -- that congressional leaders are trying to protect their own from valid investigations.''

No one was defending the Louisiana congressman other than Jefferson himself.

''In the interest of upholding the high ethical standard of the House Democratic Caucus, I am writing to request your immediate resignation from the Ways and Means Committee,'' Democratic leader Pelosi wrote him.

''With respect, I decline to do so,'' he wrote back, leaving it to the House to try to pressure him out of the seat or strip him of the post by majority vote.

''I will not give up a committee assignment that is so vital to New Orleans at this crucial time for any uncertain, long-term political strategy,'' he added.

Away from the Capitol, Jefferson filed a motion that mirrored parts of Pelosi and Hastert's statement. In it, he asked U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Hogan to order the FBI to return all of the documents taken from his office during the 15-hour search. Hogan, appointed by the President Reagan, was the judge who last Thursday issued the warrant authorizing the search.

Ethics investigations involving lawmakers and executive powers claimed by President Bush are expected to be issues for many candidates in the upcoming midterm elections.

House Democrats have been building a campaign around what they call a Republican ''culture of corruption'' focused on influence peddling and convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Many Republicans, meanwhile, are trying to distance themselves from Bush, whose public approval ratings have fallen with the continuing war in Iraq and disclosures of secret domestic wiretaps without warrants.
Hastert on Tuesday complained directly to Bush that the raid violated the Constitution's separation of powers doctrine.

Justice Department officials said there was no similar outcry when FBI agents searched a federal judge's chambers in a bribery investigation in the early 1990s. In that case, U.S. District Judge Robert Collins of Louisiana was convicted of bribery, after agents found marked bills in his office.

The Collins case is the only one in which a federal judge's office has been searched, the department said.

[Jeremiah]

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[Mavdog]

The immunity provision doesn't apply as Jefferson is accused of a felony.

the Justice department was given a warrant by a Virginia Judge.

it seems that the only defense of Jefferson is that of a long standing protocol, a tradition, that the legislator's offices are off limits. that is not something to ignore imho.

with all the evidence that was reportedly found in Jefferson's home, including the money with matching serial numbers, this raid was unnecessary, and given the sideshow it has produced, an error in judgement by someone in the DofJ.

[MavKikiNYC]

Yet another instance where I think capital punishment is vastly underapplied.

Corrupt public officials to the front of the line.

[Jeremiah]

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[Jeremiah]

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[MavKikiNYC]

Originally Posted by Jeremiah

Well, you can either sit on your butt and stew, or, you can get up off it and do something. Methinks you'll choose the former, which is just fine by me.

You've used that throwaway line before. It doesn't really have the impact you seem to think it does.

I doubt that capital punishment is going to be expanded to be as as useful as it could.

But corrupt elected public officials--Democrat or Republican, Jefferson or Delay-- elicit no sympathy from me. And there is seemingly precious little disincentive to their clamping onto the teat of graft and bribery.

[MavKikiNYC]

Gonzales Said He Would Quit in Raid Dispute

By DAVID JOHNSTON and CARL HULSE
Published: May 27, 2006

WASHINGTON, May 26 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and senior officials and career prosecutors at the Justice Department told associates this week that they were prepared to quit if the White House directed them to relinquish evidence seized in a bitterly disputed search of a House member's office, government officials said Friday.

The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, was also prepared to quit, according to officials.

Mr. Gonzales was joined in raising the possibility of resignation by the deputy attorney general, Paul J. McNulty, the officials said. Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty told associates that they had an obligation to protect evidence in a criminal case and would be unwilling to carry out any White House order to return the material to Congress.

The potential showdown was averted Thursday when President Bush ordered the evidence to be sealed for 45 days to give Congress and the Justice Department a chance to work out a deal.

The evidence was seized by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents last Saturday night in a search of the office of Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana. The search set off an uproar of protest by House leaders in both parties, who said the intrusion by an executive branch agency into a Congressional office violated the Constitution's separation of powers doctrine. They demanded that the Justice Department return the evidence.

The possibility of resignations underscored the gravity of the crisis that gripped the Justice Department as the administration grappled with how to balance the pressure from its own party on Capitol Hill against the principle that a criminal investigation, especially one involving a member of Congress, should be kept well clear of political considerations.

It is not clear precisely what message Mr. Gonzales delivered to Mr. Bush when they met Thursday morning at the White House, or whether he informed the president of the resignation talk. But hours later, the White House announced that the evidence would be sealed for 45 days in the custody of the solicitor general, the Justice Department official who represents the government before the Supreme Court. That arrangement ended the talk of resignations.

F.B.I. officials would not comment Friday on Mr. Mueller's thinking or on whether his views had been communicated to the president.

The White House said Mr. Bush devised the 45-day plan as a way to cool tempers in Congress and the Justice Department. "The president saw both sides becoming more entrenched," said Dan Bartlett, Mr. Bush's counselor. "Emotions were running high; that's why the president felt he had to weigh in."

Tensions were especially high because officials at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. viewed the Congressional protest, led by Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and House Republicans, as largely a proxy fight for battles likely to come over criminal investigations into other Republicans in Congress.

Separate investigations into the activities of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Randy Cunningham, the former congressman from California, have placed several other Republicans under scrutiny; in the Cunningham case, federal authorities have informally asked to interview nine former staff members of the House Appropriations and Intelligence Committees.

By Friday, the strong words and tense behind-the-scenes meetings of the previous few days had been replaced, in public at least, by conciliatory terms and images of accommodation. Mr. Gonzales traveled to Capitol Hill and met with Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, as Republican leaders explored a formal procedure to cover any future searches.

"We've been working hard already, and we'll continue to do so pursuant to the president's order," Mr. Gonzales told reporters on his way to the meeting.
After the meeting, Mr. Frist said, "I want to know as leader exactly what would happen if there was a similar sort of case."

Senior lawmakers in the House and Senate said their intent was not to prohibit searches of Congressional offices if there was a legitimate reason. But they said the Jefferson case powerfully illustrated how Congress and the administration had no set guidelines for how such a search should be done, what notice was required and how law enforcement and House authorities would interact.

But within the Justice Department and the F.B.I., some officials complained that the 45-day cooling-off arrangement was a politically motivated intrusion into the investigative process. Others said the deal was preferable to what some called the potential "cataclysm" of possible resignations if the department had been ordered to give up the material, as one official briefed on the negotiations described it. This official and others at the department and the F.B.I. were granted anonymity to discuss a continuing criminal case.

At the Justice Department, there was hope that the courts might quickly resolve the issue. Government lawyers prepared a brief on Friday in opposition to the motion filed by lawyers for Mr. Jefferson seeking the return of materials taken from his office. The F.B.I. search was conducted on the basis of a search warrant issued by a federal judge, T. S. Ellis, in Alexandria, Va.

On Friday, Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi and chairman of the Rules Committee, said he had been meeting with Senate counsel to explore potential procedures and had given Mr. Frist a memorandum on a possible approach.
"The Justice Department is going to have to look at what we put in place and agree to it," Mr. Lott said. "I hope we can work it out."

But he said, "I am perfectly willing to get it on with the administration and take it right to the Supreme Court if they want to argue over it."

To some, the most astounding aspect of the Jefferson clash is that the question has never arisen before in two centuries of assorted Congressional criminality and misconduct.

At the same time, law enforcement officials said the deal did not mean that the Jefferson investigation would stop until the disagreement about the evidence was resolved. Mr. Jefferson has denied wrongdoing, but within law enforcement circles it is regarded as all but certain — based on evidence already collected — that he will face indictment on bribery-related charges.

On Friday, Brent Pfeffer, a former aide to the lawmaker, was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy charges related to a kickback scheme involving Mr. Jefferson, identified in court documents only as "Representative A."
Mr. Pfeffer said he was an intermediary in an effort by Mr. Jefferson to obtain money from a Kentucky telecommunications firm for help getting contracts in Nigeria.

The investigation is being handled by the United States attorney's office in Alexandria, which until recently was headed by Mr. McNulty. He was the chief negotiator for the Justice Department in trying to reach an accommodation with the House.

Mr. McNulty seemed like the perfect point person on Capitol Hill for Mr. Gonzales. He was the chief counsel for the House majority leader when former Representative Dick Armey, Republican of Texas, had the job. And Mr. McNulty was chief counsel and spokesman for the Republican majority on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

But it was Mr. McNulty who appeared to lead the protest at the Justice Department, telling House officials that he would quit rather than obey an order to return the search material to Mr. Jefferson.

[MavKikiNYC]

The opposition by Hastert and Pelosi seems to be motivated more by the political than by the constitutional.

Suggests that the corruption in the Congress is so widespread on BOTH sides that they are concerned about losing political allies, if not concerned by how close the investigations will come to themselves.

Stay tuned.

I don't think Bush was concerned so much about losing on the legal point as he was in losing more of his top Justice Department officials. They do not sound willing to acquiesce to the widespread criminal activity going on by Jefferson, Delay and others.

[Jeremiah]

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[MavKikiNYC]

".....an interesting item from our partners at "National Journal" by way of this week's Insiders' Poll of 77 members of Congress. Remember the FBI search of Congressman William Jefferson's Capitol Hill office a couple of weeks ago? It provided a rare moment of agreement between House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. They both considered that a rank outrage. Well, it turns out many of their members weren't as outraged as their leadership. Eighty-seven percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Democrats who were polled said, yes, federal law enforcement authority should be permitted to conduct a judicially authorized search of a member's office. Members, one Republican said, should not be above the law. So so much for that Hastert-Pelosi honeymoon. (Laughter.) I think we can say that that's going to go away."

77 Member of Congress Polled--87% of Repbulicans and 81% of Democrats polled said that law enforcement authority should be able to conduct a judicially authorized search of a MOC's office.

Not only was González legally correct in what he did, but the poll strongly suggests that members of the very body whose traditionally recognized priviliges were being curtailed seem to agree.