Bush Seals Materials Seized in Raid on the Office of Rep William Jefferson
Posted on | May 25, 2006
MSNBC.Com is reporting that George W. Bush, in bowing to anger from Congressional leaders’ anger over the FBI raid on the office of Representative William Jefferson (D-LA), has ordered the US Department of Justice to seal the materials taken in the raid. In a statement, Bush says that he has ordered a seal on the materials for a period of forty-five days to allow Congress and the Department of Justice to come to some sort of an agreement. No one connected to the investigation of Rep. Jefferson is allowed to review the materials and they are to be placed in the custody of the Solicitor General’s office, which is a separate office within the Department of Justice, who is not involved in any way with the investigation of Jefferson. The raid, which was the first FBI raid on the office of a sitting member of Congress in history, came only after Rep. Jefferson refused to comply with a subpoena issued by the department in a bribery investigation back in September. After Jefferson refused to comply, the FBI took their evidence to a judge who issued a proper warrant allowed the FBI to execute a search on the office which occurred Saturday evening.
Now some members of congressional leadership have tried to make this into some kind of "constitutional issue". How is that so? In terms of legal action against sitting members of Congress, Article I, Section 6 of the US Constitution states:
[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.
In case some members of Congress have forgotten, bribery is a felony and those protections are null and void.
Michelle Malkin made the topic the subject of her latest Vent on her video blog Hot Air. In one of those rare occasions, I find myself in agreement with what Michelle has to say about the issue. While I respectfully disagree with her on her statement of how the US Congress " has been stepping all over the executive branch’s wartime powers moaning about this and investigating that until there isn’t much the terrorists don’t know about how we plan to fight them." But I agree with her fully in that the FBI’s investigation was well within the defined powers granted under the US Constitution and the judicial search warrant are part of the Checks & Balances system upon which the division of powers between government branches is based.
That all being said, I think Bush should have shown he had at least a micron’s worth of guts and told Congressional leaders to just shut up. The Department of Justice and the FBI were acting within their constitutional limits and they took the appropriate steps to ensure that the constitutional rights of Rep. Jefferson were protected. The FBI was just doing its job as is described under the Constitution. The executive branch is charged with enforcing the laws passed by the legislative branch. Congress just does not like it when they are on the business end of that enforcement.
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