In what some have said has echoes of the Watergate crisis, the nation’s Attorney General and FBI chief reportedly threatened to quit if evidence seized in a highly controversial raid on a lawmaker’s office was handed back to Congress:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI director Robert Mueller signaled they would resign this week rather than give in to Congress in a dispute over an FBI raid on Rep. William Jefferson’s Capitol Hill office, an administration official tells CBS News.
Top law enforcement officials at the Justice Department and the FBI indicated to their counterparts at the White House that they could not, and were unwilling to, return documents to the Louisiana Democrat which were seized as part of a bribery investigation.
CBS News has learned that there was concern among prosecutors and FBI agents that the White House would give in to Congressional pressure and return the materials to Jefferson. But, according to the administration official, Mueller, Gonzales and his top deputy Paul McNulty made it clear that they “going to the final end of the mat” to keep them.
Note that these are news reports with unnamed law enforcement and FBI sources. Also keep in mind that unnamed sources sometimes have a motive (political or otherwise) for the information that they give to reporters (it just isn’t because they like the reporter).
But what’s interesting is that a name familiar in many administration controversies comes up once again in the CBS report:
Inside the administration, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office was pushing for the materials to be returned. Cheney’s Chief of Staff David Addington argued internally that the search was questionable.
The dispute raged across Washington all week before President George W. Bush eased tensions on Thursday, ordering that the seized documents be sealed for 45 days.
More than a dozen FBI agents conducted an all-night search of Jefferson’s office last week. They took two boxes of paper records and made a copy of everything on Jefferson’s personal computer, Robert Trout, Jefferson’s lawyer, said in his legal filing Wednesday demanding the return of the materials.
The FBI and prosecutors refused to allow lawyers for Jefferson or the House of Representatives to be present for the search, Trout and House officials said.
In an affidavit supporting the search warrant, the FBI said it had videotaped Jefferson last summer taking $100,000 in bribe money and that agents had found $90,000 of that cash stuffed in a freezer in his home.
House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert complained about the raid to President Bush at least twice. He was joined Wednesday by his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, in a statement demanding the FBI give back the material it seized.
Some thoughts on this:
- Faced with possible resignations, Bush sealed the evidence for 45 days, which puts this controversy in a kind of holding pattern. In other words: it’s in suspended animation.
- Sealing the evidence 45 days is likely to give time for Hastert to find a graceful way to back off. Why is he likely to back off? Because he’s taking a lot of heat from some (not all) Republicans for messing up a great opportunity to point to Jefferson as a Democrat who is participating in the “culture of corruption” that Democrats have referred to when talking about Republicans. The logical question becomes: if he doesn’t back off does it mean that he’s digging in his heels on the issue of Congressional powers or that he fears a raid on his office?
- The large issue remains, however: this kind of raid has NOT been done before and it is one more example of the administration extending the reach of executive branch power by doing something that may be legal (and some experts question it) but has not been done under previous administrations. The Bush administration often shatters the conventional wisdom of how things are done — and by default that then becomes the new conventional wisdom. And, when it does, it’s weighted on the side of executive branch power.
- Bush would have taken heat if he had taken a stand one way or another on this. If he had handed the info back to Congress, he’d be under fire in some quarters for giving up possible evidence indicating wrong-doing. Many GOPers would also say he effectively had sandbagged a powerful case that could help the GOP at the polls (the “everybody does it” theory of politics). If he had refused, however, he could have been facing a full-fledged confrontation with Congress.
- The 45 day waiting period has been described by some as a cooling-off period. But the main cooling off is political, not legal: it’s buying time so in the end no one loses face or there could be some kind of compromise (but one where the info isn’t handed back to Congress). But if you’d have to bet money, you could bet the feds will keep the evidence and Congress is no longer off limits in the future. The political question will then become: will some offices of Republican officeholders be raided as well if they don’t cooperate with investigators? And, if not, will that become a political issue? And if there is a Democratic President, will this new conventional wisdom be battled by many who are now defending it?
UPDATE: The Washington Post has a MUST-READ STORY that explains some of the attitude in Congress and how administration officials were shocked by the response there. A small piece:
Another law enforcement official noted that Hastert and other lawmakers had strongly supported the Justice Department’s aggressive search and surveillance strategies for terrorism investigations. “It’s fair to say we would have expected similar support when it comes to public corruption,” the official said.
But amid multiple investigations of congressmen, many stemming from the conviction of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, this one struck too close to home. “This is the one that sends them to jail,” said Douglas W. Kmiec, a Pepperdine University constitutional law specialist and former Reagan administration lawyer. “They just watched [former Republican Rep.] Duke Cunningham go to jail. There’s an investigation of [Rep.] Bob Ney. . . . There are all the peripheral people caught up in the Abramoff matter.
Others rejected the supposition that Republican members saw themselves potentially at risk. “There was a level of contempt in the raid that resonated with members,” said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor.
A CROSS-SECTION OF OTHERS COMMENTING ON THIS STORY:
Glenn Reynolds, Balanced and Unbiased, Captain Ed Morrissey, Steve Soto, Buckeye State Blog, Daily Pundit, Steven Taylor, Part-time Pundit, The Tory Anarchist, Federal Review, The Zero Point, Jane Hamsher, Wizbang, Macsmind, Tigerhawk
http://haloscan.com/tb/macsmind/114877059850114954 –>
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.