Some Seized Documents Ordered Returned to Jefferson
It isn't clear whether the bribery prosecution of Rep. William Jefferson will be jeopardized by the FBI's seizure of every document it could find during a raid of his office, in light of a ruling today by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The three-judge panel unanimously ruled that the search itself was constitutional but that FBI agents crossed the line when they viewed every record in the office without giving Jefferson the chance to argue that some documents involved legislative business. ... "The review of the Congressman's paper files when the search was executed exposed legislative material to the Executive" and violated the Constitution, the court wrote. "The Congressman is entitled to the return of documents that the court determines to be privileged."
The impact of the appellate ruling will be decided by the district court, which will be tasked with deciding whether papers seized from Jefferson's office and which support the charges against him were privileged legislative materials. It seems unlikely that documents evidencing bribery must be kept privileged to protect "the integrity of the legislative process," but that is a question the district court will need to answer.
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