Anger after FBI raid of House member’s office

updated 9:20 p.m. ET May 24, 2006

WASHINGTON - 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?”

Speaker under scrutiny
Hastert’s name has come up in a wide-ranging investigation into whether convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s fundraising influenced several members of Congress, but the Justice Department said Wednesday the speaker wasn’t being investigated.

The Associated Press reported last November that Hastert for two years didn’t disclose his use of Abramoff’s restaurant for a fundraiser just two weeks before he asked the Interior Department in a letter to reject a Louisiana Indian tribe’s application for a casino license.

At the time, Abramoff was representing another tribe that opposed the casino. Hastert, who collected a total of $100,000 from Abramoff’s and his tribal clients, blamed a paperwork oversight, filed the required disclosure and paid for the use of the restaurant.

“Speaker Hastert is not under investigation by the Justice Department,” Tasia Scolino, a spokeswoman for the department said Wednesday night.

Asked about the matter as he walked from his office to the House floor, Hastert said he knew of no such investigation, commenting later: “Somebody leaked it out.” Asked if he thought Gonzales should resign, the speaker shook his head and declined to answer.

“We’re not trying to protect an individual, we’re trying to protect the separation of powers,” Hastert said. “That was true during Watergate, it was true during Bill Clinton,” he added, referring former President Nixon’s ultimate resignation and President’s Clinton impeachment trial over an affair with an intern.

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