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Perhaps they will home in on the half-million dollar bribe, offered to an African official "to motivate him real good". An alternative could be the note, bearing the word "cash", written to avoid Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) listening devices.Or there is the small matter of the $90,000 (£48,000), carefully wrapped in aluminium foil and hidden in plastic food containers within Congressman William Jefferson's freezer. Unfortunately for the Democratic Party as it struggles to seize back power on Capitol Hill, these are not plot choices being debated by scriptwriters for the Mob drama The Sopranos. They are options being considered...

WASHINGTON - A Louisiana congressman under investigation for bribery said Monday he would not resign in the face of allegations that he was videotaped accepting $100,000 from an informant. Democratic Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio, voting record), who has not been charged, called an FBI search of his Capitol office "an outrageous intrusion," telling reporters: "There are two sides to every story. There are certainly two sides to this story." House Speaker Dennis Hastert questioned whether the raid of the congressman's office, believed the first in history, overstepped constitutional limitations on executive powers. "Nothing I have learned in the last...

WASHINGTON, May 21 — The F.B.I. accused Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, on Sunday of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from a Kentucky businessman and stashing $90,000 from the scheme in his home freezer in Washington. The accusations appeared in court documents that were made public only hours after a team of 15 agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation completed an all-night search of Mr. Jefferson's Congressional offices. F.B.I. officials said the raid, which began about 7:15 p.m. Saturday and ended early Sunday afternoon, was the first the agency had ever conducted at a...

Federal agents searched the Capitol Hill office of a Louisiana congressman under investigation on bribery charges Sunday, while newly released court papers said agents found $90,000 in cash last year in his Washington home. In a 95-page affidavit used to obtain a warrant for the office search, investigators stated that an August 2005 search of Democratic Rep. William Jefferson's home turned up the cash sum in a freezer. The money was divided among various frozen food containers, according to the heavily redacted affidavit

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A congressman under investigation for bribery was caught on videotape accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from an FBI informant whose conversations with the lawmaker also were recorded, according to a court document released Sunday. Agents later found the cash hidden in his freezer. At one audiotaped meeting, Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., chuckles about writing in code to keep secret what the government contends was his corrupt role in getting his children a cut of a communications company's deal for work in Africa