I think so also. It's not clear to me that Speaker of the House Hastert is incorrect in asserting that there are Constitutional issues. I think President Bush has acted wisely to put a hold on this for 45 days while this can be clarified.
From the Speaker's webpage:
There's a right way
May 26, 2006
If the information we have read about the behavior of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., seems as obvious to a jury as it does to me, he deserves to be vigorously prosecuted. I do not want to do anything that will interfere with that prosecution.
The issue that has concerned me, as Speaker, since Saturday night is not if the FBI should be able to search a member of Congress' office, but rather how to do it within the boundaries of the Constitution.
On Thursday, President Bush recognized that serious constitutional issues needed to be resolved. He wisely directed the Department of Justice to send the documents (taken from Jefferson's office last weekend) to the Solicitor General's office for safekeeping for 45 days. This was a meaningful step. The president also encouraged the Justice Department to meet with us.
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and I directed the lawyers for the House to develop reasonable protocols and procedures that will make it possible for the FBI to go into congressional offices to constitutionally-execute a search warrant.
In more than 219 years, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to use a search warrant to obtain documents from a congressional office. These issues have always been resolved without the necessity of a search warrant, and prosecutions have gone forward.
Justice Department officials now insist that this specific case required them, for the first time, to conduct a search. I regret that when they reached this conclusion, they did not work with us to figure out a way to do it consistently with the Constitution. But that is behind us now. I am confident that in the next 45 days, the lawyers will figure out how to do it right.
That's because congress was never so collectively arrogant as to refuse to cooperate before.
There is nothing in Hastert's statement to indicate the siezure was anything BUT COnstitutional. He's full of it.
IOW, Congress is above the laws it writes.
Sheesh, they are all crooks.
Yes, I think that the FBI could have executed the search warrant in conjuction with the Capitol Police after having informed the House leadership, and all would have been well. Somebody, it seems, wants to push this issue.
OK, after reading that quote from Hastert's site, I am wondering just HOW the search in Jefferson's office was unconstitutional. Anyone?