[Revel]

Besides that...Once this guy got caught doing what he was doing then his only rights are for a defense in a criminal court as far as I am concerned. I don't believe that the separation of powers was ever intended to cover such nonsense as this. They guy commits a criminal act and it is up to the judicial system to deal with him. The evidence is not protected. And just why would the judicial care about anything that was not pertinent to the criminal case against him. We are supposed to trust government with our constitutional rights via the patriot act, but the legislative branch is not suppose to trust the judicial branch in matter of criminal charges. Hypocrisy.

[The Red Zone]

his only rights are for a defense in a criminal court as far as I am concerned.

But, not as far as the Constitution is concerned. Even this slime does have the "civil" right to challenge the legislatively privileged aspect of the stuff that was seized before it goes public and gets splashed out on, say, thesmokinggun.com. Without that, anybody in Congress, even your dearest GOP friend, is in a position to get harassed by bureaucrats of opposite political persuasion.

[mrsmith]

"The evidence is not protected. And just why would the judicial care about anything that was not pertinent to the criminal case against him. "

Indeed. Or the administration either.

So we can agree that removing the legislative work- which cannot be questioned in any other place- is no loss.

All the DOJ wants is the material that is evidence for the bribery case. They don't want the privileged material. The only problem was how to separate it from the evidence- which isn't privileged.
I wish the opinion was available, it sounds like the court that issued the warrant has a whole lot of work ahead of it.

"... secrecy..." certainly has it's drawbacks but, it's been wisely said that legislating is like making sausage...
In the case of legislative privilege the secrecy is to protect the legislature from being blackmailed and bullied by the other branches to thwart the will of the people.