I'm not a constitutional law expert, but this seems strange to me:

Jefferson argued that the first-of-its-kind raid trampled congressional independence. The Constitution prohibits the executive branch from using its law enforcement powers to interfere with the lawmaking process. The Justice Department said that declaring the search unconstitutional would essentially prohibit the FBI from ever looking at a lawmaker's documents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected that claim. The court held that, while the search itself was constitutional, 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.

How does that work? What's to keep the Congressman from arguing that all the records had to do with legislative business, and not allowing them to see anything? The real issue here, since they at least ruled the raid itself illegal, is whether or not the trial judge will throw out the untainted evidence.

I wonder if Justice will appeal?

I think there's less here than meets the eye. The AP currently loves the legislative branch, and of course Jefferson is a black Democrat -- triple header, there -- so they want to spin this as much as possible as a defeat for the FBI.

But...the court did not say the search was a priori unconstitutional. They only said that looking through all the guys papers in search of those related to their investigation, without giving him the chance to argue that this or that piece of paper was related to his duties as a Congressman, was.

It's hard to see what else they could have done, really. If the Executive is allowed to (1) raid a Congressman's office, (2) search through all his papers, and (3) decide for themselves which are, and are not, related to a criminal investigation, then, yeah, I'd say there's a serious separation of powers problem.

That's pretty much all they said. They didn't say seizure of some papers was unconstitional. They didn't say they can't use what they found that is germane to the case. So if this was a "victory" for Jefferson, it was pretty hollow. About all he got was a statement of principle: that the Executive shouldn't interfere with the Legislative branch. But I don't see his criminal case being set back at all, unless the trial judge says all the evidence seized was seized unconstitutionally. We won't know that for a while. But I would hazard a guess that the lack of a ruling on this issue from the apellate court is a warning to Jefferson's team that if the trial judge does not throw out the evidence, they shouldn't be very confident they'll win on appeal.

Rand, you asked what's to prevent a Congressman from totally stonewalling Justice. The answer is suposed to be Congress in a body. It's supposed to police itself, and the right thing to do would be for Congress to send the Sergeant at Arms to search Jefferson's office and send any bad stuff to Justice, or for Congress to expel Jefferson, or similarly investigate and punish their own transgressing members.

But I guess they don't have time, what with spending millions of my tax money and acres of time investigating whether Plato himself would agree that Statement A of Alberto Gonzalez is perfectly consistent with Statement B. Important stuff, that. Way more important than whether a Congressman is abusing the privilege of his position to hide evidence that he has committed a crime.

It seems really simple to me. Just as Congress cannot seem to overcome "Executive Privilege" in most cases, the President shouldn't be able to send his Justice Department to raid congress members offices.

If they had a valid search warrant, (which they did), they should have made arrangements with the Speaker to have the Capitol PD do the search.

Same result, but it does not violate the separation of powers. And that separation exists for a reason that the Founders found fairly compelling, or it wouldn't be there.

I don't approve of Congress trying to usurp Presidential powers, (such as this whole Gonzales kerfuffle), but neither do I approve of the Executive interfering with Congressional prerogatives.

Bad juju all the way around, in both instances.