Political Skullduggery

The word around Washington is that the Republicans want Democratic Congressman William Jefferson, the subject of a FBI search of his office, to remain an active member of the House so that they can point to the bipartisan nature of the corruption scandals on Capitol Hill.

This would account for one motive for President Bush intervening in the FBI investigation yesterday.

President Bush ordered the Justice Department yesterday to seal records seized from the Capitol Hill office of a Democratic congressman, representing a remarkable intervention by the nation's chief executive into an ongoing criminal probe of alleged corruption.

The order was aimed at quelling an escalating constitutional confrontation between the Justice Department and the House, where Republican and Democratic leaders have demanded that the FBI return documents and copies of computer files seized from the office of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.).

In a six-paragraph statement, Bush cast the dispute in historic terms and said he issued the order to give Justice Department officials and lawmakers more time to negotiate a compromise. "Our government has not faced such a dilemma in more than two centuries," Bush said. "Yet after days of discussions, it is clear these differences will require more time to be worked out."

Jefferson should not be too relieved by the sealing of the seized records, because the plan is still to feed him to the wolves--just on a timetable favorable to the GOP:

Bush signaled in his statement, however, that he expected the documents to eventually be made available to prosecutors. "Those who violate the law -- including a Member of Congress -- should and will be held to account," Bush said. "This investigation will go forward, and justice will be served."

We thought so.

Meanwhile, things are heating up in the FBI investigation of the leak to the New York Times of the extra-legal NSA warrantless surveillance program:

Another potential entanglement with the FBI arose yesterday when the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported that federal agents are seeking to interview top House members from both parties as part of an investigation into leaks about the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program to the New York Times.

I have been told that the administration idea here is to keep Congress on the defensive by investigating them and their staffs over the leak so that lawmakers shy away from investigating the legality of the program itself.

But getting back to the skullduggery involving high level involvement in the investigation of Rep. Jefferson, it was revealed that the approval for the search of the Congressman's office came from a high-level:

(Attorney General Alberto) Gonzales, who approved the search of Jefferson's office, issued a statement saying he was satisfied with the president's decision.

"Throughout this discussion period with the Congress over the court-authorized search of Congressman Jefferson's office, the Justice Department has sought to protect the integrity of this important ongoing public corruption investigation," Gonzales said. "The president's order does that and provides additional time to reach a permanent solution that allows this investigation to continue while accommodating the concerns of certain members of Congress."

I earlier spoke of one motive of the sealing of Jefferson's seized records--to keep a viable public face of Democratic corruption.

There is however, a larger motive in play according to Washington insiders:

Republicans were leading a challenge to the administration stemming from the criminal inquiry into a Democrat; Democrats were wrestling with how to separate themselves from Mr. Jefferson. And some were hinting that Republicans were more concerned with protecting themselves from future searches than with protecting the institution.

This is specifically the point I made on Wednesday night when news first broke about Dennis Hastert being "in the mix" of the federal investigation of the Abramoff corruption scandal.

At the same time, Bush is establishing a precedent for possible future interference in FBI and Justice Department probes of his administration. It is getting very close to a time that Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and others would likely benefit from a presidential application of the brakes to the wheels of justice.