Court ruling may hinder Abramoff investigation

This is a tricky knife-edge kind of thing. On the one hand, we don't want our legislators arrested because of what they vote or argue for in Congress. On the other hand, we don't want them voting for something because they were bribed to do so. What's the answer? I don't know:

A little-noticed aspect of an appellate court decision could sharply limit investigations of members of Congress and hamper ongoing corruption probes, the Justice Department said this week in a motion seeking an emergency stay of the ruling.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was handed down in August in the case of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), but its effects complicate other investigations, including those stemming from the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Justice Department lawyers said in their motion that the appellate ruling represents an "unprecedented expansion" of the "speech or debate" clause of the Constitution, which was intended to protect legislators from intimidation under civil or criminal law. They said the decision calls into question the legality of investigative tools such as wiretapping, searches of home offices and voluntary interviews of congressional staffers.

…The ruling bars investigators from even "cursory exposure to legislative materials without a Member's consent," Justice Department attorneys said in their brief.

…The appellate court case in question was Jefferson's challenge to the legality of the FBI's search of his Capitol Hill offices in 2005. A three-judge panel ruled that papers seized by the FBI "exposed legislative material to the Executive and accordingly violated" the speech-or-debate clause. It said the FBI is barred from "a location where legislative materials [are] inevitably to be found," unless the member consents.