A federal appeals court ruled today that the FBI's raid on Rep. William Jefferson's (D-LA) congressional office last year was unconstitutional.  The court has ordered the DoJ to return all privileged documents to Jefferson for vetting, but allowed them to keep the other documents.

The nitty gritty:

The constitutional issue is the "speech and debate" clause, which guarantees Congress the ability to operate independently of the executive.  It's unclear how or whether this development will affect the government's case against Jefferson, as none of the seized material was used in his recent indictment on corruption charges.

The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, also known as S. 1, or the ethics and lobbying reform bill, is not everything we had hoped it to be. And it's nowhere near what we'd like it to be despite its lofty title and low number.

That's all right.

If the Senate gives its approval to S. 1 this week, as it's expected to do, Congress will finally have produced tighter ethics and lobbying rules after being dragged through the mud of the Abramoff, Foley, Ney and Cunningham scandals of years past. And we'll soon be reminded of why we went to this trouble, when Rep. William Jefferson, D-LA, goes to trial.

The federal government recently unsealed several documents related to their investigation and prosecution of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) on corruption charges.  While no major revelations can be found in them, they do fill in some of the gaps.

For instance, they provide some specific details of the government's understanding of the shady Africa-related deals Jefferson sought to profit from.  The feds allege that Jefferson partially owns iGate, the company he persuaded the Nigerian government to work with in a deal worth more than $200 million.  When the deal started to go south, he intelligently used House stationery to write a letter to the Nigerian Vice President.

More "wha...?"-worthy, however, are the details regarding the money FBI agents found in Jefferson's freezer.  According to the documents, Jefferson had $10,000 stuffed in a bag from the "Yes Organic Market," $20,000 simply wrapped up in foil, $20,000 in a Pillsbury Pie Crust box, and (it breaks my vegetarian heart) $20,000 hidden in a Boca Burger box.

Why, Mr. Jefferson?  Why did you have to involve the soy burgers in your nefarious schemes?

People often say that Congress only makes big changes when faced with consensus or crisis. This must be the reason why we have no progress to report today on ethics reforms.

Apparently, there's no consensus to produce an ethics and lobbying reform bill or a revamped House ethics process. And there must not be a crisis -- notwithstanding the recent indictment of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) ongoing federal investigations involving Reps. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) and John Doolittle (R-CA) and the recent news that Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) had been hanging out with alleged prostitutes. Nah, just business as usual on the Hill.

But as members have the aroma of jet fumes dancing in their heads -- the month-long August recess is approaching -- there may be a new ethics and lobbying reform bill in the next two weeks.

Wow.  Just...wow.

What about the two-year investigation that came before the indictment?  And hello...the man had $90,000 hidden in his freezer!  How do they explain that away?

Yeah, no kidding.

Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) has pleaded not guilty to a wide array of criminal charges, and was released on $100,000 bond.  His trial isn't scheduled until January, so we have a long time to wait to find out more about:

Haha!

Yahoo!'s headline for an AP article:  Judge freezes congressman's assets.

An interesting macro-level legal comment on the Jefferson indictment. -Josh

I wrote last week about the ongoing case involving bribery allegations against Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson. In the piece, I mentioned the potential Catch-22 in the case: If Jefferson is indicted based on evidence obtained in an FBI raid of his Capitol Hill office, that could encroach upon separation of powers (in that the FBI, a department of the executive branch, would be able to peruse internal documents of members of the legislative branch charged with acting as a "check" on executive overreach); if separation of powers are preserved and evidence from the raid is not used in the case, however, Jefferson might get away scot-free.

Monday, however, Jefferson was indicted, despite the fact that a Washington, D.C. Appeals Court had yet to rule on the constitutionality of the controversial FBI raid of the Congressman's office, and whether that raid in fact violated the doctrine of separation of powers.