House continues quixotic battle over search

NY Times:

There was a time Â? four weeks ago, for instance Â? when the Office of the General Counsel for the House of Representatives was just another nearly invisible government agency, working about as far from public notice as is possible on Capitol Hill.

But the F.B.I.'s raid last month on the offices of Representative William J. Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat at the center of a bribery investigation, has drawn the general counsel's office and the woman who leads it, Geraldine R. Gennet, into a rare public fight with the executive branch. The May 20 raid, the first executed on a Congressional office at least since the United States Constitution was adopted, has angered a bipartisan group in Congress that views it as an unjustified intrusion into the legislative branch's autonomy and a violation of the government's fundamental separation of powers.

The Justice Department, which prevented lawyers from Ms. Gennet's office to be present during the search, has defended it as a perfectly legal act.

On Friday, lawyers for Mr. Jefferson and the Justice Department are scheduled to argue before Judge Thomas F. Hogan of Federal District Court in Washington. Ms. Gennet, asked to weigh in by the House Republican leadership, filed a 90-page memorandum criticizing the raid as a "grave threat" to the immunity that Congress has enjoyed from intrusions into its official business.

"Weaken the legislative branch, and the likelihood of abuses of authority by the other branches necessarily increases," the memorandum said. In its reply to the court, the Justice Department said Ms. Gennet's arguments ventured "well beyond anything the law can support."

Though she will be at Friday's hearing, Ms. Gennet, a Democrat whose first government job, in 1986, was as legal counsel to the Washington Metro Police Department, will leave oral arguments to a deputy.

...

One clue that she does not have much of a case is that she submitted a 90 page brief. That is what you do when the facts and the law suggest your are wrong. If she had a strong case she would not need 90 pages to make it. In fact most courts now put a page limit on the size of the brief that is permitted and it is substantially less than 90 pages. The Constitution clearly does not grant the exemption the House is asking for nor does common sense suggest the House Members being granted privileges that no one else in the country have. Politically, the move is as dumb as a stump.