FBI Threatened to Pick (Jefferson's Capitol office) Lock, Filing Says

FBI agents who raided the office of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) last month threatened to pick the lock on the door after the acting U.S. Capitol Police chief asked them to hold off until a congressional lawyer showed up, according to a document filed in U.S. District Court.

Shortly after that, the FBI agents were let in.
...
The court document said that FBI agents on May 20 called the acting chief at home at 5:15 p.m., and asked "without telling him why" that he come down to the Rayburn House Office Building.

Once McGaffin arrived, the documents said, agents showed him a search warrant for Jefferson's office in the Rayburn building and "demanded access." McGaffin called House General Counsel Geraldine R. Gennet and asked the FBI to wait until she arrived.

But the FBI "threatened to pick the office door lock if not given immediate entry." The FBI ended up searching the office from 7:15 p.m. until 1 p.m. the next day.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/07/AR2006060702252.html

just sayin..

dp

previous filings indicated that Jefferson attempted to hide documents from the FBI during a search of his house by hiding them under other documents in his possession and treating them as one in the same. Given this behavior, the FBI had every reason to believe that if Jefferson had, as the article and various DU'ers have suggested, been present to prevent documents not related to the search from being found, he would have engaged in active obstruction of justice on the spot and made a real mess of things by trying to shield documents actually being searched for with the use of documents that were not part of the search.

With the caveat that this assumes that the report by the female FBI agent during the search of the home was accurate and truthful in every way. (Edited for an attempted double negative that wasn't. Oops)

and George Bush on ANYTHING they say or do. It is equally naive to trust the war profiteering corporate news monopolies who shill for them. Our problem is we keep assuming that these are normal political times and that we can more or less trust our institutions, despite overwhelming evidence that we cannot. Some kind of cogntive dissonance, I think. Whose word are you accepting that Jefferson is guilty? Whose word are you accepting that the evidence against him overrides specific provisions of the Constitution that protect Congressmen from this kind of invasion by the Executive and its police forces? Do you know that even a Congressman convicted of a crime cannot be prevented from entering Congress or voting and speaking in it? The will of the people in voting for that person OVERRIDES the powers of BOTH of the other two branches of government. The Bush junta is deliberately, systematically breaking down every check on their power. And, given the overt and stealth power they have already accumulated, who knows what they are doing to set people up--to instill fear, to corrupt, to blackmail, to smear, to manufacture evidence, to prey on vulnerabilities, and to create false narratives for the lapdog press to lap up? I just don't trust this situation AT ALL. These same criminals and mass murderers and torturers are themselves funneling BILLIONS and BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars to their buddy war profiteers and global corporate predators--with billions simply lost in truckfuls of cash in Iraq and boondoggle military contracts that are benefiting no one, not even our soldiers. We need to stop buying into their lies and diversions. We need to get a lot smarter in our reaction to them.

Lying that a serving congressman behaved like this during a search, under oath?

I'm not going to respond to the remaining straw man parts.

procedure was also approved by the judge who issued the warrant. After the subpoena was ignored.

Three teams involved in a search warrant? One who was doing the investigation drew up what to be sought, another did the search, and a third nade sure everything turned over to the first team actually was appropriate.

Never heard of that before. But apparently the judge--remember, the warrant was issued by a judge, not part of the executive branch--was sensitive to the Constitution. Everything was set up to avoid violating the Constitution.

Gonzalez' DOJ could ask for the moon. But a member of the judiciary approved the warrant.

That's a new one.