Return documents, House leaders say

House officials were working on a joint resolution that decries the raid.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In rare, election-year harmony, House Republican and Democratic leaders jointly demanded on Wednesday that the FBI return documents taken in a Capitol Hill raid that has quickly grown into a constitutional turf fight beyond party politics.
"The Justice Department must immediately return the papers it unconstitutionally seized," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement.
After that, they said, Democratic Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana must cooperate with the Justice Department's bribery investigation against him.
The leaders also said the Justice Department should not look at the documents or give them to investigators in the Jefferson case.
Charges escalate
The developments capped a day of escalating charges, demands and behind-the-scene talks between House leaders and the Justice Department that ended with no resolution, according to officials of both parties.
House officials were drafting a joint resolution frowning on the raid. And Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., announced a hearing next week titled, "Reckless Justice: Did the Saturday Night Raid of Congress Trample the Constitution?"
Constitutional confrontation aside, Pelosi said Jefferson should resign from the powerful Ways and Means committee. He refused.
At the same time, Jefferson filed a motion asking the federal judge in the case to order the FBI to return the material it seized from his office.
The Justice Department dug in, repeating that the raid was carried out only after Jefferson refused to comply with a subpoena and only then with a search warrant signed by a judge.
"The actions were lawful and necessary under these unique circumstances," said Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.
The constitutional fight was set in motion last Saturday night, when the FBI raided Jefferson's legislative office in pursuit of evidence against him in an investigation of whether he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in a bribery deal.
Historians say the search was the first of its kind in Congress' 219-year history. Reaction has crossed party lines and brought in all three branches of government.
Hastert, Pelosi and several other leaders of both parties in the Senate say the weekend raid violated the Constitution's separation of powers doctrine.
"These constitutional principles were not designed by the founding fathers to place anyone above the law," Hastert and Pelosi said. "Rather, they were designed to protect the Congress and the American people from abuses of power, and those principles deserve to be vigorously defended."
Not all lawmakers agreed.
"These self-serving separation of power arguments" have no basis in law, said Sen. David Vitter, R-La., in a letter to GOP leaders. He noted that search warrants had previously been served on members' homes, including Jefferson's.
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