U.S. Rep. Jefferson Facing Bribery Allegations
Date: Thursday, February 16 2006 00:07:51 PST
Topic: News

Around Washington, Rep. William J. Jefferson nurtured a reputation as a serious, even wonkish, lawmaker, a grade-school dropouts' son who graduated from Harvard Law School and was elected Louisiana's first black congressman since Reconstruction.
Then came the allegations last August that Jefferson had orchestrated a corruption scheme. Federal investigators are targeting the Democratic congressman, 58, for allegedly demanding cash and other favors for himself and relatives, in exchange for using his congressional clout to arrange African business deals. A former aide recently pleaded guilty to bribing Jefferson and is cooperating with authorities, and sources familiar with the case say a plea agreement with the lawmaker is being explored.

Jefferson's world is toppling. Tall and lean, he at times has looked ashen as he walks the halls of the Capitol. Those who know him describe him as shellshocked by the turn of events. Depending on Jefferson's fate, his central New Orleans district - badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina and in need of effective representation in Washington - could face a rowdy special election. The political scene is so chaotic that Republicans believe they could win the gerrymandered Democratic seat.

"It's all clear as mud," said Edward F. Renwick, a Loyola University political scientist.

Jefferson's woes are unwelcome news for his party and have undercut the Democrats' election-year assertion that Republicans have created a "culture of corruption." If Jefferson is indicted and pleads guilty or is convicted, he will have to step down or face expulsion. But if he is indicted and decides to go to trial, he may remain in Congress and stand for reelection - the course Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) has followed since being charged last year with violating Texas campaign law.

Federal corruption investigations have produced guilty pleas from former representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) and have forced Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) to relinquish his committee chairmanship. Investigations also won guilty pleas and the cooperation of former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose plea agreement cited only GOP aides and lawmakers.

The investigation of Jefferson and the recent guilty plea by a former aide give Republicans the chance to argue that corruption in Washington has a bipartisan tinge.

Republican groups frequently invoke the Jefferson case in defending their party from broad-brush charges of corruption. Even Public Citizen, a liberal consumer watchdog group, featured Jefferson on an "Ethics Hall of Shame" list recently.

Jefferson has said he did nothing improper. Spokeswoman Melanie Roussell said he is focused on hurricane recovery and has been traveling to his district for field hearings and other storm-related events. Jefferson has begun campaigning for election this fall to a ninth term and has scheduled a March 8 fundraiser. He attended Coretta Scott King's funeral in Atlanta last week.

In his only public statement on the case, Jefferson said he was "disappointed and in some ways perplexed" by former aide Brett Pfeffer's guilty plea on Jan. 11. Jefferson added that he has never "required, demanded or accepted ... anything to perform a service for which I have been elected." Ron Machen, one of Jefferson's attorneys, declined to comment.

The investigation became public on Aug. 3 when FBI agents raided Jefferson's homes in New Orleans and Northeast Washington, where they found about $90,000 in cash in his freezer, law enforcement sources have said. They also raided five other locations, including the Kentucky and New Jersey offices of iGate Inc., a high-tech firm that has become central to the investigation, along with a house in Potomac owned by Atiku Abubakar, the vice president of Nigeria.

IGate has denied any wrongdoing, as has Abubakar. Pfeffer declined to comment.

Jefferson was raised in Lake Providence, Louisiana, one of 10 children. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1972 and served in the state Senate before he was elected to the House in 1990. He is married and is the father of five grown daughters.

As a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee and co-chairman of the Africa Trade and Investment Caucus and the congressional caucuses on Brazil and Nigeria, Jefferson has carved out a niche in Third World trade issues, and he has traveled extensively on privately and publicly funded trips.

"He's someone respected for doing his homework on issues," said Silas Lee, a New Orleans political analyst. "He's viewed as a very serious, very studious person."

Pfeffer, who faces as much as 20 years in prison, paints a different picture of Jefferson, for whom he worked as a legislative aide from 1995 to 1998.

According to court documents and law enforcement sources, Pfeffer, 37, became president of W2 Corp., an investment company that was owned by Lori Mody, a wealthy Vienna, Va., woman. Mody, 41, is the founder of Win-Win Strategies Foundation, whose mission includes helping needy children learn about the high-tech world.

In early 2004, Pfeffer told Jefferson about his new investment job, court records show. Jefferson told Pfeffer about a telecommunications opportunity in Nigeria and about iGate, which held the rights to a technology that enabled copper wires to transport high-speed Internet service to a wide array of consumers.

In mid-2004, Pfeffer brought Mody to Jefferson's office in Washington. There she was introduced to the founder of iGate, who has since been identified as Vernon Jackson. Not long after, Mody's company entered into a licensing and distribution agreement with iGate for the exclusive rights to market and distribute the company's technology in Nigeria.

Mody agreed to invest $45 million for the exclusive rights to iGate's technology and equipment for the Nigerian deal. She put up $3.5 million and agreed to finance the balance through the Export-Import Bank of the United States, a government-run agency that promotes U.S. business exports.

Afterward, Pfeffer told Mody that Jefferson would expect compensation for his "official assistance on the Nigerian deal," according to court documents.

In summer 2004, Pfeffer, Mody, Jefferson and others met in New Orleans at the law firm of one of Jefferson's daughters, who provided the legal work for the business deal. While in the lobby of the law firm, Jefferson approached Pfeffer in private and told him that he would require 5 to 7 percent of Mody's new Nigerian company, the court document said.

Later, in a phone conversation, Jefferson told Pfeffer that he wanted a family member to be put on the payroll of the Nigerian company and to receive about $2,500 to $5,000 in monthly payments, court documents said.

"Pfeffer understood that [Jefferson] was soliciting a bribe in exchange" for the congressman's assistance in "official acts," including influencing high-ranking officials in the Nigerian government via trips and correspondences, and meeting with officials of the Export-Import Bank to help secure financing, the court document said.

Mody, who had grown concerned about the propriety of the transactions, went to the FBI in March 2005. She agreed to record conversations in what became a sting, say law enforcement sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the probe.

On March 31, she gave $2,100 to Jefferson's campaign. And in July, months after approaching the FBI, her Win-Win Strategies Foundation was listed in congressional travel documents as the sponsor of Jefferson's trip to Ghana to promote the broadband technology venture.

Jefferson was accompanied to Ghana by a relative, a staff member, Pfeffer and an iGate employee, according to documents. The trip disclosure form that Jefferson filed with the House lists the purpose of the trip as "education and business development" and lists no accompanying family member. Win-Win Strategies paid $9,248 for Jefferson's expenses, the form shows.

During the trip, Pfeffer was in contact with Mody in Virginia, reporting on Jefferson's "official acts" with high-ranking Ghanaian officials, court papers said. Pfeffer believed that Jefferson would get similar compensation for the Ghanaian project as in the Nigerian deal, the court document said. Jefferson also told Pfeffer that a member of his extended family had been designated as the secretary of the Ghanaian company and would serve in a marketing role, the document said.

Mody said late last week that authorities told her not to comment because of the probe.

Jefferson has attracted controversy over the years. Nicknamed "Dollar Bill" in New Orleans, he is known as a formidable fundraiser with designs on his own political empire. Daughter Jalila Jefferson-Bullock is a state legislator. In helping her get elected, Jefferson was heard on an FBI wiretap soliciting improper fundraising help from his brother-in-law, Jefferson Parish Judge Alan Green, who was sentenced last week to more than four years in federal prison in an unrelated bail-bond corruption case.

Jefferson said in a statement last May that he recalled the conversation with Green but added that his request for help was familial.

"To my knowledge, nothing resulted from the conversation - the campaign did not receive any money from Judge Green or anyone who may have been prompted by him to contribute - and there were no further conversations on the matter," Jefferson said.

Jefferson also generated controversy when, in the midst of post-Katrina rescue efforts, he used National Guard troops to help him get belongings from his house in New Orleans.

Jefferson's legal problems have received modest attention in New Orleans, where residents and officials are consumed with rebuilding the city and upcoming local elections. But names of potential challengers are starting to circulate, and political observers are handicapping their prospects.

With only about one-fifth of the district's 500,000 residents believed to be living in New Orleans, it is possible that a white Democrat or even a Republican could take the seat, which was drawn as a black district and which Jefferson had hoped to hand off eventually to his chosen successor. That now looks less likely.

"He's strong, but not that strong that he could withstand an indictment," said John Maginnis, publisher of a weekly Louisiana political newsletter.

Intellpuke: "This is a very thorough and balanced report by Washington Post Staff Writers Shailagh Murray and Allan Lengel, with contributions by Post researchers Madonna Lebling and Bobbye Pratt. You can read it in context here.

Political dispute over FBI raid nears showdown
Sources: Justice officials threaten to resign over House office raid
From John King, CNN Chief National Correspondent

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Top officials at the Justice Department and the FBI threatened to resign this week if President Bush ordered them to return materials seized in last week's raid of Rep. William Jefferson's office, senior administration officials said.

The showdown, said to be reaching a "tipping point" by one senior administration official, was put on hold by Bush's decision to seal the materials for 45 days.

A senior Justice Department official told CNN before the president's decision a Justice official said the materials would be returned to Capitol Hill "over our dead bodies."

Jefferson, D-Louisiana, is under investigation in a bribery scandal. The FBI took documents during a search of the congressman's legislative office, sparking bipartisan outrage on Capitol Hill. (Full story)

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and FBI Director Robert Mueller --indicated they would resign if forced to give the seized materials back, the officials said.

The resignation threats were relayed to the White House midweek as President Bush came under fierce pressure from Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other congressional leaders to return the materials. (Watch Hastert confront the administration -- 1:48)

Some in the administration, led by the vice president's office, argued the FBI overreached and violated constitutional law.

Inside the White House, the two administration sources told CNN that Vice Presidential Chief of Staff David Addington believed the FBI had crossed a constitutional line. Addington, usually a strong proponent of presidential power, asserted that in this case the FBI went too far and violated the separation of powers.

One source said Vice President Dick Cheney met with the president and "at a minimum" made the case that the critics of the raid had points that needed to be considered.

"I can't say for certain the 'veep' agreed with David (Addington) but I know he relayed those concerns as legitimate," the source said.

Former Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers was part of these discussions as well as a few other top officials.

President Bush averted or at least delayed a showdown within the administration on Thursday by ordering the documents sealed and held by the solicitor general for 45 days while all sides try to reach a compromise. (Full story)

The officials said the Justice Department officials were adamant that they had respected the constitutional questions -- giving Rep. Jefferson eight months to comply with a subpoena before seeking a warrant and by bringing officials with no involvement in the case to the search site to oversee and monitor that nothing not authorized in the warrant was taken.

"Their case is they took every possible step before going to extraordinary lengths and that they had judicial branch authorization and that the congressman was using his office as a barrier to obstruct the investigation," said the senior administration official.

This source added "their argument is they didn't rush into this and gave it every possible chance to run another course."

A White House representative had no official comment.

Spokesmen for the Department of Justice and FBI were not available for comment Saturday morning.

La. reps defend paid travel
Trips educational, helpful, they say
By GERARD SHIELDS
Advocate Washington bureau
Published: Feb 12, 2006

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WASHINGTON - In an atmosphere where privately funded travel for members of Congress is being criticized, Louisiana legislators and their aides took trips worth more than $200,000 last year, according to travel disclosure records.

Roughly three-fourths of the 64 trips were taken by staffers and paid for by institutions that included The Rice Foundation and Tulane and Xavier universities in New Orleans.

What troubles organizations calling for a ban on such travel is that most of the groups paying for the trips have issues before Congress.

"Groups with interest in legislation should not be in a position to finance trips to influence members," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit Washington watchdog organization.

The leading recipient of such trips in the Louisiana delegation is U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans. Jefferson's office racked up about $81,800 worth of trips both home and abroad.

Jefferson himself took six trips, among them excursions to Las Vegas, Qatar and Egypt. On most trips, Jefferson took his wife, Andrea, and he took his two daughters on a speaking engagement to Miami, according to congressional travel disclosure records.

Jefferson defended the travel, saying that the trips were either diplomatic or trade missions. He sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes the nation's tax laws, and the trade subcommittee.

Jefferson said he would support banning some trips.

"It's probably good to ban trips to play golf, but to go help the Middle East?" he said.

Likewise Todd Metcalf, Jefferson's legislative director, called the trips "extremely educational." The Tax Foundation sent Metcalf to Europe last year to discuss tax and trade policy.

"If you want to go over there and spend eight hours listening to a Belgian guy talk about transfer primary directives and call it a vacation," Metcalf said. "We weren't playing golf or going on sailing trips."

U.S. Rep. Charles "Charlie" Melancon, D-Napoleonville, agrees.

Melancon and his office staff accumulated about $62,000 in trips.

Melancon took six trips, including ones to Napa Valley, Calif., where he discussed California demographics and security, and to Kazakhstan, where he served as an election monitor and linked south Louisiana oil businesses with that nation.

Melancon, a freshman representative, called the trips a good way to avoid becoming entrenched in Washington.

"If I have a concern it's being caught up in the Beltway," he said. "It's important to get out there and understand concerns."

But being whisked away to such exotic places is the reason that opponents of the travel are calling for a ban. Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who recently pleaded guilty to corruption charges, regularly paid for members of Congress to attend golfing outings in Scotland. The Abramoff scandal has led to both Republicans and Democrats calling for changes in privately funded trips.

"It's this chummy atmosphere that is built up on the trip when you are sharing drinks with the lobbyist by the pool or playing a round of golf that the average voter doesn't get," said Mary Byrnes of the Common Cause, a watchdog group.

Despite seeing the trips as an education tool, Melancon said he supports banning them. So does U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-Kenner.

Jindal, also a freshman representative, took an $8,200 trip to Israel last year sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation. He sees a difference between a fact-finding excursion and a posh resort outing.

"There is no excuse for the boondoggles we've heard about," Jindal said. "If a member wants to take a vacation, then they should take a vacation."

If a trip is truly warranted, he said, it could be financed by Congress.

"If there is a legitimate reason for members to travel, it could be possible," said Jindal, who took his Israel trip as a member of the House's Homeland Security Committee.

Trip sponsors have said they don't view the trips as trying to sway members. The Rice Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the USA Rice Federation, funded a trip for seven staffers in August to Louisiana and Arkansas that included two Louisiana aides.

Randy Jemison, field services director for the federation in Kinder, La., called the trip educational.

"It wasn't attempted to be a lobbying trip, it's simply to educate them on the rice industry," he said.

But Jemison acknowledged that he hoped the trip would produce results.

"Gauging the success of it will be determined through legislation for years to come," he said.

Gene D'Amour of Xavier University runs a program that brings congressional staffers to New Orleans for a daylong briefing on issues before Congress.

D'Amour views the seminars, which cost the universities about $2,000 per person, as different than the posh resort trips.

"We bring them in and give them a slide show," he said. "If they're lucky, they get lunch."

Louisiana Tires of Its Rogues
Now that Katrina has spawned its first graft case, angry residents see the state's reputation for corruption corroding its ability to get federal aid.
By Miguel Bustillo, Times Staff Writer, January 27, 2006

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NEW ORLEANS: Joseph Impastato conceded he took the two cashier's checks worth $85,000. The whole thing was captured on tape by the FBI, so it would have been difficult to deny.

But it was no kickback, the councilman from St. Tammany Parish said. It was business.

When he cut a deal to receive half the money from a government contract to haul away hurricane debris, Impastato said, he was acting as a private businessman, not a public official.

Federal prosecutors are not buying it - and neither apparently is the Louisiana public. After a federal grand jury indicted Impastato on felony extortion charges last month, making him the first Louisiana politician accused of Hurricane Katrina corruption, citizens condemned him in newspapers and on talk radio and the Internet as an embarrassment to his home state.

"He's got to be a real lowlife to do something like that at a time like this," Frank White, a 62-year-old retired fire captain from the suburb of Chalmette, said in an interview. "It's the Louisiana way of doing business, I guess. But there is a quiet majority now that's sick and tired of this. People are fed up with these crooks."

In Louisiana, which has a history of political shenanigans so rich and colorful that it has become a part of American folklore, people long have laughed off misbehaving politicians as a fact of life, every bit as inevitable as death and taxes.

But as the state lobbies Washington for more money to rebuild ravaged towns and cities, citizens are realizing that Louisiana's well-earned penchant for dirty politics has exacted a steep price: It has badly damaged the credibility of the recovery effort.

"Frankly, the reputation in Washington is, if we send money down there, it will just get stolen," said political handicapper Charles E. Cook, a Louisiana native who has worked in the nation's capital for more than three decades. "It is a caricature of Louisiana politics that is not entirely undeserved but is grossly exaggerated. No one cared about it much before Katrina. But right now, it's hurting the state enormously."

A major turning point in public attitude came in 2001 when Edwin Edwards, the former four-term Democratic governor, received a 10-year sentence for taking bribes for riverboat gambling licenses. In the last governor's race, both candidates - Democrat Kathleen Babineaux Blanco beat Republican Bobby Jindal - were considered squeaky clean, and promised government reforms. The distaste for dirty government has really picked up momentum since last summer.

"What was tolerated before Katrina is not necessarily tolerated now," said pollster Silas Lee III, a professor at Xavier University here. "Nerves are raw. People have lost their sense of security and direction. They are living a day-to-day existence, and they have little patience for any politician who is perceived as being corrupt."

In addition to Edwards, in the last decade Louisiana has seen an attorney general, a congressman, a state Senate president, a federal judge and countless local officials convicted of corruption. Louisiana's last three state insurance commissioners wound up in prison for offenses that include lying to the FBI, accepting $2 million in illegal campaign contributions and taking bribes - prompting jokes that future candidates should make sure they look good in stripes.

Jim Letten, the U.S. attorney for eastern Louisiana and the lead prosecutor in the Edwards case, sees the convictions as a sign of progress. Wherever he goes, he said, he is greeted by people - black, white, Latino, Asian - who tell him Louisiana needs to clean up its act.

"I am not sure that Louisiana has measurably more corruption than other (regions), but surely we have a reputation for being tolerant of it," said Letten, a member of the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force, a team of federal, state and local law enforcement officials investigating scams and corruption.

Until recently, Louisiana politicians proved that charisma trumped scruples. Their repeated election victories, despite corruption allegations in many instances, showed that Louisiana voters viewed the ethical transgressions of their elected officials as an amusing spectacle.

T. Wayne Parent, a political science professor at Louisiana State University and author of "Inside the Carnival: Unmasking Louisiana Politics," said citizens accepted corrupt politicians because they were effective in providing government services, and the cash they were pocketing was not believed to be taxpayer money.

"Maybe some politician was making a deal with the devil, but that was money from some oil and gas company, or so people thought. By the late 1980s, people realized, maybe it was our money," said Parent, who believes the change in attitude has been slowly building over the last quarter-century.

Huey Long, the Depression-era demagogue who dominated every level of Louisiana government by bullying or buying off anyone who got in his way, joked that "one of these days the people of Louisiana are going to get good government - and they aren't going to like it."

Known as the Kingfish, Long was impeached as governor in 1929 on charges of bribery and gross misconduct but narrowly avoided punishment - reportedly by bribing several state senators. Elected a U.S. senator in 1930, he was assassinated in 1935 in Baton Rouge by the son of a judge who was about to be gerrymandered out of a job.

Earl Long, his eccentric brother, kept the family's Democratic political machine running into the 1960s. He once remarked that Louisiana voters "don't want good government; they want good entertainment."

He served three terms as governor, spending some of the last term in a mental hospital, where his wife had him committed after he took up with Blaze Starr, a stripper.

Edwards, who survived two trials and 22 grand jury investigations in his four terms as governor, boasted that the only way he could lose was if he were "caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy."

When he ran against former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, the Republican candidate, in 1991, Edwards supporters printed bumper stickers saying: "Vote for the crook. It's important."

The "crook" handily won. But he was eventually sent to prison for taking bribes after Eddie DeBartolo Jr., former owner of the San Francisco 49ers, testified that he had paid Edwards $400,000 to land a casino license.

Even now, during the state's ultimate hour of need, some Louisiana citizens say they could stomach a crooked politician - as long as he was competent.

"I'll tell you what, I'd take Edwin Edwards in a minute to get us out of this mess," said Gid Brill, 65, a tool salesman from Belle Chasse. "He might skim off $10 million for himself, but he'd know what to do with the rest of the money."

Such attitudes do not go over well in Washington, where some Republican lawmakers speak of Louisiana as if it were a banana republic.

Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), who sits on the pivotal appropriations committee which oversees all major spending bills, compared fraud in Louisiana to fraud in Iraq. During town hall meetings in his home state last year, he repeatedly said that Louisiana and New Orleans had "the most corrupt governments in our country."

State lawmakers last year sought $250 billion from Congress for recovery and reconstruction in a proposal criticized as a grab-bag of pork-barrel projects. President Bush said Thursday the federal government had approved $85 billion in aid to the Gulf Coast. Louisiana's congressional delegation has contended that is not nearly enough, and continues to press for more.

Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) said that the corruption, while historically accurate, has been magnified by Republicans in Washington who do not want to help Louisiana. "I don't want to discount that the image carries the scars of our past. But we have emphatically turned the corner," Landrieu said.

Citing the corruption scandal in the nation's capital centering on GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Landrieu added, "Republicans in Washington should clean up their own house before using Louisiana's past reputation an excuse for not wanting to rebuild the Gulf Coast."

Not surprisingly, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) sized up the situation differently.

"It's not fiction - we have had some real corruption issues here in the past, and to some extent we still do today," Vitter said. "My colleagues in Washington want assurances that money is going to be spent wisely, given those issues, and I don't think it's too much to ask."

Government statistics indicate that Louisiana is one of the most corrupt states in the country. From 1995 to 2004, federal prosecutors won 310 corruption convictions involving public servants and citizens in Louisiana, said a report by the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department. That was far from the highest total: California prosecutors logged 871. But California is a state of 36 million people, nine times the population of Louisiana.

In the last month alone, federal prosecutors have been busy bringing corruption charges against Louisiana public servants. Two sheriffs deputies who worked at a Gretna jail were sentenced last week after confessing to taking bribes - part of an ongoing federal probe dubbed "Operation Wrinkled Robe," which seeks to ferret out jail and courthouse corruption. The investigation already has resulted in the conviction of a former state judge.

Last Friday, a federal grand jury indicted a former New Orleans police officer caught driving a stolen pickup, one of about 200 Cadillacs and Chevys looted from a dealership after Katrina. Witnesses reported seeing officers drive away in the vehicles. A state grand jury is also investigating the case, along with other allegations of looting by law enforcement officers.

Brett Pfeffer, a former aide to Rep. William Jefferson, a New Orleans Democrat, pleaded guilty two weeks ago to bribing an unnamed congressman on behalf of a small telecommunications company. Jefferson has not been charged and has denied wrongdoing.

Impastato's trial is scheduled to begin next month. He pleaded not guilty Jan. 10 to federal charges that he extorted money from a businessman after helping him land a contract to remove debris. If convicted of the charge, as well as related counts of conspiracy and money laundering, he could face up to 20 years in prison.

The indictment said Impastato arranged with Lee Paul Mauberret of the Pontchartrain Chipping Yard to split the $200,000 contract. A relative of Mauberret's balked at paying the kickback, and Mauberret called the FBI, which set up the sting.

Impastato, 33, continues to serve his second term on the council in St. Tammany Parish, next to New Orleans on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. He declined to discuss the case when reached at Sal & Judy's, his family's Italian restaurant, where he makes a living running a business selling tomato sauces and olive oil.

His lawyer, Karl Koch, said Impastato did not "use his official capacity in any way" to enrich himself, and witnesses would testify that Impastato did a fair amount of the hurricane cleanup work himself. Impastato's critics said his actions - legal or not - set back the state's efforts to repair its reputation.

"Impastato should have avoided this at all costs. Especially given the current climate and attitude in Washington toward Louisiana," St. Tammany resident Dana Deris wrote on a blog carried on the New Orleans Times-Picayune website. "He IS guilty of furthering the negative image of Louisiana."

Outside a grocery store a few blocks from Sal & Judy's, Robert Keys, 72, shook his head.

"I'd love to be the judge on that one," said Keys, a 41-year resident of St. Tammany Parish. "A snake is going to take advantage of this opportunity right now, because there's a lot of money flying around loose. I guess the question is whether it was a legal shakedown or not. But either way, he's still a snake."

FBI Says Jefferson Was Filmed Taking Cash
Affidavit Details Sting on Lawmaker
By Allan Lengel, Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 22, 2006; A01

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Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), the target of a 14-month public corruption probe, was videotaped accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from a Northern Virginia investor who was wearing an FBI wire, according to a search warrant affidavit released yesterday.

A few days later, on Aug. 3, 2005, FBI agents raided Jefferson's home in Northeast Washington and found $90,000 of the cash in the freezer, in $10,000 increments wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside frozen-food containers, the document said.

The 83-page affidavit, used to raid Jefferson's Capitol Hill office on Saturday night, portrays him as a money-hungry man who freely solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, discussed payoffs to African officials, had a history of involvement in numerous bribery schemes and used his family to hide his interest in high-tech business ventures he promoted in Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria.

In one instance, at an unidentified D.C. restaurant, Jefferson allegedly exchanged cryptic notes with investor Lori Mody and discussed illegal kickbacks for his children in a telecommunications venture in Nigeria in which she had invested.

"All these damn notes we're writing to each other as if we're talking as if the FBI is watching," he told Mody, who was wearing an FBI wire.

About 15 FBI agents, wearing suits, entered Jefferson's office in the Rayburn House Office Building about 7:15 p.m. Saturday and left about 1 p.m. yesterday. Authorities said it was the first time the FBI had raided a sitting congressman's office.

The affidavit was the most damaging material to date in the FBI investigation of Jefferson, 59, who has not been charged and has maintained his innocence. He is also the subject of a House ethics committee inquiry.

Earlier this year, Jefferson's lawyers explored the possibility of a plea agreement, according to those familiar with the talks. Jefferson changed lawyers recently and has issued vehement denials of wrongdoing as federal investigators move closer to deciding whether to seek his indictment.

"As I have previously stated, I have never, over all the years of my public service, accepted payment from anyone for the performance of any act or duty for which I have been elected," he said this month. His press secretary, Melanie Roussell, declined to comment yesterday.

Jefferson's attorney, Robert P. Trout, called the raids outrageous, saying disclosure of the previously sealed affidavit was "part of a public relations agenda and an attempt to embarrass" Jefferson. "The affidavit itself is just one side of the story which has not been tested in court," Trout said.

The FBI declined to comment. Ken Melson, the first assistant U.S. attorney in Alexandria, said, "We don't care to comment on that statement."

The FBI probe began in March 2005 after Mody became concerned that Jefferson and others were trying to defraud her of millions of dollars that she had invested in iGate Inc., a Louisville high-tech company, the affidavit said. That was when the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria set up a sting.

Since January, Brett M. Pfeffer, a former Jefferson aide who worked for Mody, and Vernon L. Jackson, the owner of iGate Inc., have pleaded to guilty to bribing the eight-term congressman to promote iGate's broadband technology -- including Internet and cable television -- in Africa.

According to the affidavit, during one of many recorded conversations with Mody, Jefferson said he knew a businessman who was "corrupt" but interested in investing in the iGate project in Africa.

"He thinks it's great," he said. "He can easily be involved in this."

In another instance, Jefferson said someone, identified in court papers only as "John Doe #1," needed money to bribe "various officials in Nigeria."

"We got to motivate him real good," Jefferson allegedly told Mody. "He got a lot of folks to pay off." Later in the conversation, he says: "If he's got to pay Minister X, we don't want to know. It's not our deal. We're not paying Minister X a damn thing. That's all, you know, international fraud crap."

On July 21, 2005, Jefferson told Mody that he would need to give Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar $500,000 "as a motivating factor" to make sure they obtained contracts for iGate and Mody's company in Nigeria. The vice president is not mentioned by name in the affidavit, but other court documents make it clear it is he.

A few days later, they talked about passing on a smaller amount of money. But Jefferson refrained from using the word "money" and pointed to the word "cash" written on a piece of paper.

A short time later, at about 8:30 a.m., Jefferson and Mody met at the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City in Arlington and went to Mody's car trunk.

"At that time, Congressman Jefferson reached in and removed a reddish-brown colored leather briefcase which contained $100,000 in cash" as FBI agents filmed the transaction, the affidavit said.

Jefferson then put it in his car and drove off, the affidavit said. A few days later, FBI agents seized $90,000 in marked bills from Jefferson's freezer.

The affidavit does not indicate whether Jefferson passed any of the money to the Nigerian vice president, whom he had met a couple of weeks earlier at Abubakar's Potomac home, according to court documents. Abubakar did not return a phone call to his home seeking comment.

Earlier in 2005, shortly after Mody started taping the conversations with Jefferson, she asked him how long he planned to stay in Congress.

Jefferson replied, "I'm going to get your deal out of the way . . . and I probably won't last long after that."

Staff writer Martin Weil contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company


Congressman William Jefferson's webpage:

TPM Muckraker
House Fires Latest Salvo in Battle over Jefferson Raid
Yesterday, the General Counsel for the House of Representatives weighed in on the FBI's raid of Rep. William Jefferson's (D-LA) congressional office, filing an amicus brief on behalf of Jefferson.

The search, according to the House, was both "unconstitutional and unnecessary."

You can add that to Jefferson's lawyer's argument that the search was "an affront to the Constitutional separation of powers and a violation of the absolute privilege and immunity that Members of Congress enjoy under the Speech or Debate clause."

The Justice Department, for its part, argues that the issue is simple: as the Supreme Court has decided before, Members of Congress aren't above the law.

And in response to the House's brief yesterday, which argues that lawyers from the House should have been warned of the search, a Justice Department official told The Washington Post "that the suggestion that 'a target of a criminal investigation be informed before a search takes place is a nonstarter. That clearly places a congressman above the law.'"

We've posted all the briefs in our document collection. All TPMm separation-of-powers junkies are encouraged to give the briefs a read.

Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan will hear arguments on this June 16.

Meanwhile, the question is being pursued on two other fronts: the Justice Department is negotiating directly with the House about search procedures in the future, and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) is pressing forward with his "Reckless Justice" Hearings, during which he has discussed the possibility of legislating the problem away.

Memorandum in Support of Motion in Support For Return of Property

US House of Representatives Amicus Curiae

Government's Response