WASHINGTON — Five months ago, the FBI touched off a legal and political firestorm when it raided the office of Rep. William J. Jefferson after wads of marked $100 bills were found in the Louisiana Democrat's freezer.
Now, with major questions about that search still unsettled, the right of investigators to gain access to lawmakers' documents and computers is shaping up as a key battleground in the sex scandal probe surrounding former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.).
State and federal investigators are trying to determine whether Foley's Internet exchanges with former House pages constituted a crime. Since opening a preliminary investigation a week ago, they have started interviewing former pages and congressional aides.
Authorities are now deciding whether to subpoena records from the office and home computers that Foley used, according to people who are familiar with the case and who requested anonymity because of the ongoing inquiry. Such evidence would be central in building a case against the former lawmaker.
Depending on what authorities find, they also may be interested in obtaining records from House leaders and their staffs to determine what they knew about Foley and his interaction with pages. Those requests could test a pledge by House leaders, including Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), to cooperate fully in the probe.
Lawyers for the House have taken an aggressive position in defending the right of members to limit investigators' access to official information in past cases. They have argued in the Jefferson case that even the contents of members' personal electronic devices deserve such protection.
House lawyers have already told prosecutors that they would want any requests for information to be channeled through their office. Officials did not return calls seeking comment.
"There is a potential tension between the ex-congressman's counsel who will want to restrict the ability of the FBI to look at his records, and the FBI's unwillingness to do a visibly inadequate job," said Charles Tiefer, a University of Baltimore law professor and a former deputy general counsel of the House.
Lawyers for Foley will try to keep the FBI's examination of e-mail to a minimum, Tiefer said. "But that is hardly the way to find out the full story."
Foley said through a lawyer in Florida last week that he had received no request for computers or e-mail files from investigators, but pledged to preserve the information.
