by the Way . . .

Representative William J. Jefferson has been videotaped by the FBI picking up $100,000 in cash in a Nigerian deal. They later raided his home freezer and found 9 bundles of $10,000 each in frozen food containers. The FBI has already muddied the water and precipitated a constitutional crisis over the matter, and we will get to that, but first it is important to see the several points where Jeffy Man went wrong in handling the Nigerian money. Judging from my email, there are a large number of Nigerian deals available where you could end up with a big chunk of change just for helping legitimate ex rulers and princes get their funds out. These situations are not available to everyone of course, as the emails note my national reputation for honesty and business acumen, but if one falls your way, you better know how to handle all that money.

And who knows nowadays what is legal, what with the Patriot Act, Sarbanes Oxley, and so on? So while I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with taking the cash, like the Congressman said in his news conference in New Orleans, a prosecutor may choose “to view the facts in the worst possible light.” So it never hurts to preserve a little deniability. First, stay in your car and let the contact open your trunk and put the luggage in. Mouth something like “oh thanks, I am always forgetting my laptop when going through security”. When you get home, leave the brief case by the door, and attach a note, “oops, wrong case, return tomorrow”. Leave it there for a few days. If the feds have set you up, they get itchy and it won’t be long.

Now even if you fail, like Jeffy Man, to take these precautions, you can still recover if you are not grabby. If the money is going in the freezer, put ALL of the money in. That way you can say that it was already in pizza wrap when you opened the case, and just thought it was another food gift like the turkey they gave you at Christmas, and you put it in the freezer without opening it. If you don’t get all of it in, you will have to fall back on the old “ten thousand of it looked like it had thawed, and the package said not to refreeze, so I threw it out” dodge. Thin, but better than nothing.

Fortunately, even if you miss every step, all is not lost. You can count on the FBI to make a little slip here and there. For example, in applying for the search warrant, they accused him of the “attempted bribery of a Nigerian official”. Come on. In the entire history of modern Nigeria, there has never been an “attempted” bribery. Simply not credible. Then, apparently in a panic to find the other 10 Gs (they probably borrowed it from the evidence room to make the sting), 15 agents went in Saturday night and searched his Congressional office! And took stuff “in violation of the constitutional principle of separation of powers, the speech or debate clause of the Constitution, and the practice of the last 219 years” according to a rare joint statement by J. Dennis Hastert (R. Ill) and Nancy Pelosi (D. Ca.). Note: 1887 was when the Constitution was adopted by the convention, so this does not necessarily imply that there was hanky panky by the FBI prior to that.

Justice Department and FBI officials say they are dismayed at the tone of the joint statement, but that they can’t return any stuff because it is now in the custody of the FBI as evidence in a criminal case. They also said they only went in and took the stuff because the Congressman didn’t give it to them voluntarily. This seems like the kind of circular argument we are used to getting from this administration. They might have done better to leave the stuff by the door with a note on it.