Shadegg not worried over FBI-tapped call

Rep. John Shadegg is the first member of Congress to acknowledge the FBI listened in on a 2006 call he made to indicted Rep. Rick Renzi, a fellow Arizona Republican.

The call took place amid GOP leadership races that fall, when Shadegg and other candidates were furiously making calls to their colleagues for support.

{mosads}“I was calling to ascertain his support in my leadership race,” Shadegg said. He called him a second time nearly two months ago after Renzi was indicted to offer condolences.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently informed Shadegg and other members that their calls were intercepted during a preliminary investigation of a land deal involving Renzi. Justice provided the notification to the House general counsel’s office and included the date of the Shadegg-Renzi phone call, sometime in 2006.

Shadegg, a lawyer, said he is unconcerned about the intercepted call. He said he has only made two calls to Renzi, and labeled both innocuous.

He added that the DOJ notification contained a line letting recipients know that they are not “subjects or targets” of the Renzi investigation.

Stan Brand, an ethics lawyer and former House general counsel, said that means that the recipient is someone in the “intermediate range” between a witness and a target of the investigation.

Several other members’ voices were caught on the FBI wiretap, but no one else has acknowledged a notice.
Mike Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), declined to comment on whether his boss received a notice. Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (Fla.) also would not indicate whether they were recipients.

Renzi is accused of promising to support legislation authorizing a land deal that netted him more than $700,000. He was indicted in February and is facing 35 criminal counts.

Federal law requires the DOJ to alert any person whose conversation has been picked up in wiretaps.

Brand said wiretapping lawmakers’ phone calls during leadership races raises serious separation-of-powers issues. The Speech or Debate clause of the Constitution protects lawmakers’ legislative activity from intrusion by the executive branch, and Brand argued leadership races fall into that category.

“It’s offensive to me because they shouldn’t be intercepting calls about leadership races — there are minimization steps they are supposed to take,” Brand said. “How would the president feel if his calls were intercepted by a [congressional] committee investigating his administration?”

Anyone served with such a notice can ask for a transcript of the phone call, but doing so requires filing a public motion with a court, something members may be reluctant to do because it could draw media attention.

The law also allows any person who believes that a communication was unlawfully intercepted to move to suppress it or any evidence derived from it from being used in the case.

A judge on Tuesday agreed to postpone Renzi’s trial until October after his lawyers successfully argued the case was complicated and involved both consensually recorded conversations, wiretaps and complex motions involving the Speech or Debate clause.