President George W. Bush on Thursday ordered sealed for 45 days records that the Department of Justice seized from the office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) on Saturday.

As I’ve said before, I hardly watch corruption cases, as it’s so endemic to the system as to almost not be newsworthy. But this one is really starting to heat up. In case you have no idea what’s going on, here’s a brief:

Since 9/11, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has made government corruption one of its top priorities behind counterterrorism. Its various probes have brought down lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former member of Congress Randy Cunningham, among many others. In 2004 and 2005, the FBI got 1,060 government criminals convicted of various crimes.

And now it’s setting its sights high, going after corrupt members of Congress who still walk its halls.

Last year, the FBI put a wire on an informant, who paid Jefferson a $100,000 bribe. Most of the money was recovered shortly afterward from Jefferson’s freezer in a search of his Louisiana home, a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina struck. And last weekend, the FBI raided his Congressional office. And that’s where things get interesting.

Speaker of the House Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) absolutely lost it. He demanded the Justice Department immediately return the seized files and ask the court to void the search warrant, saying that it violated the Constitution.

“The Justice Department was wrong to seize records from Congressman Jefferson’s office 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,” Mr. Hastert and Representative Nancy Pelosi, [D-Calif.] the Democratic leader, said in a rare joint statement. — New York Times

The story gets stranger still. Wednesday, ABC News published a story which said that Hastert himself was in the mix in the DOJ’s ongoing investigation into Congressional bribery. Hastert flatly denied the story and called on ABC News to retract the story, but ABC is standing by the story and Hastert now says it’s just a coincidence that Jack Abramoff raised funds for him. Yes, that Jack Abramoff.

So amid all this, President Bush comes out today and says:

The Department of Justice’s search was part of an important investigation of alleged public corruption. At the same time, the bipartisan leadership of the House of Representatives believes this search violated the Constitutional principle of separation of powers and the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution. They note these principles must be adhered to, even in the pursuit of a legitimate criminal investigation.

I recognize these are deeply held views. Our government has not faced such a dilemma in more than two centuries. Yet after days of discussions, it is clear these differences will require more time to be worked out. — George W. Bush

So let’s look briefly at that Speech and Debate clause. It says: “They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.” It was designed to protect Congress from an overzealous executive branch trying to intimidate legislators to vote a certain way and traces its roots to the creation of the English Parliament.

Whether the argument will stand in the case of Jefferson, though, remains to be seen. We’ll find out in a couple of months, I suppose. In the meantime, Jefferson has plenty of time to get rid of whatever other evidence he might have left lying around, and so does Hastert.