By Kathleen Hunter, CQ Staff

A bipartisan group of House leaders has filed a brief supporting retiring Rep. Rick Renzi ’s bid to bar prosecutors from introducing wiretapped phone conversations and other evidence at the congressman’s upcoming federal corruption trial, arguing that the materials are constitutionally protected.

Renzi, R-Ariz., is scheduled to stand trial in March on 42 federal corruption charges stemming from allegations that he engineered an illegal land swap in his home state and conspired to commit insurance fraud with two former business associates.

While they stressed that the brief is not meant “to protect Congressman Renzi from criminal investigation or prosecution.” House leaders backed Renzi’s contention that the Justice Department’s investigation “repeatedly and substantially” violated a constitutional provision known as the “speech or debate clause,” designed to insulate legislative activities from executive-branch review.

House General Counsel Irvin B. Nathan submitted the 57-page brief late Monday to U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernardo P. Velasco on behalf of a group of House leaders from both sides of the aisle known as the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group.

In the brief, House leaders argued that Velesco should suppress evidence gathered as a result of an October 2006 wiretap order they contend was overly broad. Using that order, federal investigators secretly recorded hundreds of phone conversations between Renzi, his aides and other members of Congress, including a Nov. 8, 2006, post-election conference call with members of the House Republican Conference.

“If the wiretap order and the department’s execution of that order are not held to be unconstitutional, the resulting precedent could readily increase the potential for executive branch overreach and abuse at the expense of legislative branch independence,” the general counsel wrote. “If members knew that their conversations about legislative matters could be monitored by the executive branch . . . they might be intimidated out of fear of reprisal to the detriment of the American people.”

The brief also accuses the Justice Department of using an overly narrow interpretation of the clause, in part by asserting that the clause’s protections do not apply when Congress is not in session.

In addition to opposing the introduction of the secretly-recorded phone conversations, House leaders argue that some of the charges against Renzi should be dismissed if the judge determines grand jury testimony from two of Renzi’s former chiefs of staff and the congressman’s former legislative director or “stolen” internal e-mails submitted to the grand jury for review without Renzi’s knowledge run afoul of the speech or debate clause.

House leaders are “well aware that adhering to the speech or debate clause may make the prosecutors’ job more difficult in this case,” the general counsel wrote. But House leaders added that they wanted to “ensure that the investigation and prosecution complies with the speech or debate clause, which is designed to insure that members can conduct their legislative duties free from interference or intimidation by either of the other two branches.”

Two years ago, House leaders also supported Louisiana Democrat William J. Jefferson ’s bid to retrieve documents seized during an unprecedented May 2006 raid on his Capitol Hill office.

Jefferson, who is awaiting trial on 16 federal corruption and bribery charges, eventually won a victory when the Supreme Court refused to review an August 2006 appeals court ruling which found that the FBI raid improperly exposed legislative materials to executive branch review and ordered the return of some of the documents seized.