This being the newspaper for Congress, there’s a good possibility that some of you have been hit with a subpoena at least once.

If so, and if you work in the House of Representatives, then you know — as many people on the outside do not — that when that happens you are required to notify the House, in the form of a letter to the Speaker.

It’s nothing fancy. You just say you’ve received a subpoena and what you plan to do.

That is, of course, what happened to Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) last August, when he received the subpoena that led to the search that led to the discovery of the infamous $90,000 in carefully wrapped $100 bills hidden in his freezer.

“This is to notify you formally, pursuant to Rule VIII of the Rules of the House of Representatives,” Jefferson wrote to Speaker Denny Hastert on Sept. 15, “that I have been served with a grand jury subpoena for documents issued by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

“I will make the determinations required by Rule VIII.”

The determination Jefferson made, of course, was to tell the Justice Department where it could put its subpoena. (Rule VIII, by the way, directs that any member or staffer hit with a subpoena “shall comply, consistently with the privileges and rights of the House.”)

Some members of Jefferson’s staff also received subpoenas for documents, and they also wrote letters.

“After consultation with the Office of General Counsel,” wrote former Jefferson Chief of Staff Nicole Venable last November, “I have determined that compliance with the subpoena is inconsistent with the precedents and privileges of the House.”

In other words, she reached the same conclusion as Jefferson. Only she didn’t do it by herself. Venable’s letter suggests that it wasn’t just Jefferson who was telling the Justice Department to get lost; it was the House of Representatives as an institution, too — acting through the House’s Office of General Counsel.

Which means that the standoff many of us originally attributed to the intransigence of a man who got caught with packs of illegally obtained $100 bills in his freezer was actually the result of a decision made at the highest levels of the House.

House leaders have been on Jefferson’s side virtually from the beginning. They yelled bloody murder when FBI agents, acting with a judicially approved warrant, searched Jefferson’s Capitol Hill office May 20. They blamed the Justice Department for not finding some other way to get the needed information.

But what had they done to avert a showdown?

They knew, or should have known, that the Justice Department had Jefferson dead to rights — or, at the very least, that Jefferson was in deep trouble. After all, last August, less than two weeks after the FBI searched Jefferson’s homes in Louisiana and Washington, The Washington Post reported that “FBI agents seized a number of items, including a large amount of cash that was kept in a freezer.”

But instead of looking for ways to accommodate the department in what clearly appeared to be an investigation of criminal wrongdoing, the House of Representatives sided with Jefferson and his staff in their defiance of subpoenas. The House counsel’s office even has copies of at least some of the subpoenaed documents, which it is keeping in its offices. It is most likely doing so as part of its role of representing members and staff, as well as the House as an institution.

Not surprisingly, all of this ended up in court. This week I reported in National Review Online that Jefferson and lawyers for the House have squared off against the Justice Department in a secret court battle arising from the corruption allegations.

The litigation is in federal court, where it has all been conducted under seal — so we know nothing of it. But one possible scenario is that after Jefferson and the House refused to comply with the subpoenas the Justice Department went to court to compel them to comply.

All of this suggests that this battle has never been Jefferson versus the Justice Department. It has always been the House, working on Jefferson’s behalf, versus the Justice Department.

Everyone hopes that House leaders have good reasons — reasons that go beyond the wounded pride expressed by some lawmakers — for going to the mattresses in Jefferson’s defense. If not, they are committing themselves — and their reputations — to an all-out effort to defend a purported constitutional right to use their offices to hide evidence of felonies.

President Bush did them a favor when he ordered a 45-day cooling-off period in the House-Justice Department feud. But what happens when the 45 days are up?

Perhaps the House has won some victory in the secret litigation and news of that will change our understanding of this case. But if not, will the House continue to use all its legal resources to defy the Jefferson investigation?

Let’s hope not.

York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it