To be honest, I cannot say I am surprised. After all, the matter is on appeal. Just as you cannot unring a bell, you also cannot unviolate a privilege -- and if by some chance the appeals court finds for jefferson, the entire investigation could be derailed if the Justice Department were permitted to proceed.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday temporarily delayed a Justice Department bribery investigation of a Louisiana congressman while he challenges the legality of an unprecedented FBI raid on his Capitol Hill office.

The decision by two members of a three-judge panel means the Justice Department cannot begin a review set to begin Wednesday of more than a dozen computer hard drives, several floppy discs and two boxes of documents seized during a May 20-21 raid on Democratic Rep. William Jefferson's Rayburn Building office.

"The purpose of this administrative injunction is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the merits of the motion for a stay pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion," wrote Judges Janice Rogers Brown and Thomas B. Griffith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The identity of the third judge is not known.

And I think that this statement, coming from two highly respected judges, really says everything that needs to be said on the matter. We are looking at a procedural action by the court, not one based upon the merits of the case.