ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- A Louisiana congressman caught on tape accepting a $100,000 cash payment should not have been charged with bribery because the alleged conduct was more akin to influence peddling than actual bribery, defense lawyers argued Friday.

Associated Press

Congressman William Jefferson

At a pretrial hearing in U.S. District Court, lawyers for Rep. William J. Jefferson, D-La., made no admission that Jefferson engaged in any kind of improper conduct. But defense lawyer Amy Jackson argued that even if the government's allegations are true, they do not technically constitute bribery under federal law.

"We think using influence is not a bribe," Jackson told U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III.

Prosecutors scoffed at the argument, and Ellis seemed skeptical. Ellis offered several hypothetical situations that he likened to the alleged conduct in Jefferson's case and questioned whether such situations would not constitute bribery.

But Jackson maintained that under federal law, bribery is defined as receiving payment for "an official act."

If Jefferson had taken money in exchange for sponsoring legislation or voting a particular way on a specific bill, it would be a bribe, Jackson said. But the congressman's alleged misdeeds -- helping to broker business deals in Africa in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments -- fall outside that definition.

She said that Congress spells out influence peddling as improper in its ethics rules but specifically neglects to do so under the bribery statute.

"We must apply the law as it is written, not as the Department of Justice wants it to be read or ... not even as a commonsense interpretation of right or wrong might think it should be read," she said.

Prosecutor Mark Lytle cited several legal precedents that differ with the defense interpretation, and said that Jefferson's efforts to secure business deals qualify as abuse of his official duties in providing constituent services by helping only those who paid him money.

Ellis did not rule on the defense motion. If he were to accept the defense argument, some, but not all, of the 16 counts against Jefferson would be dismissed.

The issue is one of more than a dozen pretrial motions filed by Jefferson's lawyers seeking to have counts dismissed and evidence tossed out. Ellis will hear arguments on most of the remaining motions at a later date.

While the defense is challenging large swaths of evidence, they have not filed to suppress the most notorious evidence -- the videotape of Jefferson receiving a $100,000 cash payment from a cooperating witness, followed by a raid on the congressman's Washington home in which $90,000 of the money was recovered from his freezer.

Defense lawyers have said in court filings that they reserve the right to challenge that evidence at a later date if they find a reason to do so.

Jefferson attended Friday's hearing but did not speak and did not comment after the hearing.

According to the indictment, Jefferson allegedly received more than $500,000 in bribes and demanded millions of dollars more between 2000 and 2005.

The 16-count indictment spells out 11 separate bribery schemes in which Jefferson used his influence as co-chairman of the congressional Africa Investment and Trade Caucus to broker deals in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and other African nations.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)