By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Defense attorneys for two men accused of impersonating federal law enforcement agents and supplying Secret Service personnel with gifts will ask a U.S. judge on Monday to release their clients from jail pending trial.
“The offense charged, false impersonation of a law enforcement officer, is not a crime of violence,” wrote Michelle Peterson, an attorney representing Arian Taherzadeh, 40, one of the accused along with Haider Ali, 35.
In court filings, the lawyers accused prosecutors of providing flimsy evidence.
The two men were arrested last week for impersonating Department of Homeland Security agents and four U.S. Secret Service members were suspended from duty, on suspicion the defendants supplied or offered them rent-free apartments and other gifts.
Those who were offered gifts included an agent assigned to protect President Joe Biden’s wife Jill Biden.
At a detention hearing on Friday, prosecutor Joshua Rothstein asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey to detain both men. The hearing was due to resume at 3:30 p.m. ET (1930 GMT) on Monday.
At Friday’s hearing, the judge voiced frustration over the lack of explanation for the defendants’ actions, such as how or even whether in fact they paid for the apartments and other gifts, and if they sought anything in return.
Rothstein said the FBI had searched five apartments tied to the defendants and uncovered disturbing evidence including weapons, surveillance equipment, tools used to manufacture identities and tactical gear.
Rothstein said Ali had traveled to the Middle East in recent years and bragged of having ties to Pakistani intelligence, concerns he said justified detaining Ali as a flight risk.
Ali’s attorney on Monday played down the foreign travel, saying one of the passports seized had expired and that the trips were all legitimate.
“Mr. Ali’s faith’s major religious shrines are located there, and these visits also all took place more than two years ago,” wrote the attorney Gregory Smith.
Smith said the weapons seized were all found in apartments controlled by Taherzadeh, not his client, and that Ali believed erroneously that Taherzadeh worked as a real DHS agent.
Peterson, representing Taherzadeh, said the rent for the apartments used by the Secret Service agents was never paid, and a default judgment was entered in January for $222,000.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Howard Goller)
