D.C. federal prosecutors on Friday outlined their arguments for why two men charged with impersonating Homeland Security agents should be detained pending trial, again without providing much explanation of who might have directed what the government described as a scheme to “infiltrate networks of federal law enforcement officers.”
Am I correct in my assumption that the FBI had this operation under surveillance for some extended period prior to arresting them?
ISI pretty much equals Taliban. If they are behind this we have an epic international kerfuffle.
What nation were the passports from? An Iran stamp on an American passport is an odd mix.
My personal guess -with ZERO evidence- is that whoever may have funded them at the start either died or is too rich. Either way, this amount of money may have been too small to be noticed. And perhaps one guy convinced the other one that they should keep to their roles in case they were ever ‘called into action’.
This all seems nebulous and without much of a goal. So far.
This whole thing smells of a false flag operation.
If they claimed they were affiliated with ISI, then I think we can assume they were not ISI (even if they do personally think they were ISI, but these guys were clearly not very bright and probably easily misled).
I can’t imagine why Iran or Saudi Arabia or any ME country would want to expose themselves with a Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight operation like this.
My suspicion is that this operation has been under surveillance for some time, and got wrapped up by the FBI because they were worried assets were about to be activated, because of recent world events. The whole ME thing is one big red herring, and the USPS inspector blowing the whistle is a cover story.
But the truth is probably much stranger than that.
Gee, with private citizen Trump and his being compromised, and his knowing theft of top secret documents, the U.S. A.G. Merrick Garland would have to:
Compromising USSS agents provides an avenue to the leader of the free world. So there is that. Though I think this is a very unlikely scenario.
But whatever is going on here, the agents involved should be fired, stripped of their pensions, and prosecuted if they did indeed break any law.
Yes, we don’t need gullible men and women as agents close to the Executive Branch.
In reading the memorandum argument for detention while awaiting trial, Taherzadeh is not allowed to possess a gun or ammunition because of a strangulation case of a family member in 2013. Look at the document to see all the weapons and ammo in their possession.
I think these guys are a couple of loons with some potentially big plans if they only knew what they were.
Two years is a long time to run something that’s so easily uncovered as fake when someone finally questions them. Until we hear more, I’m thinking it’s two rich dudes enjoying cosplay as Federal agents. They get to play with guns that aren’t legal for civilians in DC, flash badges, feel important hanging out with Secret Service buddies. It’s just too sloppy and amateurish for a foreign connection, but I guess we’ll see eventually.
#1 weirdest thing about this so far, is that the wikipedia article on the Secret Service has nothing about it at all.
The last “scandal” they discuss is from 2017.
I wonder if they’ve locked down the page, to keep it from being slammed, or they can’t substantiate anything either. But there’s been four SS suspensions and also charges brought. I don’t understand. They could at least list that stuff.
This is fabulous for those of us who are missing John LeCarré novels.
Well, since they stormed the apartment, yes, I’d say for some time. They knew what was in that apartment before they raided.
And the last thing the FBI needs right now, is to stand there with their dicks in their hands, after their droppage of ballage on January 6th, 2021.
With the level of weirdness coupled with incompetence attached to the amount of money used connected to how it was sort of a well ran despite how it wasnt… It has trumps fingerprints all over it.
That sounds just as likely as anything else, at this point. In which case, we should consider ourselves lucky that this security hole was discovered before ‘bad actors’ found it first.
Best-case scenario is that these guys just like playing cop, and someone’s Daddy gives them the money to do that. They want to hob-nob with the top-cops. Maybe they’ve got dozens of people going, and the SS agents are just coincidentally wrapped up in it.
Worst-case is that this is an off-books Pakistan intelligence fiasco, as payback for Bin Laden.
But then again, what did I know?
Watergate was just a bunch of small-time DC hoods looking for stray cash, right?
There should be enough that isn’t known for the judge to order them held without bail.
Creepy, and ominous.
I see various timelines cited in articles about this affair, but most generally reference an imprecise 18 months, year and a half, etc. Yet I also see citations as in this TPM article with the genesis dating to Feb 2020, which is well over two years ago. This seems critical, to some degree, as the origin’s birth falling either during Trump’s term, or timed during the transition to Biden. If the goal was to infiltrate Biden’s and Harris’ security detail, starting the plot in February of 2020 predates that by over a year. What gives with the various dates?