Fake DHS agent may have duped other defendant with Secret Service

One of two men criminally charged with impersonating Department of Homeland Security agents may himself have been duped, along with several Secret Service agents, into believing his co-defendant actually was a DHS agent, a defense lawyer said in a court filing Monday.

“The weight of the evidence against Mr. [Haider] Ali is not strong,” Ali’s lawyer wrote in the filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

“It is far from clear that Mr. Ali ever represented himself as a federal government officer or employee, or that any such statements were known by him to be false,” the lawyer, Gregory Smith, wrote.

Smith’s filing says that a review of Ali’s multiple interviews with a U.S. postal inspector last month “suggests that Mr. Ali may well have naively but genuinely believed” that his co-defendant, Arian Taherzadeh, was a Homeland Security Investigations special agent, “and that the work he did for Taherzadeh’s company (USSP) possibly included work that company got from DHS.”

The filing for Ali, 35, came ahead of a detention hearing for Ali and Taherzadeh scheduled to resume in court later Monday. The men were arrested last week.

Prosecutors want both men, who remain in jail, held without bail, calling them a danger to the community.

But lawyers for the defendants in filings Monday asked a judge to release them on bail, saying prosecutors are overstating the seriousness of the case.

Ali’s lawyer said he has four very young children and is “badly needed back at home since his wife underwent surgery just this past Friday.”

The attorney also noted that even if Ali were convicted of the Class E felony he faces, federal sentencing guidelines would likely recommend a sentence of just zero to six months in prison. He would also be eligible for a probationary sentence, the lawyer added.

Prosecutors said that since the arrest of the men last week — amid claims they lavished gifts on Secret Service agents and provided two such agents with free apartments that normally rent for up to $48,000 per year — “the story only gets worse” as investigators turn up additional evidence.

“Because of the breakneck pace of the investigation, there are many facts that we still do not
know,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing Sunday.

“But the facts that we do know about the Defendants—that they lied about their identities for years, stored a cache of weapons and surveillance equipment in their apartments, compromised law enforcement agents in sensitive positions, and tried to cover up their crimes — leave no doubt that their release poses a public safety risk. Both Defendants should be detained.”

The Secret Service agents who protected first lady Jill Biden and the White House were among those duped by the men’s purported lies about being DHS agents.

The…