DOJ Prosecutor Won't Use Project Veritas Fever Dream Sequences To Open Fake Invesigations, Resigns
Yes, another one. And oh boy, this Ed Martin acting US attorney is a REAL idiot.
Another top-level resignation!
The head of the criminal division in the US attorney’s office in DC and a 24-year-veteran, Denise Cheung, resigned Tuesday morning rather than cosign illegal orders that would have required her to lie, as she alleges was demanded of her by the election-denying ham-faced dick that is (acting) US attorney Ed Martin.
Cheung claims Martin instructed her to write a letter to freeze a federal contractor’s bank accounts with grant money in them, and open a CRIMINAL investigation and convene a grand jury to find something illegal about an EPA funding decision made under Old Handsome Joe Biden’s administration. The evidence? A Project Veritas video that new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin saw. Yes, the same Project Veritas you’re thinking of. Do some people think Project Veritas isn’t a serious organization that is full of truth-telling and integrity?
And behold the stupid of this press release about it! (By the way, Zeldin would desperately like to make the nickname “The Legend of Zeldin” stick. Kind of like “Legend of Zelda,” get it? How do you do, fellow kids?)
From the press release:
… tens of billions of dollars went out the door during the Biden administration that we want accountability for. Between the time President Trump was elected and sworn in, a Biden political appointee was on video talking about how here at the EPA they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic. He says it four or five times in this Project Veritas video, even saying that there was a desire among the Biden political appointees to give out the final billions of dollars with an eye toward getting jobs at the recipient NGOs.
And Denise Cheung was like, nooooo, some Project Veritas video —still the same Project Veritas — that some guy saw where an employee uses a metaphor is not enough evidence to convene a grand jury and indict somebody for something. Nooooooo. Bless your hearts, noooooo.
Also, FWIW, the poor caught-on-tape-with-a-cocktail EPA employee guy says nothing about a quid pro quo for any job. Project Veritas is really slacking off with these ding-dong gotchas. Maybe they should skip the hassle of trying to be superspies at some bar and just make people’s lips move to say what they want with AI? Anyway, here’s the video, judge for yourself. NEFARIOUS?!
Trying to allocate the funds that Congress has appropriated, quelle horreur ! The funds in question were EPA grants for clean energy. The grants have been awarded, the contracts have been signed, and the money is sitting in accounts at Citibank. But Legend of Smellin’ would like to claw $20 billion of it back. However, the only way he can do that is if something illegal went on, and that’s where Martin apparently hoped Cheung would step in and do him a favor, though, and work with the Washington Field Office of the FBI to claim that there was evidence of some kind of wire fraud conspiracy on somebody’s part and demand that Citibank freeze the accounts.
The FBI told Cheung that they would send the bank a letter, but first needed her to say that there was some kind of probable cause, which, of course, there wasn’t. Not even the name of a person or a specific allegation! But she held her nose anyway and drafted:
Based upon the information we received from [the Office of the Deputy Attorney General] and public-source materials, including a video of statements by a former [executive agency] official, USAO-DC believes that there may be conduct that constitutes potential violations of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 371 (conspiracy to defraud the United States) and 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1343 (wire fraud) that merits additional investigation.
“Video of statements” is doing a lot of hard work there, because we are still talking about a Project Veritas video.
But that was still not good enough for Martin; according to Cheung he wanted her to DEMAND a freeze on the money, and open an investigation into somebody. From Cheung’s resignation letter:
You expressed your dissatisfaction about the adequacy of the FBI-WFO letter and criticized that the language merely "recommended" that a freeze of the accounts take place, notwithstanding that the same language was used in the draft I sent to the [Principal Assistant US Attorney] earlier in the day. You also directed that a second letter be immediately issued to the bank under your and my name ordering the bank not to release any funds in the subject accounts pursuant to a criminal investigation being run out of USAO-DC.
When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed that there was sufficient evidence. You also accused me about wasting five hours of the day "doing nothing" except trying to get what the FBI and I wanted, but not what you wanted. As I shared with you, at this juncture, based upon the evidence I have reviewed, I still do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to issue the letter you described, including sufficient evidence to tell the bank that there is probable cause to seize the particular accounts identified. Because I believed that I lacked the legal authority to issue such a letter, I told you that I would not do so. You then asked for my resignation.
I remain committed to the oath that I took, and it has been an honor of a lifetime to be an AUSA in this Office. I know that all of the AUSAs in the Office will continue to uphold that pledge they have taken, following the facts and the law and complying with their moral, ethical, and legal obligations.
You can read the full epic resignation letter here. Future quitters, take note of how she documented in her letter the illegal stuff that Martin was willing to say to her over the phone, but not willing to put in writing. That’s how it’s done!
Martin sniffed in a statement, “Refusing a basic request to pause an investigation so officials can examine the potential waste of government funds is not an act of heroism – just a failure to follow chain of command.”
There was no investigation to pause, and Cheung did follow the chain of command. She just wasn’t willing to make up accusations against individuals or organizations out of thin air. Kind of like the seven prosecutors across the SDNY and DC Public Integrity Section who resigned last week, rather than abet Eric Adams getting quid pro quo-ed by the Trump administration for help with their Nazi immigration campaign, in exchange for having his bribery charges dropped, by falsely claiming that sweet innocent lamb Adams was framed and the FBI and DOJ hallucinated all of the evidence in the throes of some kind of Mulholland Drive-like dream sequence.
Adams’s dismissal of charges will be in front of Judge Dale Ho this afternoon, by the way. Can’t wait to see what he does!
As with (acting) Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove in last week’s Thursday Afternoon Massacre, why did Ed Martin not simply type up a bunch of lies to send a freeze letter himself, and gin up some charges himself? Lazy? Doing a loyalty test? Realizes that at some point he’d have to defend his action in court and does not want to incur the wrath of a judge when he shows up with his only evidence being a clip of a Project Veritas video of a guy drinking a cocktail with a spring of rosemary in it who is saying nothing illegal whatsoever? Take your pick!
Tough choices for the folks in the FBI and DOJ right now. Do you pretend to go along and sacrifice some integrity now so you can hopefully throw sand in the works of the fascism later, and you don’t leave important cases that you’re currently working on out to dry? Or do you jump off the bus before it and your integrity crash into a tree? There’s really no good answer there, and we sure don’t envy them.
PREVIOUSLY!
>> Between the time President Trump was elected and sworn in, a Biden political appointee was on video talking about how here at the EPA they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic. <<
So some legal eagle correct me if I'm wrong, but as I currently understand US law today AND as I understand British law in 1912, it is/was not actually illegal to throw gold bars off the Titanic after it hit the iceberg but before it sank, even should one be a US-citizen time traveler while doing the throwing.
P.S. I'm certain that Dr. Dan Streetmentioner willen haven been outraged at the primitive use of verb tenses in the previous paragraph, but sorry, transtemporal grammatics is just not my field.
“(…)tens of billions of dollars went out the door during the Biden administration that we want accountability for.”
I think we need to fire the person responsible for this sentence structure.