(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Businessman Mark Cuban and Sean Ono Lennon, the son of the late musician John Lennon, set Twitter ablaze due to their strikingly differing views on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), a contentious hiring practice that prioritizes minority individuals.
The contentious dueling posts of Cuban and Lennon began during discussions on hiring practices, particularly following Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation over anti-Semitism and plagiarism scandals. Notably, Harvard faced accusations of hiring Gay only because of her race.
“Have you guys heard of DEI? It stands for ‘Dumb Evil Idiots,’” said Lennon in a since-deleted post, addressing a supportive Twitter audience.
In contrast, Cuban expressed support for DEI in several tweets, countering Elon Musk’s and Lennon’s anti-DEI stance by highlighting diversity’s alleged positive impact on business.
“Having a workforce that is diverse and representative of your stakeholders is good for business,” he stated, despite a seemingly disapproving response from some.
Let me help you out and give you my thoughts on DEI
1. Diversity
Good businesses look where others don’t, to find the employees that will put your business in the best possible position to succeed.
You may not agree, but I take it as a given that there are people of various… https://t.co/L00fl6ggUD
Cuban further dubbed equity as a “core principle of business” in a follow-up post. “Put your employees in a position to succeed. Recognize their differences and play to their strengths where ever [sic] possible. It is not a hard concept. But it is not easy to implement,” he claimed.
Lennon, in a separate post on Jan. 3, criticized DEI, arguing that its implementation leads to “institutional racism.” He suggested that excluding non-diverse individuals in hiring or other selection practices constitutes racism.
“To make a long story short: the people who claim to be fighting ‘institutional racism’ are doing so by creating institutional racism. (And absolutely no one should be surprised by this.)” Lennon tweeted in response to Harvard donor Bill Ackman’s rebuke of ex-President Gay.
Lennon further commented, “And you can also supplant the word ‘racism’s with ‘oppression.’ It’s both.”
And you can also supplant the word ‘racism’s with ‘oppression.’ It’s both.
The DEI debate gained traction on Twitter amid accusations that Harvard’s hiring of Gay was solely based on her race.
Gay resigned six months into her tenure after refusing to condemn the genocide of Jews during a congressional hearing. Subsequently, she faced allegations of plagiarizing sentences from other academics in her dissertation.
They informed the Daily Mail that the brothels were believed to be masterminded by a 41-year-old South Korean woman and targeted politicians, high-ranking government officials and defense contractors.
However, it isn’t clear which foreign country was behind the operation. As of Jan. 4, 2024, the suspects are Russia, China, South Korea or Israel.
In November 2023, the brothels were raided and prosecutors said that they were looking to charge 28 people in Massachusetts alone.
Han Lee, the mastermind herself, Junmyung Lee, 30, and James Lee, 68 – all South Korean-born U.S. nationals – were charged the same month with running the sex ring. The three people are not related.
The locations of four of the brothels in the Boston area made sense since Han and Junmyung both lived there. However, James lived in Torrance, which is a suburb of Los Angeles.
Prosecutors added that among the steady customers at the “high-end brothels” run by the ring were members of Congress, military officers and national security contractors who “possessed security clearances.”
Other ring’s clients who were ready to pay up to $600 an hour were corporate executives, professors, lawyers and scientists.
So far, none of the clients have been identified or charged. However, their identities could soon be revealed because federal prosecutors announced last month that they are seeking criminal charges.
“The most valuable information in Washington and Boston are government secrets. If you open a prostitution business that caters to wealthy clients in those cities, you’ll get a lot of people walking through the doors that have access to them,” a former foreign spy who is well acquainted with honeypots said.
Former CIA Special Agent Nic McKinley, who is now a leader of Deliver Fund, a nonprofit that works with law enforcement to combat human trafficking, agreed.
“If this had been a pure cash play, massage parlors [would be] easier to set up, have lower overhead costs and print money. But they wouldn’t have pulled in affluent customers from government and national security circles,” he said.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A Jan. 6 protestor suffering from a rare form of chronic lymphoma has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for involvement in the Capitol Hill riot.
Christopher Worrell, an alleged member of the Proud Boys, was previously allowed to leave federal prison after expressing disturbing concerns about his treatment during his pre-trial arrest, Politico reported.
Worrell, who suffers from a rare form of cancer, regularly complained about his treatment during pretrial incarceration in the DC jail. That led Judge Lamberth to ask question and hold the jail in contempt. He let Worrell out to get treatment…
U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth granted Worrell a medical exemption and held the Department of Corrections in contempt of court due to their harsh treatment of the ill man. Nevertheless, Lamberth imposed a decade-long sentence on the ailing man.
Federal prosecutors had sought a 14-year sentence in August, prompting Worrell to skip sentencing hearings over heart-wrenching fears of dying in prison.
Prosecutors accused Worrell of assaulting U.S. Capitol officers with pepper spray gel.
During an emotional sentencing hearing, Worrell expressed regret for his actions on Jan. 6 and thanked the judge for the apparent leniency during the pre-trial process.
“You very likely saved my life,” the man said, according to media reports. “Nearly three years ago today, I made some choices I sincerely regret.”
Worrell added, “If I could go back in time,” he said, “I would change many things about that horrible day.”
The judge expressed satisfaction with the sentence and defended the relatively shorter term, specifically citing Worrell’s medical condition.
“I don’t want to see you die in prison,” Lamberth said, as reported by Politico. He also pushed back against Worrell’s assertion of being a political prisoner.
“It’s wrong to think that he’s a political prisoner,” the judge added. “It’s not OK. The court can’t send a message that it was OK.”
Worrell’s complaints about his treatment in federal prison led to a contempt of court order after his civil rights were violated.
“It’s clear to me the civil rights of the defendant were violated by the D.C. Department of Corrections,” said Lamberth in 2021, according to the Associated Press. “I don’t know if it’s because he’s a January 6 defendant or not.”
Worrell’s sentence followed Attorney General Merrick Garland’s directive to prosecute those who allegedly broke the law during the protests of the congressional certification of the contentious 2020 presidential election.
(Headline USA) GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie claimed this week he made a “mistake” by endorsing former President Donald Trump back in 2016.
Christie made the confession in a new campaign ad in response to criticism that his current opposition to Trump’s campaign is hypocritical given Christie’s past support of him.
“When I decided to endorse Donald Trump for president, I did it because he was winning, and I did it because I thought I could make him a better candidate and a better president,” Christie said. “Well, I was wrong, I made a mistake.”
Christie acknowledged that Trump seems to be the clear winner in the GOP primary, but urged voters not to back the former president again as he did in 2016.
“Donald Trump is ahead in the polls and so everyone says, ‘Anyone who’s behind him should drop out, and we should make our choice: Donald Trump versus Joe Biden.’ Neither choice is acceptable to me,” he said
The ad is part of a seven-figure campaign blast in New Hampshire ahead of the state’s Jan. 23 primary.
Christie didn’t just endorse Trump in 2016; he also prepped him for both the 2016 and 2020 presidential debates and even reportedly vied for a Cabinet position.
The ad buy comes as calls for Christie to drop out ramp up even among establishment Republicans. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, for example, said this week that Christie’s bid is “at an absolute dead end.”
In response, Christie blasted Sununu for not caring enough about stopping Trump.
“I remember when Chris used to care about Donald Trump,” Christie said. “He’s the guy who came, I think to the Gridiron Club, and said that Trump belongs in a mental institution. And now he’s saying that he’d vote for him if he were the nominee.”
(Headline USA) Despite having recently found a mysterious cache of $250 million to divert to Ukraine, President Joe Biden claimed he didn’t have enough money to solve the border crisis when asked about the skyrocketing levels of illegal immigration this week.
While walking from Marine One back to the White House on Tuesday, Biden was asked what he was going to do about the border crisis after Customs and Border Protection officials recorded 300,000 encounters with illegals in December—a record high.
“Well, we gotta do something,” Biden said. “They [Republicans] ought to give me the money I need to protect the border.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean–Pierre has made similar excuses for the administration’s inaction, blaming the situation on House Republicans.
“We need to continue to work together on border security, right?” Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday.
“The president, first day in his administration … the first thing that he put forward was a comprehensive immigration law,” she claimed. “And that’s because he believed that our system was broken and that it had been broken for decades and wanted to take that seriously.”
On his first day as president, Biden repealed many of the Trump-era laws that were keeping illegals from crossing the border, thereby encouraging the massive influx that has overwhelmed even Democrats’ so-called sanctuary cities.
Republicans, however, pointed out that they already passed legislation in the House to provide additional funding for border security. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., also argued that more funding wouldn’t change Biden’s policies.
What he's asking for is money for more agents to process illegals and bring them into the country, not protect the border. https://t.co/qbRhMMkhpP
Fox News contributor Miranda Devine agreed: “Oh yeah, more money. But not to ‘protect the border.’ It’s to pay for more lawyers to lie for the illegal migrants posing as asylum seekers,” she wrote. “It’s to pay for more NGOs to continue the cartel’s human trafficking work around the country. It’s to pay for more ‘humanitarian’ aid at the border, and more money wasted on ‘root cause’ boondoggles. Anything but secure the border.”
A group of House Republicans visited the southern border this week, saying Biden’s refusal to enforce immigration policies “began this chaos.”
Their trip comes as conservatives in both the House and Senate are threatening to shut down the government if Democrats do not agree to address the border crisis.
(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Former President Donald Trump’s long-awaited release of findings following extensive investigations into vote fraud in the swing states of the 2020 election revealed chronic irregularities, manipulated and destroyed records, and enormous amounts of fraud.
🚨JUST IN – President Trump Releases Summary of Election Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election in the Swing States
Introduction: It has often been repeated there is “no evidence” of fraud in the 2020 Election. In actuality, there is no evidence Joe Biden won.
Despite Democrats’ constant refrain that the 2020 election was clean and fair, the investigations revealed several incongruent counts, corrupted electronic files and a great deal of missing information.
“It has often been repeated there is ‘no evidence’ of fraud in the 2020 Election,’ said a tweet from social-media influencer KanekoaTheGreat introducing a lengthy thread about the report. “In actuality, there is no evidence Joe Biden won.”
Many of the irregularities had to do with destruction and forgery of ballots, issuing of ballots to addresses and people that do not exist, tampering with ballot boxes and fraudulent mail-in votes.
In Georgia, poll managers did not witness or sign off on any early voting ballots—a legal requirement in the state. Unidentified parties tampered with the seals of hard copy ballots; election workers printed off votes cast electronically on different machines than the ones that tabulated them, preventing accurate vote count.
In-person ballots from Election Day in Fulton County were destroyed.
“The vote in Georgia was counted three times: the original machine count, a statewide hand recount, and a second machine count, ” the report read. “Each time the state, and Fulton County, reported three different results.”
Wisconsin, in particular, had difficulties with mail-in ballots and voter ID laws. Election integrity groups identified 107 ballot traffickers in Milwaukee County in the days leading up to the election, making visits to drop boxes several times a day.
The percentage of people who identified themselves as “indefinitely confined” on their ballot rose 287% across the state. In 2016, only 56,978 identified themselves as “indefinitely confined.”
To the East, Pennsylvania struggled with their counts as well, ending up with 121,240 more votes than voters.
The report expressed that interference by state employees, such as then-state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, and private actors, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, likely had an influence on the election as well.
Arizona’s infamous issues with mail-in voting proved to be the top issue for the state, with 20,000 ballots coming in via USPS in the days following the election. The state called a win for Joe Biden by a margin of 10,457 votes.
Over 400,000 ballots cast in Maricopa County failed signature verification standards, and nearly 10% of reviewed ballots had completely mismatched signatures.
Michigan had over 271,000 more votes than qualified voters, more than one and a half times the election margin. Someone removed thousands of votes from voter-history files, and tampered with individual voter histories.
Investigators caught Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson making illegal changes to signature verification rules, and ordered all election workers to assume the signatures were legitimate.
City employees made reports of massive quantities of ballots showing up at voter registration offices, many of them uncertifiable, in the same handwriting or from false addresses.
A police investigation in Muskegon revealed that the organization behind the scheme was GBI Strategies. A Super PAC known as Black PAC hired the group to register voters for Biden. The city and state police speculated that the group has operations throughout Michigan and in other swing states.
The FBI took the Muskegon case from the Michigan State Police, and the matter remained unquestioned until a 2023 Michigan Freedom of Information Act request.
Trump released the report, which is essentially a compilation of different investigations from election fraud watchdog organizations, on Thursday.
Several left-wing news sources already decried the findings as “dead end” and a “mirage.” Leftist media also attempted to pre-empt the report’s release with an op-ed in USA Today by a RINO claiming to have been hired by Trump to investigate vote fraud.
Ken Block, a failed Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate and founder of the Moderate Party, claimed that Trump had paid $750,000 to his software company but that he found no evidence that would be legally admissible.
It is unclear whether Block disclosed his political biases in advance of the alleged contract. He is currently promoting a book due for release in March.
Trump had earlier pledged a release of the vote fraud evidence in connection with the lawfare cases against him—specifically the Fulton County case that alleges he and 18 “co-conspirators” were engaged in a racketeering scheme to steal the election.
The evidence proving the election was stolen on Biden’s behalf offers a direct rebuttal to those charges.
The statement was made by Epstein victim Johanna Sjoberg, who was reporting hearsay of Clinton’s involvement in the ordeal.
“[Epstein] said one time that Clinton likes them young, referring to girls,” she testified, adding that she never saw Clinton on the island or on Epstein’s plane herself.
When asked if she knew Clinton was a friend of Epstein, she said: “I knew he had dealings with Bill Clinton. I did not know they were friends until I read the Vanity Fair article about them going to Africa together.”
And though Clinton’s name appeared over 70 times in the first batch of documents, there appeared to be no evidence that would lead to charges against him.
Maxwell herself even named Clinton, according to court documents.
“What is my relationship to [Clinton]?” Maxwell wrote in an email. “[Prince] Andrew on and on. Let’s rest till monday. I need head space.”
The unsealed documents briefly transfixed the news cycle and reignited interest in the mystery surrounding Epstein, who died while awaiting trial in 2019, ostensibly from suicide.
In the documents, dozens of known Epstein associates were finally confirmed, including Clinton and England’s Prince Andrew.
Clinton’s sexual appetites have, in fact, been the subject of scandal since even before his presidency.
He was notoriously impeached in 1998 for obstruction of justice and perjury after a semen-stained dress belonging to 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky confirmed that the then-president had lied both to the public and to federal investigators about his sexual relations with the young woman.
Even so, the claim coming from Epstein, who routinely trafficked underage girls, suggests that Lewinsky may have fallen on the older end of his clandestine conquests.
The latest documents come from a 2015 civil lawsuit pertaining to Epstein and Maxwell. Both were accused of facilitating the sexual abuse of then-minor Virginia Giuffre, an alleged victim of their sex trafficking.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, who is hearing the case, ruled last year that there was no legal reason to keep the John and Jane Does under wraps, including Clinton.
Only one name is known to have been redacted in the 943 pages released as of Thursday.
JUST IN: A single name is redacted in a list of individuals who Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly directed underaged girls to have s*x with.
Who is this person?
The redacted name was next to former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, billionaire hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin,… pic.twitter.com/fAR7mzqJpu
Mark Epstein told the New York Post that he does not think his brother blackmailed potential allies or associated with long-rumored sex tapes. However, he also conceded that he wasn’t immediately tied to the property where the alleged rapes could have been recorded.
“This is just an opinion — I never really believed they existed,” he said. “Jeffrey was buying islands in the Virgin Islands. He had his own private 727 [jet]. Do you think he needed to make money by extortion?”
Mark Epstein’s remarks came in response to allegations that Jeffrey Epstein secretly recorded his allies in potentially damaging situations to later use them as potential get-out-of-jail cards.
Among the individuals tied to the alleged tapes are former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. Mark Epstein’s pushback also followed the release of reported flight lists showing allies of the late pedophile.
Notably, Clinton’s name appeared a whopping total of 73 times, a drastically high number compared to the meager four times that Trump’s name appeared in the infamous lists. Neither were implicated in potentially illegal acts, the NY Post reported.
Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s disgraced former sex trafficker, reportedly said during a 2016 interview for a reporter’s book that there are tapes of both Trump and Clinton.
But Mark Epstein warned that his brother made his money off the “financial world” and did not need tapes of influential individuals for potential gains.
“He knew how to make money in the financial world. He knew all the dirty tricks. When he was on Wall Street he learned all the tricks before Wall Street was cleaned up,” Mark Epstein added.
“I think you could argue that I knew Jeff better than anybody, and some of these stories seem so far fetched,” he continued.
The man said that his brother’s New York City-based townhouse did not have a widespread security system to catch allies in and out of the property. He conceded, however, that he was not physically present to assess the home.
“There was not an extensive camera system in the New York House,” he stated. “I was told there were no cameras in the house — like spycams. But… I wasn’t there.”
(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Soon after being inaugurated, new Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker declared a state of emergency in the city due to the extraordinarily high levels of crime, ABC 6 reported.
After her inaugural ceremony, Parker laid out a 100-day Action Plan meant to make the city a safer place.
Parker’s first order of business was to issue an executive order declaring high crime rates against both individuals and their property an emergency.
“You’ve all heard it all starts with public safety,” Parker began.
“That’s why my very first public order does declare that state of emergency here in the city, she continued. “I am fully committed to ending the sense of lawlessness that has been so pervasive in our city and bringing back of order and lawfulness.”
The order directed Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel to crack down on crime and report to Parker’s office on his department’s progress within 30 days.
“We will pursue those who harm and traumatize our neighborhoods across the city,” Bethel said.
The action plan included measures to increase the burgeoning police department’s recruiting numbers in order to bring in more officers, who are to specialize in reducing violent crimes and combating property offenses, such as theft.
Parker’s plan also intends to address “quality of life” issues, such as minimizing “litter, graffiti, potholes and abandoned cars.”
The plan also aims to develop “a strategy to permanently shut down open-air drug markets,” Parker noted.
“…There is a lot of work to be done,” she said. “Mark my words, what you see here today is only the beginning.”
The plan more broadly seeks to address the declining opinion of their security among the people by taking care of “immediate safety concerns” and fostering “longer-term community resilience.”
The aim of the new government is, therefore, to “restore a sense of lawfulness to the city” by increasing law enforcement presence.
Many of Philadelphia’s present woes can be traced to the election of George Soros-funded District Attorney Larry Krasner, first elected in 2017 and again in 2021, who has pursued an aggressive pro-criminal agenda.
Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature tried unsuccessfully to impeach Krasner last year over his dereliction of duty.
During the mayoral race, candidates openly discussed ways they could circumvent the controversial prosecutor to impose law and order by diverting cases to federal prosecutors.
“We need to bring back the certainty of punishment in the city of Philadelphia,” said Democrat candidate Derek Green, a former prosecutor, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
It’s a phrase the FBI and other agencies often use in response to questions that might jeopardize sensitive law enforcement operations or matters of national security.
But in an ongoing lawsuit, the Justice Department is battling for the right to neither confirm nor deny records that—if they do indeed exist—would be related to the abrupt departure of the FBI’s former 3rd in command.
The previously unpublicized lawsuit stems from the FBI promoting Jeffrey Sallet to associate deputy director in February 2021—making him the third highest-ranking official at the bureau behind Director Chris Wray and Deputy Director Paul Abbate—only to have him depart the bureau about nine months later.
Sallet now works at accounting firm Ernst & Young, which was purportedly an opportunity for a higher salary.
Former FBI Associate Deputy Director Jeffrey Sallet. PHOTO: Ernst & Young
However, former FBI agent Michael Zummer, who has a long and contentious history with Sallet, claims to have received information from other bureau employees that Sallet’s departure was related to sexual misconduct allegations.
An organization called United for FBI Integrity—run by former FBI agent Jim Davidson and represented by Zummer—submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the FBI and Justice Department for any records about Sallet’s alleged misconduct.
Instead of denying such records or claiming they don’t exist, the FBI and DOJ issued “Glomar responses”—neither confirming nor denying the records’ existence or lack thereof.
“The mere acknowledgement of the existence of FBI records on third party individuals could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” the FBI told the watchdog group in November 2021.
Unsatisfied with those responses, United for FBI Integrity filed its lawsuit against the DOJ in September 2022.
The two parties have been battling in court for some 15 months and counting, with United for FBI Integrity arguing that the DOJ is incorrectly using Glomar in a misguided effort to avoid transparency obligations. The watchdog has also levied some salacious and unconfirmed accusations against Sallet.
Salacious but Currently Unproven Allegations
United for FBI Integrity first sued the DOJ in September 2022, hinting at misconduct allegations against Sallet, but offering few details.
In June 2023, Zummer filed a sworn declaration as part of a motion for summary judgment against the DOJ. His sworn declaration specifies the information he’s purportedly heard about Sallet.
An excerpt from a sworn declaration of former FBI agent Michael Zummer, who’s levied unproven sexual-misconduct allegations against the bureau’s former third top-ranking official, Jeffrey Sallet.
“After learning about Sallet’s retirement, I heard from various current and former FBI employees that allegations of sexual impropriety against Sallet had caused him to retire. The first allegation that I was told was that an employee reported that Sallet was alleged to have invited a young female employee to his hotel room while on official travel,” Zummer said.
“Another employee reported that Sallet sent a photograph of his genitalia to a female employee closer to his own age and rank with whom he was having an affair. Another FBI employee reported that two female employees threatened to go to the national media if action were not taken against Sallet,” he said.
“Finally, these reports are consistent with behavior that was reported about Sallet when he was in New Orleans. A former employee told me that Sallet commented to him and other employees about underage high school girls’ buttocks, saying words to the effect that the men would not find similarly attractive posteriors on women their own age.”
United for FBI Integrity’s motion for summary judgment also included a sworn declaration from the organization’s president, former FBI agent James Davidson.
Davidson said he only heard the rumors about Sallet from Zummer. Nevertheless, it’s suspicious that Sallet retired so soon after being promoted to be the FBI’s third-in-command, according to Davidson.
“In fact, the circumstances of Sallet’s retirement fit the profile of someone who had faced some sort of internal or external scrutiny for ethical or disciplinary violations and chose to retire to avoid further scrutiny,” Davidson said in his sworn declaration.
Sallet, to reiterate, has denied all allegations of wrongdoing, and Zummer admitted to Headline USA that he has no direct evidence of sexual misconduct.
The DOJ, for its part, has also blasted Zummer’s accusations as “only anonymous hearsay and innuendo,” seeking a summary judgment of its own.
“The invasion of Sallet’s privacy that confirming or denying the existence of any responsive records would entail outweighs any public interest in disclosure. Sallet has a significant interest in personal privacy that outweighs all the rationales for disclosure that Plaintiff asserts,” DOJ lawyers argued in a July 2023 court filing.
“Plaintiff offers no evidence sufficient to support a reasonable belief that Sallet engaged in misconduct.”
However, Zummer takes exception to the DOJ’s characterization of his allegations. In an August 2023 reply to the DOJ, Zummer argued that his information about Sallet comes from reliable sources within the bureau.
“The Plaintiff has established more than a bare suspicion that Sallet might have engaged in sexual misconduct,” Zummer wrote on behalf of United for FBI Integrity.
“Allegations of government misconduct are far more powerful when they come from insiders. FBI employees are the source of the requester’s allegations. Here, the Plaintiff has provided specific allegations of wrongdoing from members of DOJ’s primary investigative agency,” he added.
FBI Stretches Authority to Avoid Public Scrutiny
Salacious allegations aside, United for FBI Integrity has argued that the DOJ is attempting to apply its power to “neither confirm nor deny” far too broadly in this case.
“Government misconduct is a sufficient public interest to defeat DOJ’s Glomar responses, particularly considering DOJ has failed to establish that all of the possible responsive records held by the FBI or OIG would have been compiled for law enforcement purposes,” the group argued in August.
“Under the less stringent standard of Exemption 6, DOJ cannot meet its burden to establish that all possible responsive records may be withheld in light of the public interest in disclosing government misconduct.”
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, who’s presiding over the case, has yet to rule on either party’s motion for summary judgment.
The FBI declined to comment for this story. Sallet has denied any wrongdoing but did not provide further comment on the record. Ernst & Young did not respond to a message seeking comment.
According to a 2020 Associated Press article entitled, ‘Under the rug:’ Sexual misconduct shakes FBI’s senior ranks, the last time the OIG did an extensive probe of sexual misconduct within the FBI, it tallied 343 “offenses” from fiscal years 2009 to 2012, including three instances of “videotaping undressed women without consent.”
That AP investigation identified at least six sexual misconduct allegations involving senior FBI officials over the past five years, including two new claims brought by women who say they were sexually assaulted by ranking agents.
“Each of the accused FBI officials appears to have avoided discipline, the AP found, and several were quietly transferred or retired, keeping their full pensions and benefits even when probes substantiated the sexual misconduct claims against them,” the AP reported in December 2020.
A year after the December 2020 AP investigation, a December 2021 OIG report found that four FBI officials had sex with prostitutes while posted overseas, while a fifth also tried to do so—and all but one “lacked candor” about it during interviews and lie-detector test.
According to that December 2021 report, two FBI officials resigned, two retired, and one was removed—all while the OIG’s investigation was ongoing.
The OIG’s December 2021 report said it referred the findings to the FBI for “appropriate action,” but nothing public has been revealed about the matter since then.
More recently, the OIG revealed in October that a senior FBI official had solicited prostitutes from a foreign national’s massage parlor while he was still working for the bureau. Like the others, that official retired while the OIG’s investigation was still ongoing. The DOJ declined to prosecute that official, according to the OIG.
And just this week, the OIG reported that a former Acting Deputy Assistant Director harassed a subordinate and made inappropriate sexual and religious jokes in the workplace. That report didn’t state whether the FBI official retired or is still at the bureau.
Zummer has cited the numerous instances of sexual misconduct at the FBI to support United for FBI Integrity’s lawsuit.
“The documented problems with FBI executives and DOJ’s mishandling of their misconduct further weighs in favor of disclosure of those records, should they exist,” he said in an August court filing.
“Thus, allegations of misconduct by Sallet and the OIG are sufficient to defeat DOJ’s Glomar responses.”
