A federal judge granted bond to two men accused of acting as federal agents in a conspiracy to bribe Secret Service officials on Tuesday.
According to court filings, Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 36, have been in detention since their arrest on April 6 in Washington, D.C. According to an affidavit, the two men had been posing as Homeland Protection officers since February 2020, purchasing expensive gifts for members of the Secret Service, including one agent assigned to First Lady Jill Biden's security detail.
“In a case like this, release should be the norm,” U.S. District Court Judge G. Michael Harvey said.
“It’s not a crime of violence. It is a felony, but it is a felony with a maximum period of incarceration of three years,” the judge added.
Their release would imply that they would be required to remain in the Washington area, with GPS tracking to guarantee that they did so.
After obtaining visas from those nations, authorities are looking into the likelihood that the accused are linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a US-designated terrorist group, Iran's Quds force, and/or Pakistani intelligence.
The allegations of foreign ties were disregarded by Harvey due to a lack of evidence, and he added that there was no "hint that any foreign government that is opposed to the United States" was involved.
