When the deputy attorney general personally announces an indictment from Justice Department headquarters, it signals a matter of national importance. So when Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent Mc Cotter announced that he would hold his first news conference, observers rightly expected a major case. Instead, Mr. Mc Cotter announced an indictment of a rogue postal worker for improperly disposing of mail. The Utah mail carrier, Damon Matai Seei, was apparently covering a colleague’s delivery route at the time. By his own admission, he was feeling “overwhelmed,” and sought to “lighten his workload” by discarding a batch of undelivered mail in a church dumpster.
Mr. Seei claimed that he believed the discarded mail was advertising material. But according to prosecutors, it also included 300 mail-in ballots for a primary election. He was charged with a single felony count of delay or destruction of mail. Mr. Seei had no apparent intent to interfere with an election. But that did not stop the Justice Department from offering him up to the public as an election saboteur. The deputy attorney general called Mr. Seei — a 34-year-old with no prior criminal history — “a danger to the public and to the integrity of the electoral system.”
After Mr. Mc Cotter’s news conference, a top Justice Department spokeswoman lashed out at a correspondent who characterized Mr. Seei’s prosecution as “a case about a tired mailman.” These actions are reminiscent of the aftermath of the 2020 election, when a rogue Justice Department official sent a letter to Georgia election officials falsely claiming that the department had evidence of “significant” irregularities. What’s different and scarier now is that the Justice Department’s leadership is working together to validate the president’s election lies from the top down.
Turning fiction into fact is now part of the job description. Ordinary citizens are being ensnared. David Hearn, a man from Maryland, was one of them.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing