The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a former federal official’s request to carry out an emergency review of his corruption conviction and put his prison sentence on hold.
The former official argued that his case deserved review because months ago the Supreme Court reined in a similar federal law that was used to prosecute individuals charged for actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol breach.
The emergency application by former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) assistant inspector general Eghbal Saffarinia was submitted to Chief Justice John Roberts, who referred it to the full court. The court then dismissed the application without comment on Sept. 3. No justices dissented.
According to court documents, for five years, Saffarinia worked in HUD’s Office of the Inspector General (HUD-OIG). Because of his senior position, federal law required him to file annual disclosure forms listing financial liabilities exceeding $10,000. These forms were established to help federal agencies assess potential conflicts of interest among senior officials.
One of Saffarinia’s key responsibilities at HUD-OIG was handing out information technology contracts, which often run several years and are valued in the tens of millions of dollars.
When a contractor lost out on a HUD-OIG contract, that contractor protested, leading to an investigation that revealed that Saffarinia had repeatedly falsified disclosure forms and failed to report liabilities exceeding $10,000.
The probe also found that one of the individuals he had borrowed money from owned an information technology company that had received HUD-OIG contracts when Saffarinia had “near-complete power over the agency operation,” court papers say.
The government said he failed to disclose two loans totaling $170,000. He received one loan, for $80,000, from a friend “to whom he had directed a HUD subcontract.”
In September 2022, a federal jury in Washington convicted Saffarinia on seven counts, including three counts of obstruction of justice under 18 U.S. Code Section 1519.
In May 2023, the federal district court sentenced him to a year and a day of incarceration. The court initially released him pending appeal, and in June 2023, Judge Jia M. Cobb of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia affirmed the release order pending appeal.
Saffarinia appealed the conviction, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld it in May 2024. The circuit court allowed the defendant to remain free, but on Aug. 15, that court refused to stay the sentence.
The D.C. Circuit’s ruling relied on its prior decision that the prosecution of Joseph Fischer, a former Pennsylvania police officer charged with obstructing an official proceeding after he briefly entered the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could proceed under an evidence-tampering law that Saffarinia said was similar to Section 1519.
Fischer was indicted on several counts following the Capitol breach, including obstructing an official proceeding under 18 U.S. Code Section 1512(c). Convictions under Sections 1512(c) and 1519 can yield sentences of up to 20 years in prison.
Section 1519 could be stretched “to reach obstruction of any routine administrative activity—from review of U.S. Postal Service certified mail forms to review of federal job applications.”
He argued that a stay was needed to give him time to prepare a formal petition asking the Supreme Court “to review and redress that break from precedent and common sense.”
“The case presents an important issue that raises ‘a reasonable probability’ of this Court’s review and ‘a fair prospect’ of reversal,” the brief states, citing precedent.
“And without a stay, Saffarinia will suffer ‘irreparable harm’: He will serve all or much of his prison sentence before this Court can consider his petition and address the merits.”
Saffarinia’s application fails to meet the legal requirements needed for a stay because it did not raise “‘a substantial question of law ... likely to result in’ reversal.” Nor did the application show that the Supreme Court would likely grant his petition for review or that further proceedings would likely lead to reversal on “the counts for which imprisonment was imposed.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Saffarinia’s attorney, Jeffrey Lamken of Molo Lamken in Washington, and the U.S. Department of Justice for comment, but did not receive any replies by the time of publication.
