January 16, 2023

White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Biden:

Please accept this letter as a formal request for an immediate criminal investigation of Mr. Kenneth Parker, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, and Mr. Benjamin Glassman, former US Attorney of the same district.

Specifically, in October 2018, while Mr. Glassman was US Attorney and Mr. Parker was Chief of the Criminal Division, both men represented that “evidence” in a criminal trial was “shredded” by the Department of Justice. This is not the truth. The documents that were supposedly destroyed were never real in the first instance.

I hereby state with the utmost certainty that no shredding ever occurred because the alleged evidence did not exist, does not exist, and could never have existed.

In fact, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), an agency of the Department of the Treasury which investigates national banks, contradicts the assertion made by Glassman and Parker. The OCC conducted its own investigation and concluded, with confirmation by PNC Bank, the institution at the center of this controversy, that there were no such documents.

Mr. Glassman and Mr. Parker lied to the citizens of Ohio. They made false statements in their official capacities when, instead, they had a responsibility to account for the finding of another federal agency (the Department of the Treasury). Two federal agencies cannot arrive at two separate conclusions. There is only one Federal Government. Moreover, the US Attorney has the legal and lawful burden to speak for other federal agencies and their findings when addressing the public.

Both Glassman and Parker had an incumbent responsibility to accept and verify the accuracy of both the OCC representation and the admission of PNC Bank. Incredibly, these men did the opposite. They said the DOJ shredded these imaginary documents, which makes their claim of shredding just as imaginary. I have no doubt their intention was to deceive an unsuspecting public in order to preserve unwarranted guilty verdicts.

Rather than reverse an unjust conviction of an innocent man, Glassman and Parker advanced a guilty verdict that, to this very day, should not stand. Is that not what prosecutors seek to accomplish, to preserve convictions at all costs, even at the expense of truth?

When you nominated Mr. Kenneth Parker to serve as US Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, I sent you a letter advising against this choice. When Mr. Parker was confirmed, I sent him a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) for the records of the actual shredding of these alleged documents. Mr. Parker forwarded my FOIA request to the Executive Office of US Attorneys over a year ago. I have yet to receive a response. Unless some action is taken by you, I do not expect to receive an answer.

Please note that even if the alleged documents did exist, the DOJ, by its own regulations, is prohibited from destroying records in a criminal trial that is either less than ten years old or undergoing litigation. Both conditions existed in 2018 for the case under review at the time. This point cannot be any more transparent. Even if the alleged evidence did exist, the DOJ had a responsibility to preserve the documents when Glassman and Parker made their false claim. Shredding of any documents in the criminal trial discussed was an impossibility.

I am strongly asserting that both Mr. Glassman and Mr. Parker committed misfeasance and malfeasance and criminal acts while in office. Mr. Parker, who continues to serve as US Attorney, should be removed and both men should face the consequences of a criminal investigation.

I do hope you will seek the ends of justice.

Sincerely,

Beau Johnson