A Republican congressional candidate in Washington state has been accused of embellishing his participation in the investigation of a Sept. 11 terrorist, with Justice Department and FBI officials saying they “never heard of him.”
Reagan Dunn, 51, a Republican running for Washington state’s 8th Congressional District, has built his political career on being an important Department of Justice official and later a tough federal prosecutor who went after terrorists and participated in the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person ever convicted in a U.S. court in connection to the Sept. 11 attacks.
But Dunn’s claims about participating in the investigation of Moussaoui are a “Walter Mitty” fantasy that can be likened to stolen valor, a leading prosecutor involved with the investigation and prosecution of Moussaoui told the Washington Examiner.
‘CATEGORICALLY FALSE’: HEAD OF 9/11 JUSTICE FIRES BACK AT TRUMP OVER LIV DEFENSE
“I’ve never heard of the guy,” said the former DOJ official. “This guy was never involved in the central aspect of the case. I’ve never heard of him.”
The source added that an FBI counterpart familiar with the investigation into Moussaoui has also not heard of Dunn or his contributions to the investigation.
The former prosecutor agreed it is “100%” an exaggeration for Dunn to take credit for participating in the Moussaoui investigation.
Moussaoui, sometimes referred to as the 20th hijacker, is serving a life sentence at the Supermax federal prison in Colorado after the jury spared him the death sentence in 2006.
The investigation into Moussaoui began in August 2001, a month before the attacks, when he was arrested on charges of an immigration violation after drawing suspicion for attempting to obtain flight training. He was charged in December 2001 for participating in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack plot that killed over 3,000 people.
Moussaoui mocked the victims and celebrated the attacks during his 2006 sentencing trial. He initially claimed he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane and fly into the White House, but he later retracted this statement.
Prosecutors claimed that Moussaoui tried to obtain flight training without an apparent reason to do so and had received money from Ramzi bin al Shibh, a vital member of the Sept. 11 plot who is being held in Guantanamo Bay.
Lead prosecutors blamed Moussaoui for lying to the FBI when he was arrested in August 2001, as his information could have prevented the attacks.
Dunn, a King County councilman and the son of the late six-term Republican Rep. Jennifer Dunn, is running against incumbent two-term Democrat Kim Schrier in the highly contested 8th District, which is considered a toss-up by the Cook Political Report.
Schrier, Dunn, three other Republicans, and an independent are due to face off in a nonpartisan primary on Aug. 2, with the top two going through to the November general election.
Dunn began claiming he had participated in the investigation of Moussaoui ever since he entered the political fray in 2005 as a King County councilman.
The Republican’s campaign website from November 2005 highlighted his participation in the Moussaoui investigation. The claim has since been repeated in every biography circulated by Dunn or his campaign and echoed by local Washington state media.
“He helped in the preparation of the government’s case against Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th 9/11 hijacker, before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle,” a September 2005 article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer stated.
The Republican’s current online biographies on the King County Council website and his campaign website state his involvement in the Moussaoui investigation.
Former DOJ officials involved in the case claimed that Dunn’s involvement in the Moussaoui inquiry at best could have been limited to reading FBI reports in preparation for the discovery phase of the Moussaoui prosecution, when junior DOJ employees were briefly used in this effort.
“At one point, when the case got going, we borrowed a bunch of young lawyers to read FBI’s investigative reports before turning them over in discovery,” a former DOJ official familiar with the Moussaoui investigation said.
“A bunch of people were involved, it was very tangential. That’s possible, but I never heard of Dunn.”
Dunn’s campaign manager, Carson Coates, said in a statement, “Reagan has said he participated in the investigation, and he did.”
The campaign provided a letter signed by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft stating that Dunn was among 260 other individuals who reviewed FBI reports in preparation for the Moussaoui case. The letter does not mention any involvement in the investigation itself.
Dunn joined the DOJ in January 2001 as an employee of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, a bureaucratic DOJ department providing general executive assistance to the offices of U.S. attorneys. Dunn was appointed as a coordinator for Project Safe Neighborhoods, a government initiative sponsored by then-President George W. Bush.
Throughout Dunn’s stint at the DOJ, Dunn was described as a spokesman for the DOJ or a PSN coordinator in DOJ documents and by the media. A January 2002 United States Attorneys’ Bulletin listed Dunn as a point of contact for questions related to PSN training. A bulletin from March 2003 claimed Dunn was a PSN coordinator.
In 2005, Dunn was publicly mentioned by the DOJ as a federal prosecutor and the Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Western District of Washington.
Dunn is considered a leading Republican to win the nonpartisan primary in August and face Schrier in November due to name recognition, thanks to his late mother and her political career in the state.
But the Republican faces scrutiny over his changing views on abortion rights, allegations of abuse against his former wife, and alleged child neglect, revealed by the Daily Mail in April. A spokesman for Dunn pointed to court documents that ruled there was “not neglect or domestic abuse of any kind in the marriage.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Dunn was criticized last month by Democrats after he flip-flopped on his decadeslong support for abortion rights despite voting against a symbolic motion supporting Roe v. Wade, the Seattle Times reported.
