Obama Homeland Security pick defende​d Happy Meal Hoaxer -- By Charles Johnson, The Daily Caller

Jeh Johnson, President Obama’s nominee to head Homeland Security, represented a disgraced scientist who was sentenced to 30 months in prison for planting a fried rat’s tail in his son’s Happy Meal french fries as part of a failed extortion attempt.

Michael Zanakis took a rat’s tail from the medical research laboratory where he worked, had it fried and then placed it in a package of french fries he bought at a Long Island McDonald’s on Jan. 15, 1996, prosecutors said at the time.

Zanakis  threatened to go public with accusations that McDonald’s served the fried rat’s tail to his son — who he said had bitten into and swallowed part of the tail — unless the company paid him $5 million.

“He planted the tail and thought he would get away with it,” Assistant US Attorney Leonard Lato said. “The next day he was on the phone with McDonald’s. We had him on tape demanding money.”

Despite being represented by the future nominee for Homeland Security secretary, Zanakis was convicted of both the rat-tail fraud and a 1993 scheme in which he had planted bits of grease in a can of Coca-Cola Classic and then taken $4600 from the Coca-Cola Company to keep quiet about it.

Johnson, who will be charged with overseeing DHS’s vast domestic anti-terrorism and surveillance apparatus, suggested his client deserved pity because his threats against the company had stopped short of violence, and he also seemed to countenance Zanakis’ committing fraud in the service of a higher truth.


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