U.S. Attorney Zachary Cunha Talks

U.S. Attorney Zachary Cunha Talks

U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island Zachary Cunha sat down with GoLocal. He has had some newsworthy cases and he says there are more in the pipeline, but with the election of Donald Trump as President, it is likely his days are numbered.

Cunha was appointed by President Joe Biden, and he serves at the pleasure of the president. 

Cunha discussed prosecuting fraud cases, federal action on the Washington Bridge, building a top prosecution team in the office, and taking Washington Trust to task for redlining. His office also entered into a non-prosecution agreement with Barletta Heavy Division relating to the 6/10 project, and one member of Barletta's team pled guilty to multiple crimes.

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The big questions for Cunha are what can be completed before the Trump administration names a successor, and then what is next for his career.

“My MO for the present is full steam ahead, and as long as I'm in this chair, I'm doing the job,” said Cunha.

“If you're asking as I sit here right now, and I am coming up on three years in the job, what we've done and what I'm pleased that we're making progress on and have accomplished, I think it's a lot of things I think the office is in a very good place,” said Cunha.

“I think we have a great team. One of my goals coming in was [to] expand our capacity to do the kinds of cases that only we can do on the federal side of the house and I think you've seen a lot of that, particularly in the fraud space, said Cunha, who now has a staff of 25 federal prosecutors and will be adding one more before the end of the year.

“We have done some really significant [cases], and we have some yet-to-publicly-surface significant fraud matters that we're working on, and that touches a lot of different things. It touches procurement fraud, it touches drug and medical device fraud, it crosses over to the Civil Rights realm,” said Cunha.

“One of the fraud prosecutions I'm most proud of is the Recovery Connections Michael Brier prosecution, because that's a guy who has a long history of fraudulent conduct. He was at it again in a way that really impacted the lives of some vulnerable victims,” added Cunha.

GoLocal began writing about Brier back in 2016.  Follow the trail of Brier's criminal activities HERE.

 

Washington Trust Redlining

In one of the most unexpected cases, Cunha’s office went after the venerable Rhode Island bank Washington Trust. In September of 2023, Cunha’s office and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced that Washington Trust Company — the oldest community bank in the nation, had agreed to pay $9 million to resolve allegations that it engaged in a pattern or practice of lending discrimination by redlining majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Rhode Island.

Redlining is an illegal practice in which lenders avoid providing credit services to individuals living in communities of color because of the race, color, or national origin of residents in those communities, according to the Department of Justice.

“Everyone who pursues the American dream has the right to expect to be treated equally and with dignity, regardless of their race, their background, or zip code. When communities are denied access to fair lending, families are denied the opportunity to build stability and financial success,” said Cunha in 2023. “I am pleased that, as a result of the hard work of attorneys in my office and the Department’s Civil Rights Division, Washington Trust has agreed to take targeted and extensive measures to make meaningful lending services available for all Rhode Islanders, regardless of race or background.”

 

 

Washington Bridge

Cunha was circumspect in his comments about the Washington Bridge failure.

"What I'll say again is some there were some public reports that we issued, civil investigative demands, and I think there were actually photos of some of those that got published some places [a reference to a GoLocal report], and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that those are forgeries. We have a false claims act investigation whenever we issue civil investigative demands, and as you know from prior cases and past reporting, the issue that we look at and can look at in that context is pretty narrow,” said Cunha.

"It's not whether somebody's doing a good job administering things. It's not whether the engineering is prudent. It's whether the federal government is spending money and being billed for things that it's not getting. I mean the the classic example is the case that we did I was actually the line prosecutor when we did this case into the I-Way Bridge and the alteration of the railing that was done and the government got billed for a railing design that wasn't installed,” said Cunha.

 

 

What’s Next?

Cunha declined to comment on the next step in his career.

But it is no secret that if he ran for the Rhode Island Attorney General’s position, he would be the immediate frontrunner.