Bombing suspect Jerry Drake Varnell

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The family of a man accused of trying to detonate what he believed was a bomb outside of a bank in downtown Oklahoma City said the suspect is a paranoid schizophrenic and was manipulated by the FBI.

The mother and stepfather of 23-year-old Jerry Drake Varnell said undercover agents took advantage of their son’s mental condition and that he was incapable of carrying out an attack without additional help.

Varnell lived at home and was jobless because of his mental illness, Clifford and Melonie Varnell, of Oklahoma, said in a statement picked up by the Associated Press. 

“The FBI came and picked him up from our home, they gave him a vehicle, gave him a fake bomb, and every means to make this happen,” the statement said, adding that authorities “should not have aided and abetted a paranoid schizophrenic to commit this act.”

The FBI declined to comment this week.

Varnell faces up to 20 years in prison on a charge of attempting to use explosives to destroy a building in interstate commerce.

Varnell “has suffered through countless serious full-blown schizophrenic delusional episodes and he has been put in numerous mental hospitals since he was 16 years old,” the family’s statement said. 

The Varnells said their son is easily manipulated and that they believe the confidential informant who tipped off the FBI may have inspired the attempted attack.

Missouri State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The Secret Service is investigating a Missouri state senator after posting on Facebook that she’s hopes someone assassinates President Trump.

Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal commented on her personal Facebook page, “I hope Trump is assassinate.” 

The Democratic senator deleted the post, which prompted an investigation by the Secret Service.

Chappelle-Nadal told the Kansas City Star that she made the comment because she was frustrated with the “trauma and despair” the president is causing by minimizing the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Va. 

“The way I responded this morning was wrong,” she told The Star. “I’m frustrated. Did I mean the statement? No. Am I frustrated? Absolutely. The president is causing damage. He’s causing hate.”

Chappelle-Nadal eventually deleted the post.

“It was wrong for me to post that,” Chappelle-Nadal said. “But I am not going to shy away from the damage this president is causing.”

Trump has caught criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for blaming “both sides” and “many sides” for the violent rally that ended in the death of an anti-racist protester who was among a group of people struck by a car driven by an alleged Nazi sympathizer from Ohio.

By Editorial Board
New York Times

Do you use the internet? Are you interested in politics? Do you value your privacy? If you answered yes, you should be alarmed by the shockingly broad search warrant sought by the Justice Department, and approved by a judge in Washington, D.C., last month, targeting DreamHost, an internet hosting company based in Los Angeles.

As DreamHost explained in a blog post on Monday, it hosts disruptj20.org, a website that helped organize anti-Trump protests on Inauguration Day, and posted pictures of those protests in the days after. There were large-scale protests across Washington on Jan. 20, most of which involved peaceful marches or sit-ins. But some people turned to violence, breaking store windows, setting fires, throwing rocks at police officers and, in one case, assaulting Richard Spencer, the white nationalist, during a television interview. More than 200 people have been charged with felony rioting.

As part of its continuing investigation, the Justice Department demanded that DreamHost turn over “all records or other information” relating to the site, which received more than 1.3 million requests to view its pages in six days after the inauguration. Those records include personal information like I.P. addresses, which identify a specific computer; data about which of the site’s pages a user viewed, and when; and the type of operating software on that person’s computer. Federal prosecutors are also seeking all emails, photos and other content sent to and from the site.

“That information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment,” DreamHost wrote in its blog post.

It doesn’t matter whether the visitor is suspected of participating in a crime, or is even known to have attended the protests. If someone clicked anywhere on the site from anywhere in the world, the government wants to know.

To read more click here. 

Border Patrol car covered in liquid manure. Photo via CBP.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A Vermont man accused of spraying liquid manure on a marked Border Patrol car pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of disorderly conduct and simple assault of a law enforcement officer with fluids.

Authorities said Mark Johnson, 53, covered the vehicle in manure after telling an agent that he should do more to arrest people in the country illegally, the Associated Press reports.

The agent said Johnson sprayed the car after shouting profanities on Aug. 3 in Alburgh, a community just out of the Canadian border on a peninsula in Lake Champlain.

About 30,000 pills laced with fentanyl were discovered by the DEA. Photo via DEA.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The DEA and Tempe Police Department seized about 30,000 counterfeit pills containing the powerful and deadly opioid fentanyl.

Local and federal authorities said the pills, discovered Sunday during a traffic stop, are tied to Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, Tucson News Now reports. 

“This massive seizure removed thousands of potentially lethal doses of this powerful narcotic off the streets,” said Doug Coleman, Special Agent in Charge of DEA in Arizona. “DEA will never relent in its pursuit of Mexican cartels who manufacture huge quantities of fake oxycodone pills using fentanyl.”

Fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that is much more powerful than heroin, is to blame for thousands of deaths a year.

The counterfeit pills were made to look like oxycodone.

Authorities said Mexican cartels are lacing pills with fentanyl, which is cheaper and easier to produce.

Other Stories of Interest

• How the FBI Smashed White Supremacist Group ‘The Order’
• FBI Teamed Up with 18F to Open Crime Data Resource
• State Police Announce New Homeland Security Division
• How the Secret Service Investigates Social Media Threats on the President
• Border Patrol Officials Are ‘Moving on’ As Wall Construction Remains Delayed

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A hacker in Ukraine known as “Profexer” is cooperating with the FBI as it investigates Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election, the New York Times revealed Wednesday evening. 

Profexer, who wrote and sold malware on the dark web, is accused of writing a program used to break into the Democratic National Committee  servers and obtain thousands of emails that were leaked ahead of the election.

The hacker, whose real identity has not been released, turned himself into the FBI earlier this year and became a witness in the case. He has not been arrested, and there is no proof that he worked for Russian intelligence, according to Ukranian police.

But U.S. intelligence officials, based on a sample of the malware, believe Russians used the program to hack into the DNC.

The FBI, federal lawmakers and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating whether Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to leak damaging information about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

James Comey testifies about President Trump before a Senate committee.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

President Trump and his administration have repeatedly asserted that fired FBI Director James Comey was unpopular among the rank-and-file and was to blame for low morale.

But an internal survey released Wednesday suggests Comey, whom Trump fired in May, was trusted and highly respected, the Associated Press reported. 

A majority of survey respondents gave Comey high marks when asked if the then-director had “a positive impact on my morale.” The results mirror similar surveys dating to the start of Comey’s tenure in 2013.

The AP wrote:

Using a 1-to-5 scale, where scores between 3.81 and 5 are considered a “success in those areas,” Comey received average scores of 4.67, 4.39 and 4.38, respectively, on the morale question. Those results were tallied from 36 respondents in 2015, from 47 in 2016 and from 48 in 2017.

Respondents’ “trust and confidence” in Comey as a leader did drop slightly between 2015 and 2017 — from an average score of 4.78 to 4.46 — though it still fell within the higher end of the top benchmark for the surveys.

Trump initially cited Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s personal email server as justification for firing him. The deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, wrote a three-page memo criticizing those decisions, saying that as a result the FBI was “unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a director who understands the gravity of the mistakes.”

But Trump later said he had intended to fire Comey all along, dubbing him a “showboat.” A White House spokeswoman said then she had personally heard from “countless” agents who had complained about Comey’s leadership.