Church shooter Devin Kelley

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The Texas church gunman who killed 26 people and wounded 20 more worshipers at a Texas church on Sunday should never have been able to buy the guns he used in the massacre.

But the Air Force failed to notify the FBI that Devin Kelley was sentenced to a year of confinement after a court martial found him guilty on two charges of domestic assault. According to numerous reports, Kelley brutally assaulted his wife, threatened her multiple times with loaded and unloaded guns and cracked his stepson’s skull. 

The Air Force failed to enter the domestic violence conviction into the National Criminal Investigation Center database, which would have prohibited him from buying a gun legally.

That omission allowed Kelley to pass background checks to buy four guns, some of which were used in the mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs.

Several investigation are underway to determine why the Air Force never flagged Kelley.

Authorities also revealed Monday that Kelley was involved in a dispute with his mother-in-law, who attended the church in the past but was not there Sunday.

“He expressed anger towards his mother-in-law,”  Freeman Martin, a spokesman for the Texas department of public safety, said at a press conference on Monday. “This was not racially motivated, it wasn’t over religious beliefs.”

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The FBI originally characterized Hillary Clinton as “grossly negligent” for her handling of classified information, according to an early draft by then-FBI Director James Comey.

The language, which may have been strong enough to warrant charges, was softened to indicate Clinton had been “extremely careless” when Comey announced in July 2016 that no criminal charges would be filed against Clinton, The Hill reports. 

Federal law makes it a crime to handle classified material with gross negligence. 

Neither the FBI nor Clinton responded to questions for comments.

The memos were disclosed to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is investigating Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation.

“There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified information,” reads the statement, one of Comey’s earliest drafts from May 2, 2016.

For reasons that remain unclear, the draft statement was changed about a month later to conclude that Clinton’s use of an insecure personal email server was “extremely careless.”

Now the committee wants to know who made the changes and why.

“Apparently, as of May 2016, then-Director Comey and other FBI officials believed the facts fit that gross negligence standard until later edits were made,” Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote to Wray in the letter demanding more information.

Sen. Rand Paul

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The FBI is now assisting local police investigating a brutal assault that left Sen. Rand Paul with five broken ribs, lung contusions and injuries to his face on the lawn of his Kentucky home.

The violent attack was prompted by a dispute between the Republican senator and his neighbor over landscaping, the New York Times reports. 

Authorities said Paul was attacked while mowing his lawn and wearing ear plugs.

“Rand never saw him coming or heard him coming,” according to the senator’s friend, Robert Porter, who visited Paul on Saturday.

The neighbor, Rene Albert Boucher, 59, was charged with one count of fourth-degree assault.

Donald Trump Jr. and his dad, President Trump, via Twitter

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. during the presidential election campaign last year said the president’s son offered to re-examine sanctions and travel bans imposed on Russian officials in exchange for dirt on Hillary Clinton.

The attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya offered new details in an interview with Bloomberg about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower involving Trump Jr., Jared Kushner’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and Paul Manafort, who then was Trump’s senior campaign manager. 

The meeting has become a target of the special counsel investigation of possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia to meddle in the election.

Veselnitskaya said she was lobbying against the so-called 2012 Magnitsky law that imposed travel bans and sanctions on Russian officials accused of plotting to murder an accountant, Sergey Magnitsky.

In the Bloomberg interview, Veselnitskaya quoted what Trump Jr. allegedly said during the meeting: “Looking ahead, if we come to power, we can return to this issue and think what to do about it.”

It’s unclear whether Russia ever passed on information about Clinton.