Steve Bannon

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Steve Bannon, the former White House chief adviser to President Trump, has been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury as part of the special counsel investigation into possible collusion between Russia and Trump associates.

The issuance of a subpoena, which compels testimony from Bannon, was a rare move by special counsel Robert Mueller, who has been interviewing dozens of former and current Trump officials in more informal settings that don’t require a subpoena, the New York Times reports. 

A notable exception was Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafot, who was subpoenaed and later indicted on various federal charges, including money laundering.

Why Mueller opted to subpoena Bannon, who joined the Trump campaign team in August 2016, is open to speculation.

On Tuesday, Bannon testified behind closed doors before the House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. 

Bannon was subpoenaed last week, just days after the release of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” an explosive book in which Bannon raised serious legal questions about a June 2016 meeting at the Trump Tower between the president’s son Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and a Russian lawyer who reportedly offered to release compromising information about presidential rival Hillary Clinton.

Bannon, who was in the campaign’s inner circle when most of the alleged collusion with Russia took place, also predicted the special counsel probe is far from over and will focus on money laundering. 

“By forcing someone to testify through a subpoena, you are providing the witness with cover because they can say, ‘I had no choice — I had to go in and testify about everything I knew,’” said Solomon L. Wisenberg, a prosecutor for the independent counsel that investigated Bill Clinton when he was president.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A Texas Tech University sophomore got caught up in school spirit and made the “guns up” salute with her hands at an airport.

The 19-year-old’s Red Raider pride wasn’t shared by the TSA at Houston’s Hobby Airport, where she was pulled out of the security line and asked to show her ID to TSA ages agents, the Houston Chronicle reports. 

After a quick tongue-lashing, the Houston woman was able to make her flight.

“I’ve never dealt with a situation like that before,” she told the Chronicle. “I am so very fortunate it was not worse, though. They let me off with a warning, and I made my plane on time. I know that for others the situation could have been much more serious. I feel very fortunate. The TSA officers know I meant no harm; by the end of it I think they were kinda laughing too!”

Former top aide to President Trump, Steve Bannon.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Two of Donald Trump’s most high-ranking campaign officials during the presidential campaign are expected to soon appear before the House Intelligence Committee as part of the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon plans to meet behind closed doors with the committee on Tuesday, just two weeks after the release of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.” In the book, Bannon raises serious questions about the legality of a June 2016 meeting between the president’s  Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and a Russian lawyer, calling the gathering “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”

Corey Lewandowski

On Wednesday or Thursday, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski plans to meet with the committee.

“The House Intelligence Committee sent me a letter asking me to voluntarily come in and have a conversation about what I know, and what I’ve responded to them is, ‘I’ll be happy to come in and sit down,'” the former Trump campaign manager told host Rita Cosby on WABC Radio. 

“I have nothing to hide. I didn’t collude or cooperate or coordinate with any Russian, Russian agency, Russian government or anybody else, to try and impact this election. So they asked me to come in, I said I would,” Lewandowski continued, adding that he would be able to “set the record straight.”

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

You can excuse Stephen Flatley for calling Apple “jerks” and “evil geniuses” for building notoriously impossible-to-crack iPhones.

After all, the tech company has made work exceedingly difficult for the FBI forensic expert and his colleagues who are tasked with trying to access suspects’ cellphones.

Speaking at the International Conference on Cyber Security in Manhattan last Wednesday, Flatley said investigators are bedeviled by the iPhones’ increasingly powerful encryption, Motherboard reports. In fact, the cryptography has become so strong that not even Apple can break into a locked mobile.

“At what point is it just trying to one up things and at what point is it to thwart law enforcement?” Flatley asked. “Apple is pretty good at evil genius stuff.”

A day earlier, FBI Director Christopher Wray renewed calls for Apple to ease up on default encryption settings because they hinder investigators’ ability to collect evidence from a criminal’s iPhone.

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the FBI has been unable to access data from nearly 7,800 devices.

“This is an urgent public safety issue,” Wray said.

But tech companies and digital security experts have said more lax encryption would harm internet security and enable malicious hackers.

ICE official, via ICE.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Jorge Garcia was only 10 years old when an undocumented family member brought him to the U.S. from Mexico.

Three decades later, after raising two teenage children with his beloved wife, the 39-year-old landscaper from suburban Detroit was forced to say goodbye  to his weeping family and return to Mexico under President Trump’s stiff crackdown on illegal immigration, the USA Today reports. 

Garcia, who appears to have a clean criminal record, was too old to qualify for Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era policy that protected children of undocumented immigrations from deportation. Immigrants who want to qualify for DACA status DACA must be 31 or younger as of June 15, 2012.

Garcia routinely checked in with ICE but was never forced to leave.

That changed in November during his last check-in, when immigration agents told him he must leave the country.

On Sunday night, a heavy-hearted Garcia said he was sad and worried.

 “I got to leave my family behind, knowing that they’re probably going to have a hard time adjusting, me not being there for them for who knows how long,” he said, his hands pressed against his forehead. “It’s just hard.”