By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

A dog owner says an off-duty ATF agent fatally shot his mastiff puppy outside of a middle school in Spotsylvania County, Va., Fox 5 reports.

Vance Gibbs said he brings his dogs , four puppies and three adult mastiffs, to a large field at Ni River Middle School several times a week. On Tuesday, he watched his 8-month-old Presa Canario mastiff puppy Ari die in his arm.

Gibbs said it all happened when a golden retriever belonging to an off-duty ATF agent walked up on his dog, and his dogs, started chasing after it.

He said the dogs started fighting and Gibbs threw himself into the middle to try and get his dogs away. He said the ATF agent pulled out a gun and fired twice into the ground, and then a third time, hitting his dog Ari in the side. She died minutes later.

“If he would have gave me the time in the first place, I would have got them all together,” Gibbs tells Fox 5. “If the shots didn’t scare them the one time – stop. What are you doing? Shooting a puppy? I understand he is protecting his family and everything else, but I am on the ground with your dog.”

Robert Grant/fbi photo

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

Robert Grant, a longtime colleague and friend of special counsel Robert Mueller who headed the FBI’s Chicago office at the time of the Rod Blagojevich investigation, blasts President Donald Trump for suggesting he might commute the 14-year sentence of Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor.

He accuses Trump of acting out of spite against federal law enforcement and Mueller’s work as a special counsel, according to a report in Politico.

“It’s so disheartening to think that the president of the United States would overturn the evidence heard by a judge and jury, all out of an animus toward Bob Mueller, James Comey and [former U.S. Attorney] Pat Fitzgerald,” Grant, who is retired from the FBI, tells Politico.  “Blagojevich got caught by wiretaps and microphones and he was engaging in a practice that we believed he was taking part in for quite awhile … I don’t think anybody who listened to those tapes would think anything but it was an incredibly corrupt governor who was dealing with corrupt associates.”

“So if Trump gets himself into an obstruction of justice case or lies, then that’s OK. But that’s not the case for the poor kid on the South Side,” Grant said. “I think [Trump] tries to hurt anybody he doesn’t like. He will use his office because he can. Not to use it judiciously, but out of spite and animus. When the framers of the Constitution framed that power, I don’t think they envisioned this.”

Rep. Adam Schiff.

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin writes a column titled: “A letter to the FBI that would be unnecessary under any other president.”

She writes about ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), who wrote an open letter to the FBI on Wednesday, ostensibly voicing his support for the men and women who’ve been under a partisan assault from Republicans on the Hill, as well as from the president.

“In reality, it was a devastating indictment of Republicans’ handling of the Russia investigation,” writes Rubin, who is considered “center-right” in her political views, but has been a regular critic of  President Donald Trump.

Schiff began by defending the exemplary work of the FBI in its various law enforcement capacities. He continued:

In recent weeks, the FBI has come under unprecedented and unjustified criticism. FBI agents have been slandered as “stormtroopers” for executing lawful search warrants and described as part of a corrupt “deep state” for pursuing a lawful counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s interference in our elections.

The president’s allies have put forward a succession of attacks against the FBI and the intelligence agencies that responded to Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections. Each has withered under scrutiny, but they have served their purpose of casting a shadow on the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, and ultimately Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s work….

I have not always agreed with the decisions of the FBI, either as an assistant U.S. attorney or as a member of Congress, and nor would I expect to. But I have never questioned the integrity of the hard working men and women at the Bureau and for a simple reason; you have never given me cause to do so. The American people have entrusted the FBI with the tremendous task of enforcing the law, fairly and without favor. That trust has been well placed.

I can assure you that the vast majority of the American people share my high regard for the FBI, and so do my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans. While I wish that more of them felt free to say so, the FBI is widely respected on the Hill for its professionalism, talent, and integrity. Despite the static that you may hear from time to time, do not for a moment believe that it is otherwise.

Rudolph Giuliani

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

Hoping to bowel over anyone who gets in their way, Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s latest attack dog, is going after Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, who defended the FBI’s use of a confidential source to investigate potential Russian outreach to individuals connected to Trump’s presidential campaign.

“He’s drinking the Kool-Aid,” Giuliani tells CNN.

Giuliani didn’t stop there.

He went on to criticize Gowdy over his handling of a Republican-led investigation into the 2012 Benghazi attack.  Gowdy oversaw the investigation as chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

“I never understood what he did with Benghazi either. He really screwed that up. I don’t know what he was doing,” Giuliani said.