By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com

The FBI arrested a California man who repeatedly threatened violence against Boston Globe journalists, calling them “the enemy of the people,” echoing a phrase often used by President Trump.

An FBI SWAT team armed with military-style weapons arrested Robert Darrell Chain, 68, during a dawn raid in his home in Encino, Calif., the Boston Globe reported. 

Agents found 20 firearms in the home, including a rifle purchased in May.

Authorities said Chain was angry with the newspaper’s editorial campaign denouncing the president’s attacks against the media.

Chain was charged Thursday with threatening to shoot and kill journalists from the Boston Globe. He was released from jail on a $50,000 bond and told reporters outside federal court that “there’s no free press in America.”

Chain faces up to five years in prison and could be charged with additional crimes related to the weapons found at his home.

World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks via Wikipedia.

By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com

At least 15 FBI agents who searched for victims and clues in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have died from cancers likely linked to toxic exposure to carcinogenic fumes and dust, the Los Angeles Times reports. 

Three agents have died since March.

“It’s like Bin Laden is still reaching out from the grave,” said FBI Agent Thomas O’Connor, who is president of the FBI Agents Assn., a service and advocacy group for active and former agents. “It affects us all in serious ways. People are dying, others are sick. Those that are not yet sick wonder — is that headache, is it really cancer? Is that sore hip really cancer?”

The FBI deaths are only a small part of the lingering tragedy. According to the Word Trade Center Health Program, which is administered by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 7,500 emergency responders, cleanup and recovery workers and volunteers who were exposed to debris at the three Sept. 11 crash sites have been diagnosed with cancer.

Among those are more than 300 firefighters and police officers who have died of cancer and other diseases linked to the attacks.

“We are now seeing a new wave of cancers coming in,” said Dr. Michael Crane, who runs a treatment and monitoring center financed by the federal health program at Mount Sinai Health System in New York. “Most [first responders] just rushed down there and were not protected from the toxins in the air or the dust cloud. They were literally eating and breathing this material. There were known carcinogens in the air.”

President Trump at Indiana rally Thursday.

By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com

President Trump said he will keep his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, on the job until at least the mid-term elections in November, despite blasting the former senator for failing to stop an “illegal investigation” by special counsel Robert Mueller.

“I just would love to have him do a great job,” Trump told Bloomberg, declining to say whether Sessions’ job was safe after November. 

Trump has clashed with Sessions since he recused himself from the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The recusal allowed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Mueller to investigate Russia in May 2017, just days after the president fired FBI Director James Comey.

Trump has called the investigation a “witch hunt” and routinely questions why the Justice Department isn’t investigating Hillary Clinton.

“I’d love to have him look at the other side,” Trump said.

At a rally in Indiana on Thursday night, Trump turned up the rhetoric, threatening to “get involved” in the work of the Justice Department and FBI unless the agencies “start doing their job.”

He also blasted both agencies by suggesting they are letting Clinton get away with crimes.

“What’s happening is a disgrace, and at some point … if it doesn’t straighten out properly … I will get involved,” Trump said.