By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com By all accounts, this was not your typical sentencing. First, U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman in New York sentenced a U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist to 86 years for trying to kill U.S. federal agents and troops. That came after defendant Aafia Siddiqui, 38, called on Muslims to resist using violence, the…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — A USA Today investigation has concluded that a number of federal prosecutors across the country have “put innocent people in prison, set guilty people free and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and sanctions.” The paper said it had documented 201 criminal cases since 1997 in which…
By Allan Lengel For AOL News The judge called it a case of “road rage” — a hot-tempered DEA agent who lost control after a minor collision in 2003 and beat the other driver, leaving him with life-changing head injuries and emotional scars. On Sept. 17, U.S. District Judge Julie A. Robinson, who presided over…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Perhaps one of the more ironic things about Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban being accused of insider trading is that he bank rolls a website called Sharesleuth.com, which bills itself as “an independent Web-based reporting aimed at exposing securities fraud and corporate chicanery.” On Tuesday, Cuban was back in…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com An ex-New Orleans police detective is headed off to prison. Jeffrey Lehrmann was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison for his role in covering up two police-involved shootings on the Danziger Bridge in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that left two civilians dead and four others seriously…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told a Senate Committee Wednesday that he’s concerned about terrorist plots against the U.S. coming primarily from three sources: core al Qaeda, al Qaeda’s affiliates, and homegrown extremists. “In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, al Qaeda’s plots and plans primarily focused on using…
By The Boston Globe Editorial GREENPEACE, THE Catholic Worker, the Thomas Merton Center — none of these groups had the remotest connection to 9/11 or terrorism. And the FBI had no business investigating them — with no evidence other than a suspicion of left-wing organizations in wartime. This was shameful red-baiting at its worst. The…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com An assistant to a top executive at the Walt Disney Company pleaded guilty Tuesday in Manhattan U.S. District Court to partaking in an insider trading scheme. Bonnie J. Hoxie, 34, of Los Angeles, admitted that she along with her boyfriend Yonni Sebbag of Morocco obtained confidential inside information, including Disney’s quarterly…
