By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Democratic lawmakers are urging the FBI to investigate Donald Trump campaign advisers to determine whether they were involved in the suspected Russian hacking of election systems in two states and the party’s political organizations.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wrote a letter to FBI Director Jame Comey on Aug. 27, asking for an investigation into suspected Russian interference in the presidential election, The Washington Post reports. 

The letter refers to two Trump advisors who have been accused of having connections to Russia. One of Trump’s longtime friends, Roger Stone, claimed he was in touch with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. And Trump’s foreign policy advisor, Carter Page, traveled to Moscow in July.

“The prospect of individuals tied to Trump, Wikileaks and the Russian government coordinating to influence our election raises concerns of the utmost gravity and merits full examination,” Reid wrote, referring to Stone.

Four House Democrats made a similar request of Comey on Tuesday afternoon.

“Serious questions have been raised about overt and covert actions by Trump campaign officials on behalf of Russian interests,” they wrote. “It is critical for the American public to know whether those actions may have directly caused or indirectly motivated attacks against Democratic institutions and our fundamental election process.”

Hillary Clinton

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The State Department says it recovered about 30 emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server that may be related to the Benghazi attack in 2012.

State Department lawyers told U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta that the emails were not included in the 55,000 pages previously turned over by Clinton, the Chicago Tribune reports. 

Before the emails are released, the State Department said it needs until the end of September to comb through the emails and redact any classified information.

Mehta urged the State Department to speed up the review and questioned the amount of time it would take to release the documents.

The hearing is part of a lawsuit filed by the conservative group Judicial Watch, which has sued the government for access to the records.

The discovery raises questions about whether Clinton lied when she maintained that she only deleted emails that weren’t related to her job as secretary of state.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson will discuss counterterrorism and new threats to the U.S. at Duke University’s Stanford School of Public Policy on Sept. 8, just three days before the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Duke Today reports the event is free and open to the public.

Johnson, who took the helm at Homeland Security in 2013, will bring a lot of experience on the issues to the speech.

“Jeh Johnson has had a seat at the table in the key decisions about U.S. security policy over the past seven and a half years,” said David Schanzer, a Sanford School professor and director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security.

“Secretary Johnson is a thoughtful leader and a man of integrity and is uniquely positioned to share his insights on national security,” added Gen. Martin Dempsey, retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and current Rubenstein Fellow at Duke.

The speech is the fifth annual event to commemorate the 9/11 attacks.

Hillary Clinton

By Editorial Board
New York Post

How about that: Among the 14,900 “new” Hillary Clinton e-mails uncovered by the FBI are 30 or so that concern the Benghazi attack — the most controversial single episode in Clinton’s four years running the State Department.

So much for Clinton’s claim that she’d handed over all her work-related e-mails. Heck: So much for any remaining illusion that she even tried to provide a complete record.

But, as someone once asked: What difference, at this point, does it make? Can Hillary’s “trust deficit” get any deeper?

In part, that depends on what’s actually in the e-mails, which may not be released until the end of September.

But it also seems to up the odds that the overall FBI “dump” will have some kind of bombshell. Benghazi’s been a matter of prime public and congressional interest for the last four years. If Clinton wouldn’t even make a good-faith effort to hand over everything on that topic, then she wasn’t trying for full disclosure on any front.

Bigger picture: This is a taste of what a Hillary presidency would bring, just as Bill’s did back in the ’90s — endless low-level scandal, occasionally flaring up into something far larger.

To read more click here. 

Photo by Steve Neavling.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The DEA is looking for researchers to grow marijuana in an effort to better understand whether cannabis has medicinal benefits.

Since the 1970s, the DEA gave exclusive license to the University of Mississippi to grow and research marijuana.

The decision comes after the DEA declined to approve marijuana for medical use, saying there was insufficient evidence to remove cannabis from the Schedule I category.

Stat News contacted nearly a dozen agricultural schools to see if they were interested in growing marijuana. All said they had no plans to do so.

Stat News reported:

To register with the agency, applicants will need to show that they will have security measures in place to protect the marijuana and be willing to comply with a host of other requirements. And depending on the scale of the operation, prospective growers will likely have to make significant investments to get it up and running.

Other Stories of Interest

• FBI to Make Clinton Documents Public in Coming Days
• FBI Director Has High Expectations for New Cyber Security Agents
• DEA Is Placing Kratom, Mitragynine on Schedule I
• FBI Chief Responds to Concern Over Cyberthreats to U.S. Election System
• Border Patrol Discovers Yet Another Tunnel from Mexico to U.S.