Trump attorney and former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

Kingdom of Cambodia – vector map

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

An Oregon man, who was a Christian missionary running an orphanage in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, was found guilty this week in federal court of  engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place, traveling with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and aggravated sexual abuse.

Daniel Stephen Johnson, 40, Coos Bay, Ore., was charged in December 2014 after serving a one-year sentence in Cambodia for sexually abusing some of the same victims, the Justice Department said. Evidence at trial showed that Johnson was a Christian missionary who traveled between the United States and Cambodia, along with other countries in Southeast Asia.

He started an orphanage in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that housed several Cambodian children, and over a period of years beginning in 2005, he  engaged in sexual abuse and attempted to sexually abuse at least nine children who resided at his orphanage, the Justice Department charged.  The victims ranged in age from eight to 17-years-old.

“While Stephen Johnson held himself out as a selfless missionary helping orphans in Cambodia, in reality he exploited that cover to sexually abuse the children entrusted to his care,” Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan said in a statement. “Today’s conviction is a testament both to the courage of the victims, who traveled to the United States to provide critical testimony against their abuser, and to the steadfast commitment of our prosecutors and law enforcement partners to seeing that Johnson be held to account for his terrible crimes.”

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

Sally Yates, the acting Attorney General fired by President Donald Trump last year, says the president’s caustic tweets aimed at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and special counsel Robert Mueller are collectively “tearing down the legitimacy” of the Justice Department, Yahoo! News reports.

Yates, speaking at the 2018 Ideas Conference hosted by the Center for American Progress on Tuesday, urged the country not to ignore Trump’s attacks on the rule of law, Yahoo! News reports.

“What I worry about is the normalization of so much that is not normal,” said Yates.

“There is a time-honored tradition at the Department of Justice, at least since Watergate, that is nonpartisan,” Yates said. “There is a wall between the Department of Justice and the White House when it comes to criminal investigations and prosecutions.”

Trump has been hammering away at that wall so often and with such ferocity, she said, “nobody’s rolling their eyes anymore,” Yahoo! reports.

President Trump

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

The Trump camp continues to wage war on the FBI and the Justice Department.

His allies allies are waging an increasingly aggressive campaign to undercut the Russia investigation by exposing the role of a top-secret FBI source, the Washington Post reports, adding that the effort reached new heights Thursday as Trump alleged that an informant had improperly spied on his 2016 campaign and predicted that the ensuing scandal would be “bigger than Watergate!”

The  Justice Department and intelligence agencies have warned that publicly identifying the confidential source would put lives in danger and imperil other operations.

The Post reports:

The stakes are so high that the FBI has been working over the past two weeks to mitigate the potential damage if the source’s identity is revealed, according to several people familiar with the matter. The bureau is taking steps to protect other live investigations that the person has worked on and is trying to lessen any danger to associates if the informant’s identity becomes known, said these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence operations.