Stock photo by Secret Service.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A man has been arrested and charged with assaulting three Secret Service agents after he was accused of illegally entering the White House grounds.

Police say the man hopped a temporary security barrier  last week and was approached by three agents, NBC 4 Washington reports.

He’s accused of kicking an agent in the eye, grabbing another agent’s radio and gun belt and fighting with a third agent who forced the man’s surrendering by pulling out a taser.

“The individual disobeyed verbal commands of the officer to not enter the restricted area, and the suspect began to run,” a Secret Service spokeswoman said. “The suspect was placed under arrest after the arresting officer fought with him as he was actively resisting arrest and had grabbed the officer’s duty belt.”

The agents were treated at the scene for scrapes and bruises.

The man pleaded guilty. But under the plea agreement, the government in December dismissed the case after he complied with all the conditions in the case.

Former FBI informant Scott Kimball

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A former FBI informant already sentenced to prison for four murders is accused of plotting to kill from behind bars and escape from the Sterling Correctional Facility.

Scott Kimball, 51, is facing new charges of solicitation of first-degree murder and one count of attempted escape, 9Wants reports. 

Kimball was acting as an FBI informant from 2003 and 2004 when he killed three young women and his uncle. He was sentenced to 70 years in prison.

Julian Assange on Fox News

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The U.S. government said more than a week ago that it’s preparing criminal charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and other members of his organization, but so far Assange has not heard from the government, his lawyer told Mother Jones. 

“The only thing that’s happened is there’s been a very vibrant rumor mill,” Barry Pollack, Assange’s US-based lawyer, tells Mother Jones. “Obviously there’s been a lot of chatter, but the only thing I’ve seen is that the Department of Justice has sort of confirmed that it is looking at the Vault 7 leak,” —WikiLeaks’ March 7 dump of thousands of pages of CIA hacking tools.

“The Department of Justice has not gotten back to me in any way or answered any of my repeated attempts to enter a dialogue with them to tell us what they’re actually doing,” Pollack says.

Pollack says it’s unclear what the government is planning.

“It is uncommon, in fact unprecedented in my experience, that they’re not willing to engage in a broad conversation about the status of the investigation and where a particular person fits in with respect to an investigation.”

Assange has been living at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 to avoid being picked up on sex charges from Sweden.

Angel Echevarria

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A Homeland Security agent who shot into an occupied vehicle following a road rage incident in September 2013 was acquitted Thursday by a Palm Beach County jury.

Angel Echevarria was charged with aggravated assault and shooting into an occupied vehicle, the Palm Beach Post reports. 

Police said Echevarria was cut off by a Toyota Camry and crashed as a result. When the former solider and special agent with Federal Protective Service honked his horn, “the driver and passenger of the red Toyota ‘flicked’ Echevarria off by making several threatening gun-like hand gestures, left the scene and turned into the Town Center Mall in Boca Raton,” Echevarria attorney Bruce Lehr wrote in court records.

Echevarria confronted the driver, Alla Juma, while carrying a .40-caliber handgun.

Jump tried to flee and nearly struck Echevarria and his wife, prompting the agent to fire one shot into the Toyota, missing Juma, his brother and Juma’s 3-year-old son.

“It is also undisputed that a subsequent search of the red Toyota revealed the following contraband: a loaded handgun located underneath the driver’s seat and a bag containing marijuana located in the trunk,” attorney Sherleen Mendez wrote in the Dec. 4, 2015 court filing.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A Border Patrol agent in South Texas is accused of working with drug traffickers to stage narcotics seizures and sell the drugs for profit.

Eduardo Bazan Jr. was arrested Friday and charged with making false statements about a federal investigation of drug traffickers, San Antonio Express-News reports. 

Bazan’s alleged crimes occurred in February 2007, but agents with Homeland Security Investigations in McCallen didn’t learn of it until October 2013.

“The drug trafficking organization coordinated staged narcotic seizures of sham, or diluted, narcotics with the assistance of law enforcement officials, which enabled the organization to steal drug loads from unwitting narcotics sources of supply,” the complaint says.

The Express-News wrote:

Investigators say one such cocaine seizure took place near the McAllen Border Patrol station with Bazan’s assistance. Federal agents searched the agency database for the report Bazan filed in 2007 detailing the incident.

When HSI agents recently interviewed Bazan, he recalled seizing the load, telling investigators that border agents had discovered bundles of cocaine in a Honda Civic, the criminal complaint says. At first, Bazan denied being tipped off to the location of the drug load and to having received payment for making the seizure.

But when HSI agents interviewed Bazan two days later, he admitted to lying, the document states. Bazan told them he had received information that led to the seizure of about 150 pounds of cocaine and that in return he was paid around $8,000. At first, Bazan claimed to have chased suspects from the drug-laden vehicle, but he later admitted there were no suspects, confessing it was a ruse to make the seizure appear legitimate to other agents, according to the criminal complaint.

Aaron Travis Daniels was charged with trying to join a terrorist organization.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A 20-year-old Ohio man is accused of trying to board a flight to join ISIS.

Aaron Travis Daniel was arrested at the Columbus airport Monday, NBC News reports. 

The FBI said the Columbus man admitted he sent money to an ISIS recruiter and planed to travel to Libya “for the purpose of joining” the terrorist group.

“He’s accused of paying money that was intended to go to a foreign terrorist organization — in this case [ISIS],” U.S. Attorney Benjamin C. Glassman said in a brief news conference outside court Monday. “And then further, he was accused of attempting to provide himself as a fighter” for ISIS.

Daniels, who was held without bond, was charged with knowingly providing and attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

If convicted, he could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A DEA supervisor denied allegations that he had sex with a paid informant.

“There’s no salacious activity going on,” former DEA Atlanta office supervisor Keith Cromer said in U.S. Magistrate Judge Shirley Padmore Mensah’s St. Louis federal court on Friday, the Daily Caller reports. 

Cromer said he developed a person relationship with a paid informant, but it never became sexual.

Cromer invoked the Fifth Amendment twice during the court hearing.

The Justice Department has opened up a criminal investigation.

Cromer admitted he had gone on vacation with the informant twice, but said they stayed in separate bedrooms.

The informant received $212,000 for information that helped the DEA with several cases.

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• Prosecutors, FBI Investigating Alleged Absentee Vote Fraud in Berkeley

Border Port of Entry.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A Border Patrol officer is accused of receiving money and sexual favors from undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. from Mexico.

The FBI said it arrested CBP Officer Jose Luis Cota, 50, last week for allegedly helping undocumented immigrants enter the United States in exchange for favors, the bureau said in a statement.

Also arrested were Gilberto Aguilar-Martinez, 31, and Miriam Juerez-Herrera, 31, who allegedly received help from Cota. Both had been demoted from the U.S. in the past.

The FBI said Aguilar-Martinez is a “two-time convicted felon” and that he and Juerez-Herrera were operating an “alien smuggling operation.”

Juerez-Herrera said he bribed Cota with cash and sexual favors for allowing illegal immigrants to be smuggled into the U.S.

The FBI said “large sums of cash were deposited into Cota’s bank accounts”