By Steve Neavling

A would-be carjacker picked the wrong man to mess with. 

After finishing his shift, a DEA agent was stopped at a red light in Manhattan when Zachary Bell approached his government-issued vehicle and demanded he “get the f—k out of the car,” according to a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan Federal Court, the New York Post reports.

When Bell, of Maplewood, N.J., reached toward his waistband, the agent took action. 

The seven-year veteran assigned to the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force activated his police lights, pulled out his own gun, struck Bell in the face, tackled him, and handcuffed him before calling the police. 

Bell sustained “severe” facial injuries that required surgery, his attorney said. 

The identity of the agent was not released. 

Jeffrey Epstein.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The FBI is investigating the death of billionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after he was found unresponsive due to an “apparent suicide” in a Manhattan jail.

The Justice Department’s Federal Bureau of Prisons indicated in a letter Saturday that the FBI was investigating.

Prison employees found Epstein unresponsive in his cell early Saturday morning and began “life-saving measures.” He was taken to a hospital “for treatment of life-threatening injuries, and subsequently pronounced dead by hospital staff,” the letter states.

Many questions have been raised about how Epstein could have committed suicide in a federal jail after he had been placed on “suicide watch” in late July, leading to mounting conspiracy theories. Jail officials told the New York Times that Epstein was taken off suicide watch a few days before his death.

When an inmate is taken off suicide watch, prison officials told several news outlets that the detainee is often placed in a cell with another inmate. Epstein was alone in his cell early Saturday morning.

Democrats immediately called for a congressional investigation.

“With the obvious end to criminal proceedings against Epstein, it is important that the House U.S. Committee on Oversight and Reform begin its investigation,” Rep. Louis Frankel tweeted.

Epstein was in jail awaiting trial after he had pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges. Dozens of girls had accused him of sexually abusing them.

On the day of his death, additional court documents revealed allegations that he sent an underage girl to meet and have sex with two former politicians as part of an alleged sex ring.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Donald Trump has refused to give up many of his creature comforts, and that has exhausted the budget of the Secret Service.

Now the agency is asking for an additional $60 million in funding for next year to keep up with Trump’s gaudy lifestyle, Vanity Fair reports.

The problem is that Trump visits his Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, every weekend. Secret Service also has to protect the Trump Tower because First Lady Melania Trump has so far refused to move into the White House. Now Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, is using an office in the West Wing and is expected to soon receive security clearance.

Secret Service projects it will need $26.8 million in additional funds to protect the First Family and the Trump Tower.

Vanity Fair wrote:

President Trump is 70 years old—the oldest president to be sworn in for a first term. He has five children, two of whom have eight children between them. Eric Trump announced earlier this week that he and his wife, Lara, are having a baby boy in September, bringing the total count of Trumps to 19. The Secret Service asked for six additional full-time-equivalent positions for the Trump detail, the Post reports.

The remainder of the proposed budget additional funding—$33 million—would go toward travel costs. It is no secret that the president is fond of taking trips to Mar-a-Lago. The Trump children have also jetted to Dubai, Vancouver, and Aspen since he took office, for both business and pleasure. All of these trips require advance and detail, and thus, come out of the agency budget.

They also require a great deal of money from local police protection. Between Election Day and Inauguration Day, the Post reports that New York police spent about $24 million to secure Trump Tower, and on any given day, the city spends between $127,000 and $145,000 to protect the First Lady and First Son in Manhattan while President Trump is in Washington—which has been most weekdays and a handful of weekends, as well.

Palm Beach County, too, has had to foot the bill when the president comes to town. The sheriff’s office has said it has spent $1.5 million so far in overtime pay for on-duty officers securing the private club and taking care of traffic in the surrounding area. The cost is so overwhelming that officials are considering raising taxes or possibly charging Mar-a-Lago a fee in order to cover the costs without impacting residents.

Other Stories of Interest

• A Look at Trump’s Unbalanced Homeland Security Budget
• Justice Department May Have Confirmed Authenticity of WikiLeaks CIA Documents
• Former U.S. Attorney Discusses FBI Investigation in Wichita
• Oversight Committee Asks White House, FBI for Flynn Records

Trump Tower in New York City, via Wikipedia.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

President-elect Donald Trump has put the Secret Service in a difficult position by insisting he often will be working at Trump Tower instead of the White House.

To prepare for the worst, three military aircraft were conducting surveillance and plotting escape routes in midtown Manhattan last week, the International Business Times reports. 

The drill lasted about 40 minutes and involved HC-130 search and rescue plane and two HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters. 

Residents and some city officials expressed frustration with the drill because there was no notification of the drill.

Steve Neavling

Authorities may be closer to finding the source of the heroin that is believed to have killed 46-year-old actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The USA Today reports that authorities arrested four people in Manhattan on Tuesday evening and were questioning them over possible connections to the actor’s death Sunday.

The suspects were found with 350 bags of heroin, police said.

Hoffman was found dead in his apartment with a syringe in his arm.

Did fed prosecutors in a mob waste hauling case in Manhattan give two  hold-out defendants a sweet plea deal to avoid putting on the witness stand a key FBI undercover operative who was convicted of soliciting sex from a teen girl?

That likely appears to be the case, according a story by mob expert Jerry Capeci of Gang Land News.

Capeci writes:

The gangsters got offers they couldn’t refuse: low-end guidelines of 15 months for one, a year for the other. The deals were cut last week, right after a Manhattan federal judge indicated he would give the defense some leeway in questioning witness Charles Hughes about his 2008 arrest for soliciting sex from a girl he believed to be 15-years-old.

The guilty pleas close out the first of three trials that were scheduled in the 29-defendant case alleging mob control over the private sanitation industry in five counties in New York and New Jersey. So far, 19 defendants from three crime families, including geezer gangster Carmine “Papa Smurf”

 

Capeci reports that U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel said he’d allow  the defense to bring up some of the sexual allegations if the government witness took the stand.

Capeci describes the government deal as a “Macy’s bargain-basement-style sale of guilty pleas: Prosecutors suddenly reduced prison-term plea deals offered two Gambino family defendants by two-thirds.”

Gang Land News is a  paid subscription site, but worth it.

A Bangladeshi national has been arrested for in an FBI-NYPD sting for plotting to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in Lower Manhattan, the New York Daily News reports.

Quazi Nafis, 21, was arrested Wednesday morning. He had parked a van filled with what he thought were explosives, but were actually not, and tried to detonate the material, the News reported.

He was arrested at the scene.

The cost for attending the September retirement party of Janice Fedarcyk, who just stepped down as head of the New York FBI, isn’t so cheap: $150.

Some think that’s excessive for a party for the  assistant director in charge  (ADIC) of the New York office.

“Everybody said ‘wholly crap,'” one agent told ticklethewire.com. “Even for N.Y. prices, that’s wholly crap.”

Another person said: “The event costs $150. That’s the most expensive retirement dinner I have ever seen. Given the tough economic times and lack of payraises for federal workers the last two years, this is outrageous. Either ADIC Fedarcyk or whoever is planning this is out of touch with reality.”

The event is set for Sept. 6 at a hall in Manhattan.

The $150 includes cocktails and  hors d’oeuvres from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. followed by a sit-down dinner.

FBI retirement parties are usually about a third of that cost if not less.

The N.Y. FBI office had not yet responded for comment on Monday.