The FBI will analyze the remnants of the Chinese balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.
The news comes after the Navy “successfully located and retrieved” all of the debris from the balloon, according to U.S. Northern Command.
Among the retrieved wreckage were “electronics and optics,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby.
“It’s a significant amount [of recovered material], including the payload structure as well as some of the electronics and the optics, and all that’s now at the FBI laboratory in Quantico,” Kirby said, according to the Guardian.
The FBI’s analysis is expected to uncover new information.
“We’re going to learn even more, we believe, by getting a look at the guts inside it and seeing how it worked and what it was capable of,” Kirby said.
U.S. fighter jets shot down the balloon on Feb. 4.
China acknowledged it owned the balloon but denied it was for surveillance.
A federal judge in Albany, N.Y., on Monday declared a mistrial in a bank robbery case after an FBI agent admitted in court that he “forgot” to disclose nearly 200 pages of forensic laboratory evidence until the night before what was expected to be the trial’s final day, the Times Union reports.
One of the banks that was robbed (Google maps)
FBI Special Agent Paul Scuzzarella failed to disclose evidence he’d sent for tests to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va. The evidence included DNA swabs and fingerprints taken from four guns, a Ford Escape, a motel room and bullets found at a crime scene, the publication reports.
Ulysses Walls, 29, is accused of robbing two banks in the Albany area in 2019.
The agent told the judge:
“When I gave all the case files over back in ’19, I assumed everything was there,” Scuzzarella replied. “It’s on me that I apparently did not review everything and realized that this particular stuff was not included. And then I think just, over time, I forgot it was even done because when I looked at a document that was — this document here …. “
Louis M. Quesada, special agent in charge of the El Paso Field Office, will leave his post on Friday to become deputy assistant director of the bureau’s Incident Response Group in Quantico.
Quesada was promoted to head of the El Paso office in October 2019.
“Both professionally and personally, it has been a fantastic time, a time of growth,” Quesada told the El Paso Times. “I’m not from this area, but it’s been a wonderful experience. It’s a great community and I think that attributes to why El Paso is El Paso. For a major city to have the third least violent crimes and the fifth overall crime, I think speaks a lot to the people in the community and to the relationships that the law enforcement has with each other, which is something that I’ve never experienced in any other office in the last 25-plus years that I’ve been in the FBI.”
Quesada joined the FBI as a special agent in 1995 and began working in the Miami Field Office, where he investigated violent crimes with a focus on bank robberies, extortion, and kidnappings. In 1998, Quesada voluntarily transferred to the San Juan Field Office in Puerto Rico before returning to Miami in 2001 to investigates drugs. In both offices, Quesada served on the SWAT teams.
Quesada was promoted in 2003 to supervisory special agent and began working in the Counterterrorism Division of the Terrorist Screening Center, which manages and operates the nation’s terrorist watch list.
In 2005, he transferred to the FBI Academy in Quantico as a defensive tactics instructor. Quesada returned to Miami two years later as the supervisor of the violent gang and high-intensity drug trafficking area task force. He later became the acting assistant special agent in charge of Miami’s Criminal Branch.
In 2010, Quesada became the assistant legal attaché in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he promoted FBI interests in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
In 2012, Quesada was promoted to a unit chief position in the Criminal Investigative Division at FBI Headquarters in Washington, focusing on counter-narcotics efforts in Latin America and the U.S. Southwest border.
In 2014, Quesada became legal attaché of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, focusing on counterterrorism threats throughout the Balkans and the U.S.
A year later, Quesada became the assistant special agent in charge of the Criminal Branch in the Jackson Field Office in Mississippi. In 2017, he was appointed to assistant section chief in the Training Division, and a year later was promoted to section chief of the division’s Training Services Section.
Quesada earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from Florida International University
A female FBI trainee has become the 17th woman to claim she was sexually harassed at the bureau’s training academy in Quantico, Va.
The Florida woman who was discharged from the training academy joined a lawsuit that alleges the academy is a “good-old-boy network” that exposes women to a hostile work environment, inappropriate jokes and sexual advances beginning in 2015.
The trainee alleges her male supervisors effectively discharged her by issuing numerous situations known as “suitability notations,” which instructors hand out for issues ranging from insubordination to inability to complete a task.
The suit, filed in May, claims some of the women were discriminated against based on their race or disabilities. One African American trainee alleges an instructor called her “spaghetti head” because of her braids.
The lawsuit zeroed in on the mock town known as Hogan’s Alley, where trainees learn about tactical training with fake criminals and terrorists. This phase of training resulted in many women being kicked out of the academy.
At the time of the suit, seven of the 16 women still worked for the FBI.
The women are asking for more female training instructors, an examination of the training evaluation process and $300,000 each for emotional stress.
The FBI has declined to publicly comment on the case.
House Judiciary Committee leaders are requesting the Justice Department’s internal watchdog investigate the FBI’s training academy after 16 women accused the bureau of gender discrimination.
The women claimed in a lawsuit filed last month that they were disproportionately disciplined and were subjected to a male-biased review process and overt sexual discrimination at the academy in Quantico, Va.
Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and ranking Republican Douglas Collins, R-Ga., sent a letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, saying the allegations were “disturbing” and “require an investigation into the FBI’s training and selection practices for new agents,” The Washington Post reports.
“If true, such conduct cannot be tolerated,” the lawmakers wrote. “The selection process employed by the FBI must be free from discrimination on the basis of factors such as gender and race, and individuals hired to these important positions should reflect the diversity of our country.”
Horowitz’s office declined to comment.
According to the lawsuit, the women were discharged, but seven still work at the FBI in other capacities.
“Because of the FBI’s history of tolerating the Good Old Boy Network, the subjective evaluations by these male instructors result in female trainees being written up and subsequently dismissed at a rate significantly and disproportionately higher than their male counterparts,” the lawsuit alleges.
As the FBI tries to increase its ranks of female agents, 16 women have sued the bureau, claiming they were sexually harassed at the FBI’s training academy in Quantico, Va.
The lawsuit alleges the academy is a “good-old-boy network” that exposes women to a hostile work environment, inappropriate jokes and sexual advances beginning in 2015, The New York Times reports.
The suit also claims some of the women were discriminated against based on their race or disabilities. One African American trainee alleges an instructor called her “spaghetti head” because of her braids.
The lawsuit zeroed in on the mock town known as Hogan’s Alley, where trainees learn about tactical training with fake criminals and terrorists. This phase of training resulted in many women being kicked out of the academy.
“The real purpose of the suit is to change the culture of the F.B.I.,” said David J. Shaffer, the lawyer for the women.
Seven of the 16 women still work for the FBI.
The women are asking for more female training instructors, an examination of the training evaluation process and $300,000 each for emotional stress.
The FBI wouldn’t publicly comment on the lawsuit but told the New York Times in a statement that the bureau was “committed to fostering a work environment where all of our employees are valued and respected.”
Lesley Mumford became the first transgender woman to be accepted into the elite FBI National Academy.
By Steve Neavling Ticklethewire.com
A Colorado SWAT team coordinator made history by becoming what is believed to be the first transgender woman accept into the FBI National Academy, an elite and intense training course in Quantico, Va.
Lesley Mumford, of the Summit County Sheriff’s Office, is among about 200 law enforcement agents who will attend the 10-week course beginning in July, the Summit Daily reports.
“I think it’s a pretty amazing thing, a historical thing,” said Mumford, who transitioned last year. “It makes me feel that society is changing, it makes me feel that as individuals we do have the ability to change and influence the world around us.”
Summit County Sheriff Jaime FitzSimons, who nominated Mumford, hailed the moment as a groundbreaking moment for the transgender community.
“We were so proud to have her transition in the workplace, but this is the next, huge, huge, smash-the-ceiling moment,” he said. “We’re so proud of Lesley.”
President Trump, who boasted that the FBI is “in tatters” and “the worst in history,” will visit the bureau’s National Academy in Quantico, Va., today to speak with what could be a skeptical audience.
Trump will take part in the FBI’s graduation ceremony at a time of strained relations between the president and the bureau’s leadership.
After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters – worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.
The criticism prompted Trump’s FBI Director Christopher Wray to defend the bureau against heightening rhetoric as the special counsel investigation into Russia and the president’s aides continues to heat up.
Trump planned to visit FBI headquarters in May, but it was canceled following his firing of then-Director James come.
