Month: May 2018

A disgraced former Hearne Police Department sergeant is wearing a badge and gun again, according to records that I received today from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, and it is only one example of a much larger problem.

Stephen Yohner, known on this blog as “Sgt. Tallywacker,” left Hearne PD last year amid accusations that he texted a photo of his gonads to a female officer.  He was also accused of taking money and drugs from crime scenes without properly accounting for the evidence, and he is named as a defendant in an ongoing civil rights lawsuit.  Nonetheless, he was commissioned on May 15, 2018 as a reserve officer by the police department in tiny Hico, Texas (home of the Billy the Kid Museum, as it happens).

I emailed City Administrator Adam Niolet and Police Chief Ronnie Ashmore a couple of my blog posts about Sgt. Tallywacker and asked if they knew about his history.  I received this response from Mr. Niolet:

I’ve got a feeling somebody will get called into the principal’s office on Monday morning.  It’s not like Sgt. Tallywacker’s reputation was a secret.  If you Google “Stephen Yohner,” a list of news articles and blog posts explains the circumstances of his departure from Hearne PD, and all of that should have shown up in any background investigation.

So how did he get hired? Did the chief not conduct a background investigation, or did he just ignore what he found? As you can see from my July 6, 2017 blog post, Sgt. Tallywacker had a shady history even before he was hired by Hearne.  … Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice will not release any records related to the murder of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, according to a letter that I received today from the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. Actually, they have refused to release any records about Seth Rich at all, e.g., whether he had a security clearance or a background check.

The same office originally refused to even search for records related to Seth Rich, but it was overruled on October 2, 2017 after I appealed to DOJ’s Office of Information Policy.  Six months later, they’re still refusing to release anything.

I have already filed suit against the FBI and DOJ to force the agencies to release records (DOJ’s answer to the lawsuit is due next Thursday), and I am not particularly surprised by the response thus far.  For one thing, the Freedom of Information Act grants broad exemptions for records pertaining to law enforcement and prosecution.

Even so, those exemptions have limits, and not everything should be protected by FOIA. I expect to show, for example, that the FBI lied by claiming that it has no records related to Seth Rich.  My sources tell me that the FBI assisted D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department in hacking some of Mr. Rich’s electronic devices, yet the FBI has refused to even search for records at its Washington Field Office, where the records would be kept. … Read more