WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Federal prosecutors are accusing two former Wichita police officers and a gambling operator of obstructing justice, saying they revealed the identity of an undercover officer who was investigating illegal gambling, an indictment unsealed Thursday says.

The indictment charges police officers Michael Zajkowski, 50, of Wichita and Bruce Mackey, 45, of Goddard with obstruction of law enforcement along with gambling operator Brock Wedman, 48, of St. Marys. Wedman also is charged with lying to the FBI.

Also separately charged Thursday in a related criminal complaint is retired Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Michael Frederikson, 52, of Derby. He is charged with two counts of lying to the FBI about his participation in an illegal cash poker game and contacts with the man running the illegal gambling business.

Court records do not indicate whether the men have attorneys. The Wichita Police Department referred questions to the U.S. attorney’s office, but said Chief Gordon Ramsay will attend Friday’s regular media briefing.

Investigators have been looking into an illegal gambling business with ties to public corruption in Wichita since November 2011, according to an FBI affidavit. Investigators learned of more than five different business establishments throughout Wichita and identified numerous individuals involved with the illegal live poker games.

A member of the Wichita Police Department’s undercover narcotics section developed an unwitting informant who offered to introduce an undercover officer into the game, according to the affidavit.

Thursday’s charges against the four men follow two Wichita men’s guilty pleas last week to federal gambling and income tax charges related to operating an illegal gambling business in the Wichita area. One of those men, Danny Chapman, pleaded guilty last Friday to one count of operating an illegal gambling business and one count of tax evasion. The other, Daven Flax, pleaded guilty to two counts of operating an illegal gambling business and one count of making a false statement on a tax return. Flax admitted he managed illegal games at numerous locations in Wichita.

The latest charges, which include those against the police officers, stem from a Feb. 12, 2014, poker game during which Zajkowski and Mackey allegedly used Police Department resources to determine the ownership of a vehicle driven by the person who they suspected was an undercover investigator. Prosecutors say they revealed the identity of the officer to Wedman and other co-conspirators and that Frederiksen, while still a Highway Patrol trooper, was a player in that game.

The undercover investigator posing as a gambler tried to use his phone to snap photographs, and the men running the game took him aside and told him he was making other players nervous by taking photos, according to the FBI affidavit.

The government alleges Zajkowski and Mackey made a series of phone calls and sent texts, using police resources to learn the ownership of the vehicle the suspected undercover officer drove to the game in an effort to learn his identity. The calls were allegedly made at the request of Wedman and other co-conspirators.

Zajkowski and Mackey then provided the undercover officer’s identity and the vehicle information to Wedman and others, according to the indictment. The vehicle was registered to the city of Wichita and was in service to the Police Department.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security says Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is not advising the agency on election fraud issues.

But Kobach told The Kansas City Star on Monday that the White House has informed him that it wants him to work closely with President Donald Trump and his team.

He said his role is not formal and has not been fleshed out after Trump disbanded a commission on election fraud. Kobach was the commission’s vice chairman.

Acting DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton told The AP in an email last week that Kobach was not advising the department. He told The Star on Monday that Kobach was not advising the agency formally or informally.

The White House said DHS would handle any future election fraud review.

By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN

The fight over whether Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach violated the constitution in his quest to demand proof of citizenship from voters goes to trial, with a ruling Wednesday that could complicate his case, in March.

A federal judge tossed aside some testimony Kobach had hoped to present in his long-running contention that voter fraud is commonplace. The decision came the same day President Donald Trump scrapped a commission, led by Kobach, designed to document what both men have said is widespread cheating at the polls.

In a statement, the White House said states were refusing to cooperate with the commission’s work. The panel also faced numerous lawsuits from civil rights groups.

Evidence thrown out Wednesday by a U.S. District Court judge in Kansas included some testimony from Hans von Spakovsky, another member of Trump’s voter fraud commission.

The court said von Spakovsky lacks direct knowledge or academic training related to some of his claims, including that a survey shows Kobach’s citizenship law isn’t a burden on voters.

“It is clear that von Spakovsky is not qualified to testify as an expert about this survey,” Judge Julie Robinson wrote.

A spokeswoman for Kobach didn’t respond to a request for comment late Tuesday afternoon.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the League of Women Voters and other plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Kobach, had attacked von Spakovsky’s credentials and methodology.

“We’re certainly pleased,” ACLU attorney Doug Bonney said.

Yet over the ACLU’s objections, von Spakovsky will testify on other matters related to voter fraud. And Kobach will get to keep expert testimony from Jesse Richman, a political science professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia.

Kobach says Richman’s research indicates voting by non-citizens is a substantial problem. But many other studies suggest that voting by non-citizens is remarkably rare.

It’s unclear what weight the court will give to Kobach’s experts. The two sides will battle that out at trial.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ. Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to kcur.org.

BY JIM MCLEAN

His landmark nationwide panel to root out illegal voting abandoned by the White House, Kansas Secretary of Kris Kobach spent Thursday rooting out alleged voter fraud in his home state.

Armed with powers not usually assigned to a secretary of state, Kobach filed a pair of criminal complaints against two people he said voted when, and more, than they had the right to.

In 2016, Kobach contends, Que J. Fulmer voted in both Hamilton County, Kansas, and in Colorado. He charged Bailey Ann McCaughey of voting twice in the same election, in Finney County, Kansas, and Colorado. Both Hamilton and Finney counties sit in western Kansas.

“These prosecutions will help deter voter fraud in the future,” Kobach said.

Kobach, a likely frontrunner among Republicans running for governor, has marked much of his career battling voter fraud. He insists it’s far more common than most experts believe. Legislators gave Kobach’s office the power to file criminal charges in election fraud cases in 2015. He’s the country’s only top election official with that authority.

While he warns of illegal voting by non-citizens — immigration control is another signature issue for him — all of the dozen-plus people he’s charged with election fraud in Kansas are U.S. citizens.

Twelve of the 14 voter fraud cases that he’s filed have been for double voting, which Kobach contends is a serious crime.

“The consequences of double voting are the same as the consequences of voting by a non-citizen,” he said. “You still have an illegal vote cast and that illegal vote might tip the election.”

The day before the charges, Kobach saw a federal judge rule on a pending case on his efforts to demand more reliable proof of citizenship for voter registration. That lawsuit goes to trial in March.

The court ruling excluded some testimony for Kobach’s cause because the judge said it lacked the necessary expertise to back it up.

Republicans typically argue it’s too easy to register to vote, that officials should insist on birth certificates and other documents to screen out non-citizens and that states need to compare their lists with each other to stop people from voting in two places.

Democrats commonly respond that voter fraud is rare and tougher I.D. demands make it unreasonably hard for the poor or the elderly to cast ballots. They also think that programs such as Crosscheck designed to identify people registered in multiple states could exclude citizens who simply have the same name as another voter.

Kobach has an ally for his cause in President Donald Trump, who installed the Kansas Republican as the key player on a national commission created to document how much voter cheating takes place.

That panel quickly ran into trouble when many of Kobach’s fellow secretaries of state across the country refused to turn over voter records, often state citing laws that barred them from sharing the information.

So when Trump scrapped the voting commission, Kobach’s rivals in Kansas leapt to declare it a failure of the man they need to beat in the governor’s race.

“We see that the only thing Kris Kobach accomplished was wasting taxpayer money,” said Ed O’Malley, a former state representative and another candidate in the GOP field. “If voter fraud is a major problem and Kris Kobach spearheaded this effort, he failed to bring the commission together to produce meaningful and measurable outcomes, which means the problem will continue.”

Kobach said the work scuttled by opposition from left-leaning organizations will now be done by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where he will continue to play a role.

“Absolutely I’ll be involved,” he said. “Now that we are doing the investigation through the Department of Homeland Security things will happen a lot faster.”

Jim McLean is managing director of the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks.