The judge in the case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, his sons, and their friend Ryan Payne, declared a mistrial. The reason is stunning. Prosecutors willfully held back evidence of the government agents acting illegally in 2014 during a standoff on the Bundy ranch which drew the attention of militia from around the country.
When Bundy refused to comply with payment of grazing fees, Bureau of Land Management agents planned to take his animals. They suddenly appeared behind Berns on the ranch, heavily armed and armored, with guns trained on the Bundy home. It drew the attention of Sean Hannity and armed organizations who went to the Bundys assistance. The government pulled out.
Bundy characterized the uprising as an act of patriotic civil disobedience against government excess.
Cliven Bundy didn’t pay his grazing fees because the land, he says, should belong to the state, not the federal government. He also said the government is pushing all the ranchers off their land and confiscating it.
The government keeps retrying the Bundys, Cliven and his sons Ammon and Ryan This has been going on for three years since the Bundy standoff and since they later occupied a remote government building in Burns Oregon to demonstrate against Western land grabs and the arrests of two ranchers.
Judge Gloria Navarro reacted to evidence of prosecutors hiding information about agents conducting surveillance on the Bundy ranch and threat assessments since 2012.
The agents also hid logs of their activities.
Bureau of Land Management (BLM0 Special Agent Larry Wooten found “incredible bias” and widespread misconduct and likely illegal actions which he detailed in his 18-page report.
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Wooten is a whistleblower who sent a memo released last week.
The BLM instituted a military operation against the ranchers. Agents had a “kill list” of people who killed themselves while under investigation. They called the Bundys, “retards”, “douche bags”, and they wanted to grind the Bundys’ faces into the gravel.
The agents who impounded the Bundy cattle before the standoff on the Bundy ranch conducted the “most intrusive, oppressive, lard scale and militaristic trespass impound possible” while the US attorney told him not to.
Bundy said he saw agents walking around his property with AKs and he saw surveillance cameras set up.
“The government falsely represented the camera that was on the Bundy house was incidental, not purposeful,” the judge said.
The judge found prosecutors withheld a March 3, 2015, FBI report that identified a Bureau of Land Management agent in tactical gear and carrying an AR-15 rifle outside the family ranch on April 5 and April 6, 2014.
Funny how the occupiers were never treated like that. And when will these agents be fired? The answer is never because the union doesn’t let anyone get fired.
Navarro set a retrial date for Feb. 26, 2018, but whether a new trial will actually happen is uncertain. Acting US Attorney Steven Myhre said prosecutors have yet to decide whether to pursue the case, and even if they do, the judge will hear defense arguments Jan. 8 on whether to dismiss the case.
This is the latest in a string of failed prosecutions in Nevada and Oregon against those who have opposed federal control of vast swaths of land in the American West.
Jurors in Portland, Oregon, acquitted the two Bundy sons of taking over a U.S. wildlife refuge in Oregon for more than a month in early 2016 amid calls for the U.S. government to turn over public land to local control.
The government has kept these men imprisoned while trying them again and again.
One cowboy LaVoy Finicum was shot and killed in the Oregon standoff and fault was found on the part of law enforcement. An FBI agent was charged with lying in a cover up of what happened.
The government wants the four punished so it doesn’t happen again but it wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t institute a military operation.
It is cases such as this why I have little respect for the judicial system. Prosecutors, Judges etc have no liability for any illegal activities they do. The only way there is justice if those who pervert justice are held as accountable as those they seek to prosecute.
There was a case in Louisiana where a man spent Decades in prison as a result of prosecutorial misconduct. In this case, as well as all others, the prosecutor, the culprit, had suffered no action for what he had done. When it came out, and he may have helped the man, he expressed great sorrow for what he had done. Well, feeling sorry, having remorse, just doesn’t cut it. There should be NO statute of limitations for this conduct, and if someone spends years in prison because of it that prosecutor, Or whoever else was involved, should spend the equal amount of time in prison as the innocent man spent. Maybe if there was such recourse these corrupt prosecutors would think twice before doing such.
Yesterday Trump did correct an evil perpetrated on an individual, namely Sholom Rubashkin of Agriprocessors. He commuted his sentence which left the 27 million dollar judgement. It should have been a full-fledged pardon. The sole judge, Linda Reade, had her hands in every aspect of the case, in the raid on the company, the charges against Rubashkin, the appeal in the District Court, and even an influence in the Appellate level. The original case charged Rubashkin with 9311 counts of child labor laws, which that count was eventually reduced. It resulted in the company failing on bank loans. THAT resulted in bank fraud charges. The prosecutors restricted the sale of the company and therefore couldn’t meet bank obligations. As a result Rubashkin was sentenced to 27 years. He served 8 years of that sentence when Trump reduced the sentence to time served. This had begun from charges of child labor laws and those charges were Not brought forth UNTIL after the bank fraud trial. The defense wanted both trials run together and were overruled. Well, we found out why it was done that way. The case resulted in a Not Guilty verdict. So the original case that led to Rubashkin’s downfall was found not guilty of ALL CHARGES. It was later found that the Judge, Linda Reade, actually was working in conjunction WITH the prosecution on the child labor charges. When this came out much later an appeal was filed and this same judge sat in the same appellate court just not on this specific case. That appeal was denied. This is a very basic overview of the case. Judges and prosecutors should lose their law license when these situations come to light.
Upon the release of Sholom the celebrations were staggering. Thousand upon thousand of Chasidic Jews were celebrating in Boro Park and Jewish communities across the country. When Trump was elected I had hoped this day would come. There were hundreds from both sides of the aisle that petitioned Trump to do this including the vast majority of previous AG’s. One notable exception was “Chuck Schumer”. He would NOT support this because “these Jews don’t vote Democrat”. What a vile POS.