SHERIFF BACKS CLAIMS OF
FBI-LAWBREAKING IN OREGON STANDOFF, Documentary-makers
release more evidence that raises questions, by Bob Unruh, 6/29/17, WND
In a stunning development a year
after the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, where
two-dozen armed supporters gathered to protest the courts’ extension of
sentences for two ranchers, a sheriff has backed claims of FBI misbehavior.
The declaration came from
Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson just
as FBI agent W. Joseph Astarita was pleading not guilty to three counts of
making false statements and two counts of obstruction of justice in federal
court in Portland, Oregon.
The FBI agent was accused of firing
at the protesters, then picking up shell casings to conceal that fact and lying
to investigators.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in
Oregon said Astarita falsely stated he had not fired his weapon during the
attempted arrest of protester LaVoy Finicum, who was shot dead by another
officer during the incident, “when he knew he had in fact fired his weapon.”
“Astarita also knowingly engaged in
misleading conduct toward Oregon State Police officers by failing to disclose
that he had fired two rounds during the attempted arrest,” the statement said.
Nelson said, as the Washington Times
reported, that the actions by “multiple members of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team”
had “damaged the integrity of the entire law enforcement profession, which
makes me both disappointed and angry.”
Nelson said he told Justice
Department and FBI officials, including now-acting Director Andrew McCabe, over
a year ago about “possible criminal conduct” by some involved FBI Hostage
Rescue Team agents.
And while the case against Astarita
is in court, new evidence also is arising from the makers of an acclaimed
documentary about the incident.
WND
reported earlier on the armed standoff that has
been variously described by opponents as “militia terrorism” and by
defenders as rebellion against government tyranny.
The 41-day standoff ended in
mass arrests after law enforcement fatally shot one of the occupiers.
The documentary is “American Standoff,” and while it aired previously on DirecTV, it can now be viewed
in its entirety at this website.
Among the people interviewed in the documentary is best-selling
author and WND Vice President David Kupelian.
The “American Standoff” story starts
with Dwight and Steven Hammond, Oregon ranchers who were controversially
convicted and sentenced for setting a controlled land-management fire on their
property that went out of control onto federal land. But after they served
their sentences and were released, a judge – at a federal prosecutor’s
insistence – ordered them back into court, where they were sentenced to further
time in prison under an anti-terrorism law, even though there was no evidence
presented that the ranchers had planned or engaged in terrorism in any way.
Sympathetic ranchers and others –
encouraged by the federal government’s stand-down from a previous armed
confrontation in Nevada two years earlier on the land of rancher Cliven Bundy –
protested the new injustice and ended up staging an armed occupation of the
refuge.
They succeeded in keeping federal
officers at bay until they were finally taken into custody when police staged a
highly dangerous highway stop of vehicles carrying the protesters and shot two
men.
Ryan Bundy, one of Cliven Bundy’s
sons, was injured, while LaVoy Finicum was killed.
Eventually, seven
of the others who were arrested were acquitted of federal charges related to the standoff. The
feds even dismissed charges against a self-described independent broadcaster,
Peter Santilli, who documented the occupation
near Burns, Oregon, but was accused by prosecutors of being part of the protest
group.
However, one of the FBI agents was
charged with serious infractions of the law for the final confrontation. So
far, Astarita is the only FBI agent to be indicted.
In addition to the feature-length
“American Standoff” documentary, director Josh Turnbow and his film-making crew
have now produced a series
of “Aftermath” short video segments that have been posted online.
In the first, Jeanette Finicum, the
widow of LaVoy Finicum, explains how the government, after killing her husband,
also canceled the lease she needed to continue her family’s ranching operation.
She said she has lawyers
fighting to restore the lease.
And she said a wrongful death case
is inevitable against the government after a certain legal time period passes.
She insists her husband had his
hands in the air and was surrendering but “was murdered.”
“He was mowed down in cold blood.”
Then, the video explains, the
federal agents were “caught on camera, picking up casings before the forensic
team arrived at the site of the shooting.”
Also, the video shows, Finicum’s
gun, which he reportedly had been reaching for, wasn’t found for eight hours
after the shooting. “How many people tended to his body
without finding it?” the video asks. See
the footage of the first segment: The
rest of the videos are available online here.
Turnbow told WND the “Aftermath”
series continues the stories of people affected by the standoff. In
addition to conducting in-depth interviews with nearly everyone involved on all
sides of the conflict, Turnbow said he tapped WND’s
managing editor, David Kupelian, to offer a journalist’s perspective and
analysis.
“I think Josh Turnbow did a terrific
job in ‘American Standoff,'” said Kupelian, “not just in fairly and sensitively
presenting all sides of a complex and troubling situation, but in telling a
riveting, deeply thought-provoking true story about today’s America.”
Kupelian said the documentary
“captures the classic modus operandi of an oppressive government: Perpetrate
injustice, provoking widespread public outrage, which always includes a small
number of people who seriously overreact and, however well-meaning, do
something illegal or irresponsible – and then portray them as the real problem,
or in this case as ‘criminals’ and ‘terrorists.'”
He said the main provocation in
the story was “convicting two Oregon cattle ranchers, a father and son team
whose controlled burn on their own property had gotten out of control and
migrated onto federal land, with arson under
an anti-terrorism statute that
mandates a minimum five-year prison sentence.”
“Even the presiding judge said such
a severe and unjust sentence would ‘shock the conscience.’ Well, it did shock
the conscience of a lot of other ranchers – and the Malheur standoff was the
result,” he said.
Turnbow said he would like to
find out what really happened and consider what the outcome should
have been, especially with regard to the still-imprisoned ranchers serving a
five-year “terrorism” sentence. “We should be talking about it,”
Turnbow says.
The larger issue at hand – federal
control over land in the American West – continues to loom large. The federal government is the
largest landowner in the Rocky Mountain and Western states, owning contiguous
parcels of millions of acres.
Conflicts between ranchers, who in
some instances have owned and worked their land for generations, and a
federal government seemingly always hungry for more, are common.
President Trump’s recent executive
order to review the possibility of shrinking the boundaries of
federal monuments could help defuse the longstanding tensions between
America’s ranchers and the government. See
the trailer for “American Standoff”:
http://www.wnd.com/2017/06/sheriff-backs-claims-of-fbi-lawbreaking-in-oregon-standoff/
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