Posted on 06/25/2016 4:27:31 AM PDT by Nextrush
The federal investigation into an FBI agent's apparent firing of gunshots at Robert "LaVoy" Finicum and the alleged FBI tampering with evidence at the scene has gone to a grand jury.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Gorder Jr. revealed the grand jury hearing in court papers Thursday explaining the government's desire to keep its memorandum about the inspector general's investigation into the FBI's handling of the Jan. 26 shooting out of the hands of defense lawyers.
"The Declaration provides details of an ongoing investigation by the United States Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General, and concerns matters occurring before the grand jury protected from disclosure,' Gorder wrote to the court....
Defense lawyers in the Oregon standoff case have asked the judge to compel the government to turn over the investigators records regarding the FBI's alleged misconduct.
Late Wednesday, Brown said she'd allow prosecutors to file the memo under seal, but ruled it must be shared with defense lawyers. She said, however, that she would allow the government to make further argument why it shouldn't be shared with the defense.
That led to Gorder's expanded legal brief, noting the federal investigation is before a grand jury......
Updated June 24, 2016 Defense lawyer Per C. Olson replied to Gorder's filing, saying federal law allows for the court to authorize disclosure of a grand jury matter if it's connected with a judicial proceeding. Olson urged the court to accept the government's memo under seal, but allow defense lawyers access to it....
Judge Brown rules prosecutors haven't met the bar to file the document only with the court, so must file it sealed, and share it with defense lawyers.
The practice of filing legal briefs out of the eye of one party in a pending criminal proceeding, the judge wrote is "strongly disfavored."
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
I don’t remember your version of the story being the true one.
None of the protestors fired a shot at any time, even in the January 26th incident.
In the past there were black people who armed themselves against white lynch mobs in acts of ‘armed defiance’ down South.
The Hammonds (ranchers in Harney County) were jailed as terrorists for a second time by the federal government back in January.
The BLM has been harassing and restricting the economic activities of the Hammonds for decades before that.
That led to this protest.
Its about time we all gave a rip about the treatment of the farmers and ranchers instead of griping about methods of protest chosen by those on the side of the victims of the arrogant out of control federal bureaucracy in this country.
If you are going to protest with guns, don’t act shocked when there is shooting involved. Dumping a load of cow manure in front of the courthouse in Portland or running a herd of cattle through town would have been a better protest.
I’m not going to condemn the people who protested in Oregon.
Perhaps this is a prelude to something like the non violent civil disobedience of the 1960’s regarding racial discrimination.
I look at the protestors in Oregon from Ammon Bundy, the leader, all the way to the ‘last guy out’ David Fry as people who did something when others chose to do nothing.
In the movie “Patton” the sleeping soldier is tripped over by the general and the startled soldier salutes and says he was ‘sleeping’ and the general tells him to get back down there cause he’s the only ‘SOB’ who ‘knows what he’s doing’.
Those SOB’s in Oregon remind me of the sleeping solider.
The other protesters in the vehicle LaVoy was driving never fired a shot but survived miraculously and lived to tell the tale. One was shot in the shoulder while in the vehicle. There is no justification for “authorities” to open fire on a vehicle with 3 innocent people in it. This is not a 3rd world country or the drug cartel we are talking about. The authorities are not supposed to be judge, jury and executioner. When will the authorities be charging all the looters in Ferguson? They actually did damage things and put peoples lives at risk. #RanchersLivesMatter
If they had just sat at home and listened to their overlords, nobody would have been hurt??
The Hammond family seemed to understand that when they asked Bundy's people to leave.
You wrote:
"Person identified at the traffic stop, known to be armed, flees from the stop, crashes at the road block and comes busting out of the truck.
The two shots in question were fired after the truck crashes into the snow bank, but before Levoy Finicum "comes bursting out". One of them can be quite clearly seen on the phone-camera video shot by the female passenger.
Which makes the FBI agent's position a bit more problematical. You evaluated it this way:
I am betting the FBI agent would get away with those two shots.
My take is that be a good bet only if they took the shots after he was out of the vehicle, or if he brandished a weapon while in the vehicle. Lacking either of those facts it's not such a good bet. If concealed snipers were taking pock-shots at a truck some distance away while all the occupants are still in it and no weapons are visible. That's pretty much "attempted assassination".
Of course the vaunted FBI snipers did do just that (summary execution by sniper assassin) in the Vicky Weaver case and got away with it. So, maybe even with the now-revealed and very bad-looking facts your first statement is still true: "If they hadn't lied, there wouldn't be [any charges]"
The Bundy’s big mistake was being armed. If they had left their guns at home the entire “armed racist neo-nazi” narrative would have collapsed and they would have had a lot more sympathy from people and the press. It was, literaly, a fatal mistake for one of them.
Finicum should have been Black.
Exactly. If you are going up against a group of people whose only tools are hammers, don’t look like a nail.
It is painful to see all that is going on right now especially if you are LaVoy’s wife, children and other relatives.
LaVoy’s wife says its wrong when the police kill anyone they aren’t justified in killing and she doesn’t want to see any violence from anyone in response to law enforcement killings.
Hopefully she has good lawyers for her civil suit against the FBI and Oregon State Patrol. That’s the best thing she can do for herself, her family and the nation. Sue, bring out all the facts, and win a huge settlement.
vis: Ruby Ridge:
The surviving members of the Weaver family filed a wrongful death suit for $200 million. In an out-of-court settlement in August 1995, the federal government awarded Randy Weaver $100,000 and his three daughters $1 million each. The government did not admit any wrongdoing in the deaths of Sammy and Vicki.[65][66] On the condition of anonymity, a DOJ official told the Washington Post that he believed the Weavers probably would have won the full amount if the case had gone to trial.[67]
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