Posted on 02/03/2018 5:26:30 AM PST by Nextrush
Prosecutors say witness testimony, audio and video evidence, plus bullet trajectory analysis yielded one conclusion: FBI agent W. Joseph Astarita lied about firing two shots at the truck of refuge occupation spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum in 2016 after he swerved into a snowbank.
The information is detailed in a 32 page government response to Astarita's motion to dismiss the federal indictment against him. He's pleaded not guilty to three counts of obstruction of making false statements and two counts of obstruction of justice. Astarita's lawyer claimed the indictment was based on "junk science".
The government response also reveals that Oregon State Police SWAT troopers at the scene, ordinarily required to wear body cameras, didn't that day at the request of the FBI. The FBI did obtain video from FBI surveillance planes flying above the scene.
State police detectives also normally record interviews of officers who might be involved in a shooting, but they didn't that night when questioning the FBI Hostage Rescue Team members, but they didn't that night when questioning the FBI Hostage Rescue Team members, again at the FBI's request. A follow-up interview with the hostage team members also came with unusual conditions, prosecutors note.
Astarita's first rifle shot missed Finicum's truck entirely and the second entered Finicum's truck from the roof, "sending sparks into the cabin and blowing out the left rear passenger window next to Ryan Bundy," according to federal prosecutors.......
On Feb. 6, 2016, two state police detectives reinterviewed Astarita, but by then the hostage rescue team agents knew there were unaccounted-for gunshots and missing shell casings. The agents set conditions for the interview: They could only be interviewed as a group, the interview couldn't be recorded and their lawyer could be present on a speakerphone........
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
LaVoy Finicum's family has filed a lawsuit in this matter over his murder, which was done by state troopers instructed by the FBI not to wear their body cams that day.
Others in the vehicle have also filed a lawsuit in connection with what happened to them that day.
Ammon Bundy commented on his Facebook page last night.
Among other things he said "The FBI did not want the American people to see what they were planning on that isolated snowy road".
More at the Nextrush Free Blog with more to come.
The government response also reveals that Oregon State Police SWAT troopers at the scene, ordinarily required to wear body cameras, didn’t that day at the request of the FBI. The FBI did obtain video from FBI surveillance planes flying above the scene.
State police detectives also normally record interviews of officers who might be involved in a shooting, but they didn’t that night when questioning the FBI Hostage Rescue Team members, but they didn’t that night when questioning the FBI Hostage Rescue Team members, again at the FBI’s request. A follow-up interview with the hostage team members also came with unusual conditions, prosecutors note.
The FBI policy is not to allow recordings of its agents...
My best conclusion, is they do this so they can craft the narrative they wish, without having pesky facts interfere.
“So are they all, all honourable men.”
“The stench of the FBI extends well beyond Washington DC, all the way to Oregon.”
Yeah, I want to puke when the President says what a bunch of “good guys,” the 32,000 FBI field agents are. They are often criminals in the way they go about their jobs, but you lie to them and you’re going to go to jail for it, even if it’s an honest error. And the problem we citizens have is trying to find a lawyer to represent us against them we can trust.
No, they screw people for a living.
Any respect I ever had for the FBI is gone. I would refuse to even speak to them. I’m still amazed whend I think of what they tried to do to Richard Jewell. Never even mind all of their sordid, banana Republic criminality since.
“...trying to find a lawyer to represent us against them we can trust.”
LOL LOL LOL! That’s a good one!
Remember the FBI agent who got so drunk at a strip club in Florida he got onto an interstate using an off ramp, drove the wrong direction, killing a family of five. Then forcing the locals to falsify the report, blaming the family. He also did all this on his government credit card.
My best conclusion, is they do this so they can craft the narrative they wish, without having pesky facts interfere.
You are right and this needs to end now. Everything the FBI does needs to be required by law to be permanently recorded - field actions, witness interviews, internal communications and meetings. Everything. The FBI as it is now constituted cannot be trusted and its refusal to be open in its dealings is an affront and threat to government of, by, and for the People.
It’s a quote from Mark Anthony’s funeral speech in Julius Caesar. I would have hoped that I didn’t need to point that out, but I guess I do. It did not turn out so well for the coup-plotters in that era either, as Caesar was a “populist.”
All of the sanctimony about the FBI is misplaced. As an organization (as opposed to the rank and file) they have been corrupt for longer than it matters. For my part, they hit my radar screen when they framed Richard Jewell. That was enough for me.
Julius Caesar was a play written by William Shakespeare. He was an over-rated dead white male playwright writing in the time of that dead white western imperialist Queen Elizabeth I.
As long as Lon Horiuchi walks free, this will be the case.
The leaders are corrupt and the underlings are frighten little boys and girls. That what I saw when I worked with them.
The FBI doesn’t record much of anything. When interviewed, a second agent is in the room, “taking notes”. When the report is written, the final report, the notes are destroyed. And whatever may have been in those notes, is destroyed with them.
I’ve worked and trained with the FBI. All great guys, but the ones that I was with were the lowest guys on the totem pole. The local SWAT guys who were on things like the Gang Task Forces and worked with local cops all the time. I always thought that those guys had to sacrifice their firstborn to work those assignments. I was wrong. They would tell me that supervisors would have to beg agents to get on the street. They wanted to do the office thing. Show up, turn on their computers, check email, check Facebook, move some paper from one side of the desk to the other, go to lunch, repeat the morning process and join rush hour traffic on the way home.
It appears they have been believing their own BS for a long time and think they’re above the law. Because, at the end of the day, they are the top of the heap. There’s no one to investigate them, unless they get roped into something that the locals are handling, like what is happening in Oregon.
The whole FISA-Memo shows that they and the DoJ are interconnected. Who investigates who? Fairly? Sure, if they want to get you, they’ll get you. But, if you’re in the club, then you’ll be allowed to take terminal leave(McCabe) until you hit your retirement date a month or so, down the road and you’ll be forgotten about.
Among other things he said “The FBI did not want the American people to see what they were planning on that isolated snowy road”.
...
But there was another vehicle with Finicum’s. They stopped and surrendered when told to do so by law enforcement. They lived to fight another day.
Finicum proceeded to commit suicide by cop, endangering the lives of his passengers and law enforcement officers.
“Everything the FBI does needs to be required by law to be permanently recorded - field actions, witness interviews, internal communications and meetings. Everything.”
Better idea: SHUT IT DOWN!
Fire every single person now employed by the FBI and make them ineligible for future FedGov employment.
Level the J Edgar Hoover building and create a memorial park for the victims of the FBI.
Let state and local law enforcement handle the bulk of what the FBI now does.
Let DHS or the US marshals office expand a bit as an information clearing house for interstate crime.
After Waco, Ruby Ridge and LaVoy Finnicum is there anything about this rogue agency that can be trusted?
Not in my book.
“Yeah, I want to puke when the President says what a bunch of “good guys,” the 32,000 FBI field agents are.”
Right...it’s only the top brass that are bad apples. Don’t let the behavior of 31,900 Lon Horiuchis ruin it for the rest.
Welcome to the Soviet Union. Oh wait a minute. In the Soviet Union you expected this. Here you didn’t.
What none of the men at the meeting in Providence realized was that the location where they met to discuss the killing of Deegan was bugged by the FBI's organized crime division. It was an illegal wire, known as a "gypsy wire," unauthorized by any court of law but fully sanctioned by Director J. Edgar Hoover.FBI and Organized Crime - Whitey Bulger CaseThere are multiple FBI memos, never revealed until many decades later, that show the FBI knew what was coming next. They sat back and let it happen.
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