Author Archive: Doug Knowles

Defendant in Bundy ranch standoff, weapons case argues Las Vegas massacre would bias jury

An unusual ripple effect of the mass shooting that left 58 people dead and hundreds wounded along the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday is that it could have implications for a high-profile federal trial that is set to begin here next week — a case that also involves weapons.

A Montana militiaman who is accused of weapons charges and conspiring against the U.S. government asked a federal judge this week to delay his trial by 60 days because of the Las Vegas shooting. The charges against Ryan Payne stem from the 2014 Bundy ranch standoff in Bunkerville, Nev., and the trial is slated to start with jury selection Oct. 12.

On Thursday, Payne’s attorneys filed an additional motion, seeking to move the trial out of Las Vegas and to a different venue nearly 450 miles away: the federal courthouse in Reno, Nev. They argued that it would be impossible to seat a fair jury in light of the gun-related massacre.

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Religious Freedom Fight in Bunkerville Standoff

Ryan Bundy is fighting a new fight in the ongoing saga of the Bunkerville Trials in Las Vegas.

Bundy has been incarcerated since Jan 26, 2016 and has yet to go to trial. He has been fighting for his Constitutionally-guaranteed rights for nearly 2 years.

On Tuesday Ryan, and his brother Ammon, did not attend the scheduled court proceedings as they had not been transported from the Pahrump prison.

This is where it gets confusing for the average person.

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Motion to Recuse Gloria Navarro

A motion has been filed in the Bunkerville Standoff case to have Judge Gloria Navarro recused. The motion was filed by Ryan Bundy on Oct. 4th.

The basis for the demand for recusal is the public perception of her bias towards the prosecution and against the defendants.

The 25 page filing with attachments cites dozens of news articles pointing to her obvious bias. Citing articles from Redoubt News, Infowars, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Freedom Outpost, as well as a multitude of additional articles, as well as video reports, the motion proves overwhelming bias on the part of the judge.

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Trump okays emergency wildfire funding, urges quick Forest Service reforms

On the afternoon of October 4, President Trump’s Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney, announced the Administration would work with Congress to fund $577 million in supplemental wildfire disaster relief. The announcement came shortly after 32 members of the Congressional Western Caucus submitted a letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), calling for a swift response to the nation’s wildfire crisis. With the approval for funding also came a request from the Trump Administration for quick Forest Service management and budgeting reforms to correct the failed policies which have resulted, in part, in this year’s devastating wildfires.

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Will Trump Pardon Cliven Bundy?

Cliven Bundy at his Nevada ranch in 2014.John Locher/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP

In 2014, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy became a right-wing folk hero after he led an armed standoff with federal law enforcement over the Bureau of Land Management’s attempt to seize his cattle. He’d been illegally grazing the cows on federal land for decades and, despite court orders, refusing to pay more than $1 million in overdue grazing fees and fines. Militia groups and tea party types have rallied around Bundy as he fights criminal charges related to the “Battle of Bunkerville.”

And now that President Donald Trump has pardoned Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, infamous for his extreme use of profiling to target undocumented immigrants, Bundy’s supporters see an opportunity for him as well. Bundy has been in jail since February 2016 and is set to stand trial on October 10 for his role in the ranch standoff, along with his sons Ryan and Ammon and four other defendants.

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Dan Love on Witness List for Hearing

During the October 3rd Calendar call for the Bunkerville Protest trial, defendant Ryan Payne asked for, and was granted, an evidentiary hearing surrounding the shredding of documents pertaining to the Gold Butte Impoundment Operation.

As part of the hearing, Payne has requested to subpoena several witnesses, including Special Agent in Charge Daniel P. Love.

During the previous trials, Judge Gloria Navarro has upheld the government’s hiding of the discredited SAC Love and refused to allow him to be called in her courtroom. However, an evidentiary hearing is a bit different, specifically in that the jury will not be witnessing the testimony.

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Is the BLM Hiding Evidence in the Bunkerville Trial?

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has only been around since 1946 and has not had too many noteworthy events in their own right. The most noteworthy of all BLM operations in the past decades seems to be the Bunkerville Standoff and the underlying cattle impoundment operation that preceded the protest.

When the BLM are actively involved with any situation they, like all other departments of the Federal Government, will issue press releases so the public will understand said events (their version).

The BLM Website has an entire section devoted to press releases dating back to November 2006. There are hundreds of press releases, almost an average of one per day.

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Pete Santilli Accepts Felony Plea Deal

Pete Santilli’s attorney dropped a bombshell in a Las Vegas courtroom today when he stated that his client has reached a plea agreement with the government.

Chris Rasmussen, Santilli’s attorney, also withdrew every motion their team has filed based on the plea deal.

The agreement includes Santilli agreeing to a Felony count of obstruction of justice, based on his blocking a BLM truck prior to the Bunkerville standoff.

Santilli will receive ‘time served’ and is expected to be released within the next few days. No other details have been released for this deal.

Defense teams are scrambling to preserve Santilli’s motions and subpoenas related to the upcoming trial, as it is scheduled for jury selection to begin next week.

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Mass shooting in Las Vegas will prejudice jurors in upcoming Bundy trial, defendant argues

A defendant in the trial set to begin in Nevada next week against Cliven Bundy and others in their 2014 standoff with federal agents has asked for a delay, citing the mass shooting in Las Vegas by a man who lived a few miles from the Bundy Ranch.

The carnage will prejudice potential jurors and prevent a fair hearing, the lawyers for Ryan Payne argued in a motion to continue the trial for at least two months.

Las Vegas is deep in mourning following Sunday’s unfathomable massacre at an outdoor country music festival that killed 59 people and wounded more than 500, the lawyers wrote. The gunman, Stephen Paddock, lived in Mesquite, Nevada, just northeast of the Bundy Ranch and where Bundy and his armed supporters faced off with government agents.

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After Las Vegas shooting, Bunkerville defendant wants trial postponed

 A defendant has asked to postpone next week’s trial for seven Bunkerville ranch standoff defendants in the wake of Sunday night’s massacre in Las Vegas.
“This is not the time to pick a jury and commence trial in this case,” attorneys for independent militia leader Ryan Payne wrote in court papers filed late Monday, referring to the shooting that left at least 59 dead and resulted in hundreds of injuries. “It is clear that this unprecedented act of violence will prevent the defendants from having a fair trial in this city one week from now.”

Meanwhile, Pete Santilli, who has argued that he was a journalist covering the confrontation between the Bundy family and law enforcement, has agreed to plead guilty to felony conspiracy, his lawyer Chris Rasmussen told U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro on Tuesday.

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Lisa Bundy thankful for community support

Gem County residents Ammon and Lisa Bundy never thought their fight over grazing and water rights for their ranch would be a focus of national attention.

The Bundys see themselves as defenders of the Constitution, standing up for what they believe in. Lisa Bundy said her husband is in federal prison now because he was “defending his neighbors and challenging the federal government over his rights.”

“We are supposed to fight for our rights and fight for our land. This is God-given land, and he has designated us to take care of it,” Lisa Bundy said.

Ammon Bundy, his father and brother are in federal prison awaiting trial on charges stemming from an armed standoff that stopped government agents from rounding up Bundy cattle near Bunkerville, Nevada, in 2014.

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Cliven Bundy’s Lawyer Compares His Armed Resistance to Selma Marchers

In a court filing this week, Bundy’s lawyer, Bret Whipple, made a rather extraordinary argument: that this armed insurrection at the Bundy ranch was no different from the Selma civil rights march in 1965. He also notes that like Bundy, Martin Luther King Jr. “openly violated a federal court injunction.” Far from menacing the BLM officers with what the government calls a “massive assault,” Bundy and his co-conspirators were simply following the “pattern of political demonstrations throughout American history,” says Whipple. He suggests that the BLM was acting an awful lot like George Wallace, the Alabama governor who set the police on the (unarmed) Selma marchers.

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Hypocritical Prosecutors In Bundy Ranch Trial Seek To Ignore Court’s Order

In a motion that was filed on Thursday by Chris T. Rasmussen, attorney for reporter Pete Santilli, there was an appeal to Judge Gloria Navarro to enforce the court’s order not to use anything from the Oregon case involving Santilli, in which all the charges against him were dropped.

“Fourteen days before trial, the Government has decided to ignore this Court’s Order (Dk: 1613),” wrote Rasmussen.

“Santilli filed a motion to compel disclosure of discovery from the case in Oregon,” Rasmussen continued.  “The government arrogantly announced in their response, ‘The Oregon case is not this case.’”

Rasmussen pointed to the court’s order which states, “Judge Navarro found that “the Oregon case is not relevant… especially given that the activity related to the Malheur occupation began well after the events at issue in this case.’”

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Book reveals roots, early history of Bundy family

What Abraham Bundy and his sons saw from the crest of the ridge where they topped out in June 1916, looking east toward Mt. Trumbull, was a vast valley with stirrup-high grass that year.  What they did not account for is that the high annual rainfall that had blessed the Arizona Strip for several decades, making it vast grassland, would not last forever. Although there was not a single source of live water in the entire valley, Bundys staked the future of their families on making a go of it there. 

And to a large extent the same basic story likewise describes the people and place LaVoy Finicum came from at Cane Beds, on the Northern edge of The Strip.  LaVoy’s historic Tuckup Grazing Allotment along the Northern edge of the Grand Canyon stems back to the earliest history of Texans and Bundys grazing cattle and competing for forage on The Strip, as described in the book.

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Bundy Attorney Wants Jury Instructed On Militia And Right To Resist Tyranny

Las Vegas – Just before the court deadline at 11:03 PM MST on September 28, 2017 Ammon Bundy defense attorney Morgan Philpot filed a formal request for jury instructions in the upcoming criminal trial scheduled to begin Tuesday, October 10 of Bundy.  The filing included a request and supporting legal authority that the jury should be instructed that:

“Defendants’ rights to possess and carry firearms are not on trial. Under the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, a person has the right “to keep and bear arms,” that is to own, to possess, and to carry firearms, including for the purposes of participating in a citizen militia. Thus, [a] defendant’s possession and use of a firearm and participation in, or association with, militia activity for the purpose of resisting tyranny and usurpations of power by the federal government is protected by the Second Amendment unless that defendant intended his actions to constitute a deliberate act of force, threat or intimidation against an officer of the United States in furtherance of the alleged conspiracy charged in Count two.

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Deep State at the Department of the Interior

Ryan Zinke, the secretary of the Interior Department, said that almost a third of his agency’s employees aren’t exactly President Donald Trump supporters — or fans of the American flag, for that matter.

Holy cow. Why are they still there? Talk about a deep state.

It’s one thing to work in the federal government for people with whom you politically disagree. It’s another thing entirely to work in the federal government of a country you don’t entirely support.

In a different day, a different time, that’d be cause for a red flag followup from U.S. intel agents concerned about government collapse or takeover from communist-aligned enemies, or otherwise anti-American forces.

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Newspaper column Thomas Mitchell : Zinke’s national monument modifications too modest

Frankly, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s memo to President Trump recommending modifications to a few national monuments — including the 300,000-acre Gold Butte National Monument in Clark County — is far too modest, but it has the Democratic contingent of Nevada’s Washington delegation squealing like a pig stuck under a gate.

Zinke recommended unspecified changes to the Gold Butte boundaries but totally ignored the massive 700,000-acre Basin and Range National Monument that straddles the border between Nye and Lincoln counties, even though members of the Congressional Western Caucus recommended reducing it to 2,500 acres — “the smallest area compatible,” as the law says, to protect the Indian petroglyphs there.

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Fighting for the 1st Amendment in the Bunkerville Trial

THIS MOTION SHOULD BE SHARED WITH EVERY LEGISLATOR AND ELECTED OFFICIAL IN THE US.

Freedom of the Press has been a driving issue in the Bunkerville Standoff trials happening in Las Vegas.

From the ‘First Amendment Zone’ to the incarceration of a media reporter, the government has made every attempt to keep the truth from the public.

Pete Santilli has been an independent internet journalist for a number of years, reporting on government over reach and wasteful spending.

Santilli was the only full-time news media that attended the Bunkerville Standoff. There were other news reporters, but not before most of them watched Pete’s reports on his YouTube channel.

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Bunkerville Standoff: Make This Case Go Away!

The pressure from the elected officials and the public have made a dramatic difference in the Bunkerville Standoff case. Plea deals are being offered for multiple defendants this week.

Rumors abound that the prosecution is acting as if they have been told to “make this case go away”. There have been offers of plea agreements given to several defendants, including Ryan Payne, Pete Santilli, Eric Parker and Scott Drexler. There have been NO reports of any acceptance of offers, but negotiations continue.

Speculation is also running on possible plea agreements for other defendants scheduled for trial later, including Mel and Dave Bundy.

Now is the time to double-down on the letters and phone calls! Keep up the pressure! Let AG Sessions know what a miscarriage of justice this case has become. It is working!

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Corruption Continues in Upcoming Bundy Ranch Trial As Prosecution Asks Judge To Not Allow Defendants to Defend Themselves

The upcoming Bundy Ranch trial is already setting up as a display of the amount of corruption inside the federal court system.

The latest example of this corruption comes from Prosecutor Steven Myhre, who hasn’t made his case twice and is attempting it a third time on two defendants, which seems so clear to me to be a violation of the Constitution’s Double Jeopardy clause that Myhre should never be allowed to serve the people in any capacity ever again, along with Judge Gloria Navarro, who allowed it.

However, last week, Myhre submitted a twenty-six page request to the judge, which amounted to calling on the judge to suppress the defendants right to defend themselves.

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Judge rejects Cliven Bundy’s request to represent himself

A judge on Wednesday denied Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy’s request to represent himself at trial next month on charges related to a 2014 standoff with the Bureau of Land Management.

Defense attorney Bret Whipple, whom Bundy retained, filed court papers last week in which he asked to withdraw from Bundy’s case.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Peggy Leen asked Bundy a series of questions in order to determine whether he could act as his own lawyer in what is expected to be a lengthy trial with six other defendants.

When Leen asked whether Bundy was ready for the trial, set to begin Oct. 10, he replied, “Well I doubt it.” But he added that he was not asking to postpone the trial.

As the judge inquired further about his understanding of trial procedures, Bundy said, “I understand very little of it, but I reserve my right to do the best I can.”

Leen read through the charges against Bundy, while the acting U.S. Attorney detailed the possible sentences, which could land Bundy in prison for the rest of his life.

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Congress works to expand public lands access for hunting, fishing, outdoor shooting

Part of the effort to expand access to public lands is reforming the Equal Access to Justice Act, which is addressed in the current legislation. The Equal Access to Justice Act has been widely abused in recent years by radical special interest groups aiming to bury federal and state wildlife and land agencies in anti-lands management lawsuits, and get rich on taxpayer dollars while doing so.

Hunting in its various forms, fishing, and outdoor shooting are not just iconic American pastimes, they are essential to families who depend on the economic benefits these activities yield. Countless rural families depend on big game and fish as affordable sources of protein. And in the West, game and fish quarries are taken primarily from public lands. But it’s not just meat and fish harvested by anglers and game hunters that benefit families and foster self-reliance, it’s the commerce of outfitting and selling hunting leases that keep many ranchers, farmers and property owners afloat in a sea of fickle agricultural and real estate markets.

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Interior boss blasts fired Utah BLM law enforcement agent

In memo to Interior employees, deputy secretary makes example of controversial ex-Utah BLM lawman Dan Love, vow to clean up land agencies and protect those who report abuse.

A top Interior Department official has singled out the recent firing of a controversial Bureau of Land Management agent over Utah to illustrate a renewed commitment to hold accountable senior employees who misuse their official positions and to protect those who report such abuse.

Dan Love, who once led law enforcement for the BLM’s Nevada and Utah state offices, was fired not long after an Aug. 24 report from Interior’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) faulting him a second time for official misconduct, according to a memo circulated Friday by Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt.

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Ken Medenbach seeks judge’s permission to attend Bundy trial in Nevada

Public lands occupier Ken Medenbach, who called the Bundys his heroes on the witness stand last fall, is urging a judge to allow him to attend their federal criminal trial in Nevada next month.

Medenbach’s probation officer already denied the request. On Tuesday, Medenbach’s defense lawyer filed a motion asking U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane to overrule the probation officer and allow Medenbach to support the Bundys and attend their Nevada trial.

Medenbach is on probation following a 2016 conviction for illegal camping in Josephine County, a federal misdemeanor. He was acquitted last year of all federal charges stemming from his participation in the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon.

Attorney Matthew Schindler argues there’s no justification to bar Medenbach from the fundamental right of attending a public trial in a highly-secure federal court in Nevada, and Medenbach poses no threat to public safety.

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