ALL charges against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy DROPPED after judge tosses case over ‘flagrant misconduct’ by FEDS
01/08/2018 / By JD Heyes
Natural News readers remember our outrage when, in 2014, longtime Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s ranch and cattle operation was invaded by heavily armed federal agents with the Bureau of Land Management who looked more like special forces operators than peaceful public servants.
“The federal government is out of control yet again, staging a heavily militarized siege of the Bundy cattle ranch in Nevada, where the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has decided to bring a literal army of heavily armed ‘soldiers’ to intimidate the Bundy family and steal his hundreds of cattle,” founder/editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, reported in April 2014.
At the time, I noted how the so-called “mainstream media” blacked out the story altogether, despite its great importance.
“Now, I’ve been a journalist for more than 20 years. And I can tell you that when a government agency — especially one like the BLM, which does not routinely involve itself in Special Forces-like operations — shows up on an American citizen’s property with hundreds of agents with body armor and assault rifles…scores of vehicles and air cover (helicopters), just to enforce a ‘court order,’ that is a news story,” I wrote the same month.
Now it is just as likely that the legacy media will ignore what we won’t: Cliven Bundy and his family have just been vindicated in a subsequent case the government filed against them because of outrageous, illegal behavior by federal prosecutors.
As Fox News reported, U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro dismissed all charges against Bundy and Co. after declaring a mistrial last month for prosecutorial misconduct. Citing “flagrant prosecutorial misconduct,” Navarro tossed the case after it was discovered during the trial that federal prosecutors had withheld information deemed favorable to the defense.
Navarro really had no choice. She had already threatened a mistrial after prosecutors released thousands of pages of documents to the defense late. In all, the government was late in handing over more than 3,300 pages of documents.
“In this case, the failures to comply with Brady were exquisite, extraordinary,” said Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano. “The judge exercised tremendous patience.
“Either the government lied or [its actions were] so grossly negligent as to be tantamount to lying,” Napolitano continued. “This happened over and over again.” (Related: DOJ launches probe into FED prosecutors in Cliven Bundy FED case who HID evidence.)
What happened? Why was this hard-working rancher and his family, who have run cattle on the same land for decades, on trial in the first place? Adams explained in his piece:
The Bundy family has run cattle on the scrubland since the 1870’s, but in 1993, the government decided it “owned” the land and would start charging Bundy rent fees for his cows grazing on it. The Bundy family refused to pay the fees, so BLM went to court over the payments…
In 1990 and out of the blue, the federal government — in an effort to protect the desert tortoise — moved to limit grazing rights on federal land in Nevada, encompassing ground that Bundy had utilized for decades. In 1993 he refused to renew his grazing rights, claiming the BLM and the federal government had no sovereignty over the state of Nevada. The government subsequently fined him and by 2014 he had amassed a $1 million ‘bill’ with Uncle Sam.
Enter the BLM.
What’s more, the Bundy’s long claimed malfeasance by federal agents and prosecutors, and powerful evidence supporting their claims appeared in The Oregonian newspaper last month. Reports said the BLM used “incredible bias” during the handling of the 2014 standoff, in which scores of citizens — also heavily armed — showed up at the Bundy ranch to defend him.
What’s more, an investigative report by a BLM special agent found fellow agents referred to the Bundys as “retards” and “douche bags.” Agents also bragged about “grinding” a Bundy family member’s face into gravel, as well as the lead prosecutor and Nevada acting U.S. Attorney Steve Myhre’s “preferred ignorance” of details regarding the investigation that would benefit the Bundys in their defense.
J.D. Heyes is also editor-in-chief of The National Sentinel.
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Tagged Under: big government, BLM, Bundy ranch, Bundy standoff, cattle ranch, Cliven Bundy, corruption, Department of Justice, federal agents, federal prosecutors, flagrant misconduct, heavily armed, mistrial, Nevada, Probe, SWAT, Tyranny
