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Tag: militias
After Acquittals, Federal Prosecutors Prepare For Second Malheur Trial

After Acquittals, Federal Prosecutors Prepare For Second Malheur Trial

PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors on Friday regrouped to strategize for their next trial of armed militants who occupied a wildlife center in Oregon the day after seven others at a related trial were surprisingly acquitted of all charges.

The group’s leader, Ammon Bundy, and six others were declared not guilty on Thursday of conspiracy charges stemming from their role in the armed takeover and 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

The stinging defeat left federal prosecutors scrambling as they prepare to try in February seven others who were part of the same occupation.

The criminal counts brought against them, which include conspiracy to impede federal officers, are similar to the charges on which Bundy and other were acquitted.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Portland abruptly canceled a news conference to discuss Thursday’s verdict.

“We’re just regrouping with our trial team for pending litigation,” said Kevin Sonoff, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon.

Bundy and his brother, Ryan, still face assault, conspiracy and other charges from a separate armed standoff in 2014 in Nevada.

The acquittal on criminal conspiracy counts and weapons charges delivered in federal court in Portland on Thursday also encouraged the group’s supporters.

Bundy and others cast the occupation of the wildlife refuge as a patriotic act of civil disobedience. Prosecutors called it a lawless scheme to seize federal property by force.

The relative silence of U.S. prosecutors on Friday gave little indication of how they will proceed with the trial against the Bundys in Nevada and the case against the second group of defendants in the Oregon occupation.

U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden in Nevada in a statement on Friday said the criminal case in that state is proceeding as planned with trial set for February, the same month as the second trial in Oregon.

“The Oregon case and charges are separate and unrelated to the Nevada case and charges,” Bogden said.

The Nevada case stems from a face-off the Bundy brothers and their supporters had near the Nevada ranch of their father, Cliven Bundy, with federal agents who had seized his cattle for his failure to pay grazing fees for his use of public land.

The Bundy brothers and their father remain jailed while awaiting trial in Nevada.

(Additional reporting by Joseph Ax in New York, Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

IMAGE: clockwise from top left) Ryan Bundy, Ammon Bundy, Brian Cavalier, Peter Santilli, Shawna Cox, Ryan Payne and Joseph O’Shaughnessy, limited-government activists who led an armed 41-day takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, are seen in a combination of police jail booking photos released by the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office in Portland, Oregon January 27, 2016.   Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office/Handout via Reuters/File Photo

Why Trump Terrifies The Republicans Who Created Him And His Movement

Why Trump Terrifies The Republicans Who Created Him And His Movement

In the aftermath of the final presidential debate, Republican leaders and elected officials will no longer be able to shirk their responsibility to curb Donald Trump — who has become a clear and present danger not only to their party but to this country. He isn’t dangerous because he soiled the GOP brand once more, because he mocks and taunts other Republicans, or because he is so likely to lose and take some of them down with him.

No, Trump is dangerous because he refused to agree that he would accept the election’s outcome if he loses, inviting a violent reaction by his supporters — and because he sided with the Russian Federation against US intelligence and military leaders over their alleged interference in this election. Even his running mate Mike Pence has found these bizarre positions insupportable.

What Trump’s startling debate responses showed was not merely his vacuum of proper temperament and judgment — personality defects that are all too well known by now — but his casual lack of respect for basic American institutions and traditions. His casual dismissal of profound concerns over Russian incursions against US citizens, despite the briefings he has received from American intelligence officials, was stunning. He accepted the denials by Russian officials and implied that his own country’s services are lying.

Frantically as he waves the flag, spouting nationalism and xenophobia, Trump’s “patriotism” is now exposed as a ruse. Although he pretended to denounce interference in American elections “by any country,” at the urging of moderator Chris Wallace, he has encouraged the suspected Russian intrusions into this process all along — and reaffirmed that position last night.

No doubt many Republicans have been troubled by Trump’s shadowy and compromised relationship with the regime of Vladimir Putin. His strange pronouncements about Ukraine, Syria, and other foreign issues, seeming to justify or whitewash aggressive Russian policies, are far outside the American mainstream in either party.

But he went further still when he renewed his refusal to accept the election’s results. For all his obsequious blather about Putin, nothing could be more pleasing to the Russian boss than this grotesque attempt to discredit American democracy. Putin and the oligarchs who surround him often argue that the United States is “hypocritical” in advocating democracy, transparency, and human rights, because our own practices are imperfect. When a major party presidential candidate disparaged our system as “corrupt” and “rigged” before an audience of millions, he delivered an extraordinary propaganda victory to the Kremlin.

Even if Republican officials don’t fully grasp the foulness of Trump’s end game, they must have begun to realize that he poses an existential threat to them. For any individual GOP Senator or Representative, there is a strong possibility that he or she may win even if Trump loses. But when he seeks to discredit the validity of the election as fraudulent, where does that leave those victors? By definition, he and his alt-right supporters are undermining the legitimacy of every official elected on November 8.

The hard truth, as my friend @LOLGOP and other writers have previously explained, is that the Republicans only have themselves to blame for Trump. For year they have mundanely exploited the same racial divisions, fake issues, and intellectual dishonesty that he transformed into political performance art to take over their party.

The Republicans must also look inward to find the roots of the insurrectionary attitude now adopted by Trump’s supporters, and stoked by his comments about the election. Dating back to the militia movement during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and especially with the rise of the Tea Party in reaction to Barack Obama, too many Republicans have eagerly stirred up fanatics for their own partisan benefit. They colluded with the gun lobby and other extremist groups to foment conspiracy theories and dark rumors of government oppression, while promoting fantasies of armed rebellion.

Now that Trump has stepped forward to embody those apocalyptic ideas in his failing candidacy, the Republicans are suddenly frightened of their own creation. They will try to escape responsibility for whatever havoc he may wreak, although they hatched this movement long ago. The billionaire bully and his angry mob are their own shrieking chickens, finally coming home to roost.

Undocumented Militias Patrol The Southern Border

Undocumented Militias Patrol The Southern Border

Militias Patrolling Texas Border Draw Scrutiny, Concern

Militias Patrolling Texas Border Draw Scrutiny, Concern

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times

HOUSTON — Masked militias have arrived in South Texas with semi-automatic rifles and tactical gear, causing a stir not only in border communities, but also among state officials.

News of the militias has spread at a time when the border has grown more militarized in response to an influx of Central American immigrants, many of them families and children who made the crossing unaccompanied — more than 57,000 since October.

Governor Rick Perry activated 1,000 National Guard troops last month, drawing from the Texas State Guard as well as Texas Air and Army National Guard. That activation came on top of a state Department of Public Safety border surge, bringing the state’s total monthly cost to more than $17 million.

Perry has so far said the troops do not have arrest powers, although it appears they could if authorized by the state. Immigrant advocates and some local officials oppose granting them arrest powers.

Militia members started arriving on the Texas border in recent weeks to assist as part of a deployment they called Operation Secure Our Border: Laredo Sector. The effort entails creating a training command near San Antonio and rotating groups south to patrol private ranch land on the border with the permission of ranch owners.

The early groups included Oathkeepers, Three Percenter’s Club and Patriots. Then the Minutemen announced that they, too, were deploying.

An online controversy flared after a militia member appeared on YouTube advising members to confront and intimidate those caught crossing the border illegally. There also have been tensions between militia groups, but no major clashes have been reported.

Response to the groups has been mixed.

Supporters of the militias are planning a weeklong convoy from Murrieta, California — site of recent anti-immigrant protests — to the border city of McAllen, Texas. The convoy, scheduled to start Saturday, will be “stopping to support citizen border patrols along the way.”

Mike Morris, who works with Three Percenter’s, told the Los Angeles Times that several militia groups were invited to South Texas by ranchers who face regular break-ins and “incursions” by migrant groups.

“It is a dangerous situation,” he said.

Morris said there were numerous militias operating without a central command, some armed. While some groups “observe and report,” he said, others saw the need to be armed in remote areas because if a threat arises, “the Border Patrol are stretched so thin — they may not respond.”

“Some parts of the border these days, Border Patrol has pulled back and it’s not safe,” Morris said.

Local law enforcement circulated a bulletin among themselves after a group camped out near an international bridge to Mexico in Pharr, Texas.

Some sheriffs declined the militias’ assistance, while others refused to take a position on their presence.

This week, the San Antonio Express-News published photographs of militia members patrolling the border, including an image of a Border Patrol agent leaning through an armed militia member’s car window and pointing to a map. The paper reported that a militia provided the photos on condition that the paper blur members’ faces because they feared being identified by cartels and gangs.

Outraged, members of the Texas Democratic congressional delegation wrote a letter to the state’s attorney general demanding he denounce the militias and define what they can legally do.

The dozen members of the delegation said they were “deeply disturbed” by the images of “armed and masked militia groups purportedly patrolling our Texas border in response to the arrival of unaccompanied children from Central America to our state.”

They called the militias “lawless,” warned that they “perpetuate the stigma that the border is a war zone” and requested that the attorney general “clarify the jurisdiction these militia groups have to patrol alongside local law enforcement and Border Patrol agents.”

Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican campaigning to replace Perry as governor, dismissed the letter through a spokeswoman.

Abbott backed the National Guard deployment and the state border surge, and has demanded the federal government foot the bill.

Abbott spokeswoman Lauren Bean called the letter a “partisan political stunt” and said that instead of complaining about the militias, the Democrats “should work with their Republican colleagues to secure federal funding for the state’s border security efforts.”

AFP Photo/John Moore