Unsealed court documents detail how the team of prosecutors tasked with convicting Cliven Bundy and his sons of crimes relating to a 2014 armed standoff failed to turn over potential exculpatory evidence to the court, The Oregonian reports.
The Bundys’ case ended in a mistrial Dec. 20 after Judge Gloria Navarro ruled that prosecutors violated the civil rights of the defendants by withholding evidence supporting the Bundys’ case.
Navarro is considering dismissing the case “with prejudice” and blocking prosecutors from retrying the case. Her decision will come Jan. 8, according to The New York Times.
“There were approximately 3,000 pages that were provided to us only after we started trial,” Bundy lawyer Bret D. Whipple told TheNYT. “I personally have never seen anything like this, especially in a case of such importance.”
Those 3,000 pages include the Bundys’ requests for multiple federal assessments that showed the Bundy family was likely not dangerous. Prosecutors called the requests part of a “long list of frivolous and vexatious pleadings,” until a government witness, under cross examination, revealed knowledge of the assessments in court, The Oregonian reports.
Defense attorney’s asked federal prosecutors to hand over Inspector General reports on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) agent Dan Love, who directed the BLM raid on the Bundy ranch to seize the family’s cattle over decades of unpaid grazing fees.
Love was fired from the agency in September for corruption and unethical behavior.
Prosecutors had dismissed the allegations and investigations of Love as an “urban legend,” but ended up handing over 500 pages worth of reports on Love in December, according to The Oregonian.
The Bundys’ lawyers made two requests to Navarro for a special “discovery monitor” to ensure that all relevant documents were being turned over by the prosecution. Both requests were denied.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, however, launched an investigation into prosecutorial misconduct after the mistrial.
Washington Representative Matt Shea is all over these leaks coming out of the Bunkerville ‘Trial of the Century’. Exclusively through Redoubt News, Shea tells the world about ANOTHER leaked document that has BLM Agent Kent Klemen trying to discredit the Larry Wooten whistleblower report, but it actually reinforces Wooten’s information.
Klemen Report
To begin with, Agent Kent Klemen was a government witness in this case, who was asked by Acting US Attorney Steven Myhre to investigate the shredding of the documents found at the Incident Command Post (ICP) after the BLM and FBI left the area. Not only did Myhre want Klemen to lead the investigation but Myhre also defined the parameters of this same investigation.
It is interesting that this trained investigator never ask anyone involved “Why” they were shredding documents or “Who” directed them to shred the documents.
Now, we have AUSA Myhre asking his favorite investigator to handle this whistle-blower report, as well. The Klemen report begins:
On February 17,2017, BLM Special Agent (SA) Larry “Clint” Wooten was removed from the Bundy investigative team at the request of lead prosecutor First Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Myhre. Myhre stated that Wooten had made recent statements that Wooten believes that the BLM lacks law enforcement authority. Additionally, Wooten recently stated to Bundy case prosecutors that in Wooten’s opinion the government withheld exculpatory evidence involving Special Agent-in-Charge (SAC) Dan Love.
He then explains how he got onto this investigation:
Myhre requested that I collect and review Wooten’s case materials to identify any previously undisclosed information. Myhre specifically requested that I review Wooten’s “rumor log” that Wooten implied to the prosecutors contained this withheld exculpatory information. Myhre also requested that I review any material related to Wooten’s claim that Dan Love ordered BLM officers to “rough up” Bundy family members or to “kick Cliven Bundy in the teeth” that Wooten said BLM SA Rand Stover knew about.
You can see, by their own wording, that they thought the Wooten disclosures were detrimental to their case. Calling it a “rumor log” shows they want the report discredited.
“Potential Issues/Critical Vulnerabilities.”
The reviewed materials included calendar notes for a conference call with prosecutors on October 14, 2016. Listed under “Critical Vulnerabilities”, the report itemizes the following topics that the BLM agent felt were critical:
1. BLM was heavy handed even cruel in the enforcement of the court order.
2. BLM lacked law enforcement authority in their case.
3. BLM is a poor manager of the resources such as grazing.
4. DL (Dan Love) had a personal agenda and is immoral (jury appeal)
This indicates this is nothing new to AUSA Myhre. The prosecutors knew about this since the conference call on October 14, 2016! It did not suddenly get revealed to him in February 2017. He knew about this months before.
Wooten Report
However, nothing was done until Larry Wooten pressed the issue. The prosecutors never turned over this information to the defense, as is required under the Brady Rules. Not when they first learned of it, and not when Larry Wooten wrote his email report. Not even when Klemen was told to investigate Wooten after he wrote the whistle-blower email.
And not anytime during the first two trials of these 19 men. It was not revealed until well into the third trial.
This report verifies that the Bureau of Land Management’s own investigator believed that the BLM was in violation of the law during the Bunkerville protest!
It is time for the prosecution to stop playing fast and loose with the Brady rules. Judge Gloria Navarro needs to take control and sanction these rogue government employees.
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“Discovery” in the Bundy Case is reportedly so vast that it contains the texts of entire novels, and hundreds of pages of apparently irrelevant medical records, but did not reveal that FBI agent Charles Johnson was arrested last year, that Dan Love was under investigation, or that Greg Burleson was an FBI informant.
by Staff Writer August 10, 2017
“Discovery” in a court case refers to the evidence, exhibits and reports that one party intends to use to prove its case. In a typical criminal case, the government’s “discovery” contains the various police reports, photos and other exhibits that form the basis of a prosecution. Court rules generally require prosecutors to reveal their discovery to defendants within prescribed time limits.
But like other aspects of the Bunkerville, Nevada (‘Bundy Ranch’) case, the discovery is unusual in many ways. It is so vast that it cannot be delivered or stored in printed form. Defense attorneys say they are given passwords to government search engines which contain the discovery.
The Bundy case discovery is so massive that a west coast law firm has reportedly contracted to index and categorize the discovery. Although the discovery is reportedly machine-searchable, those who have access to it say it is difficult to navigate through.
As in many cases, defendants and their lawyers are told they must keep the discovery secret from the public—upon penalty of contempt of court. This is true even though the discovery is said to contain public documents and records. At least two news organizations, Battle Born Media and the Las Vegas Review Journal, have filed petitions to have some access to the secret discovery; but the court has denied each request.
Roger Roots, a paralegal who works for the Cliven Bundy defense team, told Redoubt News that the discovery is a “bucket of snakes.” Roots says he has typed search terms into the discovery search engine and randomly found the full texts of at least two entire novels. The novels, says Roots, seem to have nothing to do with the case. Roots said he has also randomly found hundreds of pages of children’s medical records that don’t appear to have anything to do with the case.
There are Court precedents such as Brady v. Maryland that require prosecutors to provide “exculpatory” evidence (meaning any evidence that tends to show defendants may be innocent) to defendants. There are also precedents requiring prosecutors to provide personnel records of government agents who may testify if the agents have previously been caught lying. Yet the discovery did not contain any reports of the investigation of Dan Love (in which Dan Love was found to be under an ethical cloud for obstruction and corruption). Defense lawyers found out about the Dan Love investigation on the internet.
Nor did the discovery contain information that FBI agent Charles Johnson (the agent behind the fake “Longbow Productions” documentary interviews) was arrested last year in Colorado. Defense lawyers found out about the arrest after The Intercept published a story on the topic. Charles Johnson had already testified in the first Bunkerville trial, and defendants were not able to discredit Johnson with the information.
Nor did the discovery contain any information that codefendant Greg Burleson has worked as a paid FBI informant. Defendants found out about this when Burleson’s lawyer cross-examined one of Burleson’s FBI handlers during trial. This may be significant because Burleson’s public statements were by far the scariest and most threatening statements made by any of the defendants, and it seems prosecutors intended to use Burleson’s bizarre statements as a means to convict the other defendants.
