On the November day when the trial of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy was supposed to start in Las Vegas, I met a man outside the courtroom named Doug Knowles. A Bundy supporter who had been covering the proceedings for a conservative website, Knowles confidently assured me, “This case is never going to get to a jury.” I thought he was overly optimistic. After all, on its face, the government’s case seems like a slam dunk. Much of what the Bundys and the other defendants did was captured on video. The photos of protesters pointing semi-automatic weapons in the direction of federal officers are damning. The government has thousands of emails and Facebook messages from the Bundys and others implicating them in the effort to recruit armed gunmen to face down federal officers. At least one of the original defendants in the case has taken a plea deal in which he agreed to help the prosecution. Barely a month later, though, Knowles’ prediction seems prescient. The government’s case against Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan, and Montana militiaman Ryan Payne over their participation in the armed standoff near Bundy’s ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada, is in shambles. A federal judge, Gloria Navarro, could declare a mistrial as early as Wednesday based on allegations that the prosecution has failed to turn over critical evidence to the defense in a timely fashion. If that happens, it would mark the fourth time in the past year and a half that the Justice Department has put the Bundys and their supporters on trial and largely failed to convict them. Also dogging the government’s case is the problem of Dan Love. Love should be the government’s star witness. Instead, the BLM recently fired him for misconduct in another case and for improperly using his position to get coveted tickets for friends to attend the Burning Man arts festival in 2015. The government chose not to call him as a witness in prior trials, but the defense has pressed for him to take the stand in the current trial, hoping he’d be a big liability for the government. He testified via video at an evidentiary hearing in November, when he disclosed the presence of snipers at the ranch, and he was critical of the government’s handling of the standoff. Making matters worse, Larry Wooten, a former BLM investigator who worked on the Bundy case, filed a whistleblower complaint with the Justice Department, alleging that he’d been removed from the investigation in February after he’d raised concerns about misconduct by Love. He suggested the government had failed to turn over evidence of such misconduct to defense lawyers for the Bundys. He also alleged that BLM officials were biased against the Bundys, writing that during the investigation, “at any given time, you could hear subjects of this investigation openly referred to as ‘ret*rds,’ ‘r*d-necks,’ ‘overweight woman with the big jowls,’ ‘d*uche bags,’ ‘tractor-face,’ ‘idiots,’ ‘in-br*d,’ etc., etc.” He wrote that during the ranch standoff, Love had told agents to “kick Cliven Bundy in the mouth (or teeth) and take his cattle.” Wooten alleged that BLM officers had bragged about using excessive force during the arrest of Dave Bundy in 2014 and “grinding his face into the ground.” More significant for the prosecution, Wooten wrote that on multiple occasions, Love “specifically and purposely ignored U.S. Attorney’s Office and BLM civilian management direction and intent as well as Nevada State Official recommendations in order to command the most intrusive, oppressive, large-scale, and militaristic trespass cattle impound possible.” He added, “The investigation indicated that there was little doubt there was an improper cover-up in virtually every matter that [Love] participated in, or oversaw and that [Love] was immune from discipline and the consequences of his actions.”...more
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