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(Law enforcement officials gather in Bend for a March 2016 press conference, where they announced that the fatal Jan. 26, 2016, shooting of refuge occupation spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum/Beth Nakamura)
-- State police went along with unusual demands by the FBI to interview the agents from the Hostage Rescue Team as a group and not record them.
Conducting a group interview of officers -- whether they fired shots or witnessed a shooting -- is unheard of, state police detective Scott Hill testified.
But Hill said he agreed to the ultimatum because he was afraid none of the agents would talk if he didn’t. Hill was part of a state task force, led by the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, investigating the shooting.
The reason given why an FBI supervisor demanded the group interview in February 2016 came out at the end of the trial.
In his closing argument, defense attorney David Angeli told jurors that the agents didn’t have legal representation with them since they were so far from home, FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. They apparently wanted safety in numbers without a lawyer there.
But it’s likely that the Hostage Rescue Team agents consulted with a legal representative from the FBI Agents Association and could have had someone on the phone for any interview or flown out to help them.
“Had I known earlier there was a serious question about who shot and whether HRT agents were implicated, I would have involved the FBI’s Inspection Division for the benefit of all involved,’’ said Bretzing, Oregon’s FBI agent in charge at the time.
Investigators from the FBI’s Inspection Division wouldn’t have agreed to a group interview, he said.
The Hostage Rescue Team is reportedly considering requiring a legal representative travel with the team on its missions.
(The truck refuge occupation spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum was driving on Jan. 26, 2016 when he raced from a police stop and swerved into a snowbank to avoid a police roadblock on U.S. 395/ Deschutes County Sheriff's Office)
-- State police, ordinarily required to wear body cameras, agreed not to wear the cameras during the arrests of the occupation leaders to protect the identities of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team agents.
State police detectives also normally record interviews of officers who might be involved in a shooting.
However, they didn't the night of the shooting when questioning the FBI Hostage Rescue Team members, again at the FBI's request, or during the February interview of the agents.
No one testified why the FBI didn’t want their interviews recorded.
The FBI typically doesn’t record such interviews. If the FBI’s Inspection Division had done the interview, the federal investigator would write up a report of the agent’s statement, the agent could make changes and then swear that it was true, providing a signed sworn statement.
In this case, the Hostage Rescue Team agents had someone who wasn’t at the scene write a “communal’’ FBI report on what they saw or did that day.
(Greg Bretzing, Oregon's FBI special agent in charge, at a March 2016 news conference, announcing the investigation into FBI Hostage Rescue Team agents)
-- Astarita and his colleagues on the Hostage Rescue Team each testified that they did a standard security items check, walking around the shooting scene to look for remnants of flash-bang grenades such as pins and other personal gear after Finicum was killed.
But a former head of the FBI’s training program for new agents -- who also trained Astarita in 2005 -- said nothing should have been moved at the shooting scene. And if it was moved for safety reasons, he said, the shooting investigators should have been told.
The investigators testified that they learned that FBI agents scoured the scene only after the fact by watching video from FBI planes monitoring the operation. Further, other flash-bang grenades and pins remained at the scene after the video caught the suspected agents bending down and picking things up at the scene, according to trial testimony.
Bretzing, Oregon’s head FBI agent at the time, testified that the search was unusual and concerning.
(The bullet strikes to Finicum's truck / Court exhibit)
-- Shooting investigators could find only two shell casings of eight shots fired at the roadblock. And the FBI didn’t turn over their guns for immediate examination.
Both of those things hampered the investigation, prosecutors said.
Had an FBI agent fired his rifle that day, the agent is required to alert a supervisor, who would call out the bureau’s Shooting Incident Response Team to investigate, seize the weapon and conduct a full inquiry into the shooting.
None of the agents’ rifles were immediately examined by the FBI or the shooting investigators because none of the agents said they fired that night.
After the shooting investigators found an unaccounted-for bullet hole in the roof of Finicum’s truck, FBI supervisors again asked all the Hostage Rescue Team agents if they had fired any rounds.
Astarita and his boss who was also at the roadblock, supervisory agent B.M., said they independently examined their own rifles in their 10-person tent at the tactical operations center at Burns airport a day or two after the shooting. They didn't find anything unusual to report, they testified. B.M.'s identity also was shrouded because the FBI said he was on active duty with the Army Reserves, involved in special operations.
Astarita was acquitted on charges that he lied when he denied taking two shots at Finicum’s truck at the roadblock after it crashed into a snowbank. One bullet hit the roof of the truck and the other missed as Finicum got out of the truck with his hands up at the roadblock, investigators said. No one has acknowledged taking the shots.
Officer 1 fired three times at Finicum’s truck as it bore down on the roadblock and then two shots that struck Finicum when he walked away from the truck. Officer 2 fired one bullet that hit Finicum.
(FBI tactical gear/ FBI)
-- FBI supervisory agent Mike Ferrari testified that the FBI recently has standardized how its SWAT operators load their rifle magazines. They now must put in 28 bullets.
Ferrari said the change didn’t stem from this case but because of a number of incidents throughout the FBI. He did not explain what those incidents involved.
- interjection by RTR Truth Media... we have the technology that each bullet an officer loads could be marked by adding nano-dye.
In this case, none of the FBI’s rifles were examined by investigators the night of the shooting.
The number of rounds initially loaded into Officer 1’s rifle became a point of contention during the trial. The defense argued Officer 1 could have taken the two disputed shots; Officer 1 said he loaded his rifle magazine with 29 bullets and 24 were remaining, confirming his account that he fired five shots that day and not the two disputed rounds. The defense countered that Officer 1’s rifle capacity is 31 bullets.
In this video Curt Kruse looks into the fact that LaVoy was murdered while both his hands were in the air in gesture of compliance and surrender. His hands clearly held no weapon. Curt Kruse felt that this video was necessary in light of the fact that the government continues its attempts to justify murdering LaVoy.
#LaVoyFinicum #CurtKruse #RTRTruthMedia
We are all deeply grateful to Curt Kruse for first offering the following video for publication. We are posting this video to our channel and on our website with the hope and expectation that our subscribers will explore the links contained in this attached description. This makes the fifth deep analysis video of various factors in the wrongful death of LaVoy Finicum, who was murdered by the Oregon State Police with assistance by the FBI in Oregon in January 2016. We at RTR Truth Media ask that our subscribers explore the links below, share them, and also go to the Finicum Family Website for more information.
Spend some time browsing around the Finicum family’s website. Buy LaVoy’s novel. Make a donation. Spread the word. Share this link. Help this American cowboy family defend their ranch against a vicious government encroachment. Click this link and you’re there. Thank you!
While you’re there, consider purchasing the DVD which The Mental Militia created for the Finicum family’s fundraising efforts. That video is a YouTube collage of various videos and includes the first four “forensic” videos by Curt Kruse.
RTR would also like to thank all of those who have continued this advocacy such as the Mental Militia, Alias Elias, J Grady, The Center for Self Governance, ReDoubt News, The Free Range Report and many many more.
FBI agent W. Joseph Astarita and several colleagues on the bureau's elite Hostage Rescue Team are under investigation for alleged "lack of candor'' in their statements after the shooting of refuge occupation leader Robert "LaVoy" Finicum in January 2016, according to a new court filing.
The federal agents are the subject of an ongoing administrative investigation and review by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General, federal prosecutors noted in the document filed in court Wednesday.
Astarita was among FBI agents and state police officers trying to arrest leaders of the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge as they drove off the bird sanctuary to a community meeting 100 miles away along remote U.S. 395.
Prosecutors had alleged that Astarita covered up that he fired at Finicum's truck after it swerved into a snowbank at a police roadblock off the highway on Jan. 26, 2016. They also alleged Astarita and his colleagues on the Hostage Rescue Team picked up and removed shell casings from the shooting scene.
One shot hit the roof of the truck's cab and shattered the rear driver's side window and the other missed entirely -- both distinctly audible on the video captured by rear seat passenger Shawna Cox.
In August, a jury acquitted Astarita of all federal charges.
While Justice Department officials had confirmed in the past that the agents would be investigated for alleged misconduct, the legal brief that prosecutors wrote mentions for the first time that the inquiry regards their alleged "lack of candor.''
Prosecutors made the notation in a footnote in their legal response to a motion by Astarita's lawyers governing whether certain documents from the Astarita trial should remain under the court's protective order.
At trial, the government prosecutors played for jurors the FBI's aerial infrared video that they said captured Hostage Rescue Team agents scouring the scene that night for evidence, bending down and looking under trucks and appearing to pick things up.
Each of the federal agents testified they were conducting searches for remnants of flash-bang grenades or for lost gear. They also testified that they didn't hear gunfire come from Astarita and didn't see him fire any shots that day.
Astarita took the witness stand and said he had never fired his gun on duty and didn't know the type of ammunition he loaded into his rifle the day of Finicum's stop.
With Astarita's acquittal, the mystery remains as to who fired twice after Finicum swerved into the snowbank, stepped from his truck with his hands in the air and shouted, "Go ahead and shoot me.''
Moments later, two state police SWAT officers shot and killed Finicum after he had walked away from his truck and was seen reaching into his inner left jacket pocket where police said he had a loaded 9mm Ruger pistol. The fatal shooting was ruled justified by the Deschutes County district attorney.
Investigators recovered only two shell casings of eight shots fired at the roadblock.
Finicum's family has a pending wrongful death lawsuit against the FBI, Oregon State Police, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and others.