Attorney General Jeff Sessions had just decided to review the bungled case against Cliven Bundy and his family when he got some advice from a lawyer who’s been trying to have the Department of Justice get it straight for months.
“It is hoped that after a thorough investigation, that you will fire and thus prevent [FBI agents] from doing further harm to not just the Bundys, but also the public at large. They also should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, as they are not above the law,” said lawyer Larry Klayman, founder of Freedom Watch and Judicial Watch.
Klayman, who was portrayed on the television show “West Wing,” has been prevented by a judge from joining the Bundys’ defense team.
On Thursday, Sessions was reported to have stepped into the feds’ case against the Nevada rancher.
Ian D. Prior, the Justice Department’s principal deputy director of public affairs, said the attorney general “takes this issue very seriously and has personally directed that an expert in the [Justice Department’s] discovery obligations be deployed to examine the case and advise as to the next steps.”
The decision came after Chief U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial over the government’s “willful failure to disclose information” to the defense, saying it would have been “impossible” for the four co-defendants to receive a fair trial.
In Klayman’s letter to Sessions recommending the investigation and the subsequent disciplinary action for prosecutors and investigators, he was blunt about the circumstances of the case.
He said he told Sessions the case was unwarranted, “apparently having been forced on former Attorney General Loretta Lynch by former President Barack Obama and then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.”
Klayman said Reid “had defamed the Bundy family as ‘domestic terrorists’ after they and their supporters waged a successful peaceful armed protest, as a result of Bureau of Land Management agents, many of whom were paid mercenaries and snipers, invading Bunkerville with the intent and purpose of seizing their cattle, denying them their grazing and water rights, and thus forcing the Bundys off the land which they had ranched for around 150 years.”
Klayman continued: “I added that it appeared to me and many others that the prosecution was political in nature, since it had not only been reported that Harry Reid and his son Rory, a Las Vegas lawyer, were attempting to arrange an ‘under the table deal’ to sell the land to Chinese environmental interests. In addition, after the successful standoff, provoked by BLM armed agents who had threatened the lives of the Bundy family, violently assaulted Cliven’s Sister, Margaret … attacked two of his sons, viciously kicked and harmed the family dog and killed dozens of the bulls in the ranch’s herd, it became apparent that President Obama, as he revealed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner a few weeks later, was offended when Cliven had equated his family’s treatment to a ‘Negro in the old south.'”
Cliven Bundy, sons Ammon and Ryan, and Ryan Payne of Montana were accused of 15 felonies for the 2014 standoff.
Klayman also had serious criticism for acting U.S. Attorney Steven W. Myhre, who ran the prosecution.
The Washington Times noted wasn’t the first problem for the prosecution.
“The case, which involves 19 defendants spread over three tiers, has been riddled with setbacks for the prosecution, including a previous mistrial, hung juries and acquittals on lesser figures in the April 2014 armed confrontation with BLM agents.”
Klayman, in his letter to Sessions, charged that federal agents had the Bundys on a “kill list,” mocked their Mormon faith, “and bragged about assaulting and waging a violent invasion of their land, as well as harming them.”
“Myhre and his staff committed crimes in furtherance of attempting to falsely convict Cliven Bundy,” wrote Klayman, who also works behind the scenes at the Cliven Bundy Defense Fund.
“It is incumbent that you also direct the department’s OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) and [Inspector General] to now conduct an ethics investigation and mete out appropriate strong disciplinary sanctions.”
Klayman wrote a commentary recently on WND in which he told of filing a lawsuit for damages for some of the Bundy-case defendants.
“The complaint details how the the U.S. attorney for the District of Nevada – Obama Deep State holdovers who should have been removed by now by Attorney General Jeff Sessions – working in concert with the FBI and BLM under the Obama administration, systematically violated the constitutional rights of Cliven Bundy and the other defendants in the criminal prosecution, denying them due process, equal protection and other rights under the Constitution and the law in general. Key exculpatory evidence proving Cliven’s innocence in engaging in what the Obama Justice Department called a conspiracy to threaten federal agents was shredded; material FBI 302 investigative reports were not disclosed and hidden; and the existence of three surveillance cameras showing that the Bundys surrounded government snipers positioned to possibly kill the family as they were at home were kept from defense lawyers for years. In short, the Obama Justice Department, along with its corrupt FBI then run by, you guessed it, Director James Comey, hid and/or destroyed material evidence until this obstruction of justice was discovered mostly by accident during an evidentiary hearing in the criminal prosecution just the last week.”