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The top job at Oregon State Police has gone to Casey Codding, one of two state police troopers who fatally shot a leader of the armed Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation in January 2016, Gov. Tina Kotek announced Monday. Codding, a 27-year veteran of Oregon State Police, shot Robert ‘LaVoy’ Finicum in the back after Finicum sped his truck toward a roadblock of state SWAT police and FBI agents. State police withheld the names of the two officers who fired at Finicum, but a witness let Codding’s name slip during subsequent court hearings about the shooting. Now superintendent, Codding started...

**SNIP** Trump’s four years in office greatly empowered anti-government extremists. His Interior Department repeatedly hosted people who want to see federal lands sold off. Fierce critics of endangered species protections and federal land management were tapped for powerful department posts. William Perry Pendley, a conservative lawyer with extreme anti-environmental views who spent his career lobbying for the sale of federal lands, was put in charge of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management. Trump issued pardons for people like Utah state Rep. Phil Lyman (R) - who in 2014 led anti-federal land protesters on an illegal ATV ride on public lands that...

A group of peaceful protestors took over a small section of uninhabited public land in the Pacific Northwest. They were conscientious objectors to federal policies they claimed were unconstitutional and discriminatory. No one was hurt and no weapons were preemptively drawn. Law enforcement asked their leaders to a parley to bring about a peaceful resolution, and they quickly agreed. While on the way to that meeting, they were subsequently ambushed and bullets riddled their vehicle. With his arms wide in the air, one of the leaders was ruthlessly gunned down as a helicopter looked from above. Another group of protestors,...

"Dad was One Cowboy who stood to uphold and defend the United States Constitution against domestic adversaries" Haunted by the mental picture of the body of patriot cowboy LaVoy Finicum lying in the winter Oregon snow, Canada Free Press wrote back in March of 2016… ““Maybe some day, a song writer with heart will come along and mark his passing with ‘The Ballad of LaVoy Finicum’ to remind us all in song about the cold-blooded cruelty of governments who put power and one-upmanship ahead of the dignity of human life.” That day has come. Much better than any ballad is...

Three environmental advocacy groups Monday filed suit to block the renewal of a 10-year grazing permit for Hammond Ranches Inc., run by Dwight Hammond Jr. and son Steven Hammond. Western Watersheds Project, the Center for Biological Diversity and Wildearth Guardians filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Pendleton against the interior secretary, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the district manager of the land bureau’s Burns District office. The three groups argue that then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s renewal of the grazing permit after the Hammonds were issued pardons violated federal administrative regulations because it failed to consider the...

After less than a day of deliberation, a jury of nine men and three women found FBI special agent Joseph Astarita not guilty of lying about a high-profile police shooting during the 2016 Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation. Astarita faced two counts of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice. The charges stemmed from a critical moment during the occupation when spokesman Robert ‘LaVoy’ Finicum was shot and killed by Oregon State Police after he fled a traffic stop along a remote stretch of highway in eastern Oregon.

President Trump on Tuesday pardoned a pair of Oregon ranchers whose arson conviction became a focus for opponents of federal government land ownership. Dwight Hammond, 76, and his son Steven, 49, were convicted in 2012 and sent to prison on arson charges. They had set a series of fires on their ranch that spread to federal land. The Hammonds’ case became the inspiration for the 40-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. The organizers wanted to protest federal land ownership. The Hammonds distanced themselves from the occupiers and didn't endorse the action. In a statement Tuesday...

An FBI agent has been indicted on accusations that he lied about firing at a rancher in 2016 when officers arrested leaders of an armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in rural Oregon. Sources familiar with the case say the agent will face allegations of making a false statement with intent to obstruct justice, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported Tuesday. The indictment stems from more than a yearlong investigation by the U.S. Justice Department inspector general. The agent will be identified when summoned to appear Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Portland. Authorities moved in on Ammon Bundy and other leaders...

If only the Trump administration would step in and demand fairness from the Bureau of Land Management for ranchers and farmers in memory of the late LaVoy Finicum No rancher’s cattle straying away to graze the grass on land the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) considers their own will ever get away with it. While seven ranchers still languish in jail awaiting trial from incidents connected to the 2016 Malheur National Forest Standoff where rancher LaVoy Finicum was shot down under questionable circumstances, up to 30,000 aimless hangers on to the Rainbow Family of Living Light have outfoxed he BLM...

Freedom of the Press #13 (Canada Free Press and Outpost of Freedom Columnist, Gary Hunt has been released from Jail and is back home safe and sound for the time being. Hunt whose exhaustive Series on American Freedom and Sovereignty chronicled the 2014 Bundy Standoff in Nevada to the 2016 Occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, had refused a judge’s order to “cease and desist writing about the trial in Oregon and had gone to name an all out FBI informants in his reporting. For that he spent the last week in jail and writes about his experience at the...

FBI agents admit in court papers that they had no arrest warrant when they took Duane Ehmer into custody at a checkpoint outside the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 27, 2016, contrary to an agent's testimony earlier this week. It wasn't until the day after Ehmer's arrest that a federal magistrate judge signed a criminal complaint against Ehmer based on an FBI agent's probable cause affidavit. Ehmer's lawyer Michele Kohler has urged the judge to suppress evidence found in what she contends was an unlawful search of Ehmer's car and horse trailer after his arrest without a warrant. ......

Seven people involved in the anti-federal government occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge have been found not guilty of conspiring to impede federal workers from doing their jobs, including Ammon and Ryan Bundy. A jury found all seven remaining occupiers not-guilty of all charges except for one charge that has yet to be disclosed, KBOI reported.

The leaders of an armed group who seized a national wildlife refuge in rural Oregon were acquitted Thursday in the 41-day standoff that brought new attention to a long-running dispute over control of federal lands in the U.S. West. Tumult erupted in the courtroom after the verdicts were read when an attorney for group leader Ammon Bundy demanded his client be immediately released, repeatedly yelling at the judge. U.S. marshals tackled attorney Marcus Mumford to the ground, used a stun gun on him several times and arrested him. U.S. District Judge Anna Brown said she could not release Bundy because...

Franklin Graham answered FBI's call to save lives, he testifies during Oregon standoff trial Maxine Bernstein | The Oregonian/OregonLive By Maxine Bernstein | The Oregonian/OregonLive Email the author | Follow on Twitter on September 29, 2016 at 12:48 PM, updated September 29, 2016 at 7:28 PM The Rev. Franklin Graham testified Thursday that he flew his own plane from North Carolina to Oregon in February to try to save lives, concerned about the four holdouts occupying a federal wildlife sanctuary as well as the FBI agents trying to get them to surrender. With no formal training, Graham said he relied...

It was a rough morning for U.S. attorneys arguing the federal government’s case against Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy and six other defendants accused of conspiring to occupy an Oregon wildlife refuge. A visibly frustrated Judge Anna Brown struck from the record a previous ruling that effectively allowed evidence from defendants’ Facebook accounts into next month’s trial. Despite calling an assistant U.S. attorney, two legal assistants and an FBI agent as witnesses, prosecutors weren’t able to explain to the court how protected information from 11 Facebook accounts used by defendants ended up being shared as part of discovery. Judge Brown ordered...

MISSOULA – U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy ... Putnam said he’s attended several Oath Keepers rallies in the past, including three in Portland, Oregon and several at a memorial on the highway outside Burns, Oregon where LaVoy Finicum was killed by law enforcement in a standoff following the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife refuge. ... Jason Van Tatenhove, a Eureka-area man who serves as the national media director for the Oath Keepers, said he had doubts about the performance of Robertson’s federal public defense attorney, Michael Donahoe, saying he had refused, for example, to push to get an...

Senate Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is reportedly hoping the federal government — specifically resident Barack Obama’s administration — will grab a stretch of land in Southern Nevada near the infamous Bundy Ranch, now that many in the Bundy group are in federal custody. The reason that the resident hasn’t had an opportunity to look at that very closely is that is where the Bundy family raised the hell that they did. Now most of them are in jail so maybe we can move forward on that,” Reid said, according to a Nevada political observer, Jon Ralston. ... Nevada...

Bullet casings from rounds allegedly fired from an FBI agent at LaVoy Finicum’s truck back on January 26, 2016 have conveniently vanished into thin air following a FBI investigation of itself... at least one FBI agent was alleged to have been under investigation by the FBI for firing two shots in the direction of the truck at the time it averted a road block and slammed into a snow bank, although the FBI special agent in charge claimed he didn’t know who he was investigating because he didn’t know who fired. Yes, he actually said that! ... The reason they...

As we are digging further into the murder of LaVoy Finicum and the ambush of the protestors from the Oregon refuge and their subsequent arrest, we are finding very disturbing information. ... that the White House orchestrated the entire thing and that when it comes to calling the shots, we don't look to Barack Hussein Obama Soetoro Sobarkah, but rather to Obama's mama, Valerie Jarrett. First, let me remind you that there are over 600 emails and texts that indicate the Governor Brown was in the loop on everything that was going on in Oregon during the protest at the...

New footage has emerged that was taken by one of the passengers in the car with LaVoy Finicum that detail his final moments during an encounter with Oregon State Police and the FBI.