FBI Director Kashyap "Kash" Patel last month awarded the agency's 'Shield of Bravery' to members of its Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) involved in the 2016 shooting death of rancher and constitutional activist Robert “LaVoy” Finicum.
The ceremony took place in July at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., and included agent W. Joseph Astarita, who was acquitted in 2018 of charges of false statements and obstruction of justice related to the incident, in a story first reported by Ken Silva at HeadlineUSA.
Astarita and other FBI Agents had been caught removing shell cases from the crime scene to hide the number of shots that were fired into Finicum.
The FBI has long claimed that they murdered Finicum in self defense, but footage of the shooting, including overhead video, shows those statements to be lies.
In the award ceremony, Patel's FBI notes that the Bureau staged the 'traffic stop' but claims they only meant to arrest Finicum, even though the video shows agents almost immediately executing Finicum.
Video shows Finicum driving on the highway when confronted with a sudden FBI roadblock. Finicum exits the vehicle with his hands raised, and is almost immediately executed by the Oregon State Police and additional shots were fired by the FBI, and hit passengers within Finicum's vehicle. The passengers are heard praying for God's intervention to help them from the murderous federal agents.
The FBI's official narrative describes the roadblock as part of an operation responding to a 'violent extremist' militia's armed takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. The agency claims that during a traffic stop, Finicum rammed his vehicle into an HRT vehicle, trapping an agent underneath, prompting the use of deadly force.
The video shows that it was not a traffic stop, and that Finicum was swerving to avoid the roadblock which was posted on curved road. The FBI has claimed one of their agents were 'pinned underneath a vehicle' during the interaction, which the video shows is another lie.
"Why do they keep shooting" one of the passengers is heard on the video saying, after Finicum was laying on the ground bleeding to death. "Are they going to kill all of us?"
Later reports and investigations confirm that undercover agents and informants were part of the operation. These agents were embedded in ways to avoid detection by the militants.
Federal authorities have sued to remove evidence of FBI informants and undercover agents at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff from media outlets. Their argument to the court was that media outlets were “illegally in possession of protected sensitive discovery materials..."
The Finicum family and supporters have expressed outrage over the awards, viewing them as a tacit endorsement of the actions that led to Finicum's death. They contend that the recognition undermines accountability and justice. There were both overt federal agents and covert operatives involved in managing and monitoring the occupation.
The leader of the standoff, Ammon Bundy, told HeadlineUSA, “The FBI HRT caused the entire incident. They shot at the vehicle when the sheriff pulled us over causing Lavoy to flee. Then the FBI shot at the vehicle when Lavoy was driving. Then FBI agents continued to shoot into the vehicle after it was stopped—shooting my brother in the arm, (the bullet is still in his arm today). Then after it was all over the FBI secretly picked up the ammunition casings and lied in the reports and interviews about how many time the shot.”
Silva also relates that former Attorney General Bill Barr instructed the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General not to polygraph additional agents to determine whether FBI agents were telling the truth about the fatal encounter.
Kashyap “Kash” Patel is a former federal prosecutor, congressional investigator, and national security official who rose to prominence during the Trump administration. Born to Indian immigrant parents in New York, Patel earned his law degree at Pace University after studying at the University of Richmond. He began his career as a public defender before moving into federal service as a terrorism prosecutor with the Department of Justice, later serving as a national security official at the Department of Defense and the National Security Council. Patel gained national attention as a senior aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) on the House Intelligence Committee, where he played a key role in uncovering FBI and DOJ misconduct in the Russiagate hoax investigation, work that made him a trusted Trump ally.
Patel's much-younger girlfriend filed suit against former FBI Agent, whistleblower, and podcaster Kyle Seraphin this week for alleging she is a Mossad agent.
Patel has advocated for increasing the FBI’s budget, publicly affirmed the implausible official conclusion that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, and argued that the public has no further need for details about the July 13 attempt on former President Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania. Even while declaring the July 13 investigation closed, his FBI has suspiciously continued to withhold records related to the incident.
Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue, who has been suing the federal government for 30 years to uncover the truth about his brother's murder in prison, contends that the details of the operation appear to be related to the "PATCON" operation, short for "patriot conspiracy." This program, Trentadue alleges, has been ongoing for decades and involves federal agents who infiltrate and lead violent groups in order to entrap others, and also participate in crime nationwide.
Trentadue believes that the presence of multiple federal agents among the Bundy protesters, along with the actions of the notorious Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), the FBI’s counterterrorism and tactical response unit, makes it likely that they are part of the ongoing 'PATCON' program. The HRT functions as the Bureau’s version of a military special operations team and a variety of past Bureau scandals involve the team. These controversial roles include, 1992's "Ruby Ridge" incident, the 1993 siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, the 1996 Olympic Games where Richard Jewell was wrongfully blamed for placing a bomb, the September 11th, 2001 attacks, among others.
"This has all the hallmarks of a PATCON operation, and I suspect that criminal enterprise is still going on. As for Patel, he seems to want to be a J. Edgar Hoover figure catering to the worst elements in the FBI and is not the guy voters were hoping for."
Or, for that matter, firing repeatedly into the car! What the hell?!
Looking at the video, I see someone struck by the side of the vehicle, but no one appears to be “pinned underneath it”.
Finnicum leaves the vehicle with his hands raised, but at one point drops them just before he’s shot. I can’t see what he was doing.
None of this justifies tampering with the evidence, or giving an award to the scum that did so, of course.