This is an example why many on the right distrust the federal government.
As Washington conservatives question whether partisan FBI officials working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller have stacked the deck against President Donald Trump, a criminal case in Las Vegas points to the sort of federal prosecutorial abuses that give the right cause for paranoia.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial in the infamous 2014 Bunkerville standoff case against rancher Cliven Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan, and co-defendant Ryan Payne, on the grounds that federal prosecutors improperly withheld evidence.
The standoff, in which both sides were armed, was a national news story that pitted a Western rancher against federal officialdom. Bureau of Land Management officials had tried to seize Bundy’s cattle following a decades-long dispute over grazing fees. The rancher had stopped paying federal grazing fees in 1993 to protest a BLM directive that he cut back on cattle grazing in order to accommodate the threatened desert tortoise.
In the course of the trial, Navarro found that prosecutors failed to share video surveillance, maps and FBI interview reports with defense attorneys. “A mistrial in this case is the most suitable and only remedy available,” Navarro explained.
Via Townhall