Bundy Ranch Redux (updated)

or maybe bundy ranch squared

In 2018, a federal judge dismissed criminal charges against three members of the Bundy family and one of their supporters, ending a trial over the 2014 standoff between the Nevada ranchers and the Bureau of Land Management. U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro dismissed the charges “with prejudice,” preventing the DOJ from attempting to bring them back to court. The dismissal, later upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, followed the discovery of a whistleblower letter from a BLM investigator, and a pattern of obvious Brady violations — failures by prosecutors to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense. From the opinion of the 9th Circuit panel:

Tonight, Tucker Carlson showed us this:

That’s the “QAnon Shaman,” Jacob Chansley, walking casually through a crowd of Capitol police on January 6. Here it is on video, with the screenshot above taken from the 38-second mark:

Citizen Free Press @CitizenFreePres

Tucker releases never before seen J6 video: "The tapes show the capitol police never stopped Qanon shaman. They helped him. They acted as his tour guides."

Now, here’s what the DOJ said that Chansley did:

Specifically, prosecutors said he engaged in “violent entry and disorderly conduct” inside the Capitol. You’ve just watched him walk around calmly with, and through, teams of Capitol police officers.

The government lied, and you’re seeing video from January 6, 2021 for the first time on March 6, 2023.

Here’s where it gets extremely interesting.

Chansley was represented by a Missouri lawyer, Al Watkins, who urged him to plead guilty — and who described his own client to reporters as one of the “short bus people” and one of the “people with brain damage” who were “fucking retarded” and so had listened to Donald Trump:

So a person who walked peacefully through the Capitol with a police escort, charged with violent entry, had a lawyer who called him retarded and told him to plead guilty.

Jacob Chansley was railroaded. If his defense didn’t have this footage of his peaceful procession through the Capitol in the presence of police who never tried to stop him at all — and I’ve seen no evidence that his own lawyer ever mentioned any of this footage — then he was railroaded by a government that denied exculpatory evidence to his defense.

I have emailed Al Watkins a series of questions, and will post his response if I get one.

UPDATE:

A brief response, by email, from Jacob Chansley’s lawyer, Al Watkins:

“I am deeply concerned and appalled by what appears to be patent Brady violations.”

We’ll see what he does about it.