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Title: Government- The Only Viable Threat to the US Constitution
Published: 2016-11-28
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PHK0l5iSac
Title: Government- The Only Viable Threat to the US Constitution
Published: 2016-11-28
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PHK0l5iSac
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Hi everyone, I'm Spiro with NewsBud.com. In this week's episode of NewsBud's Roundtable, we're going to be picking up where we left off from our previous episode titled The Oregon Standoff. Could this not guilty verdict restore faith in the judicial system? If you have not yet seen that episode, I highly encourage you to do so. This week we're joined by attorney Roger Roots, who had a ringside2/179
seat at what is being called the Oregon Standoff trial as a volunteer researcher and paralegal for Ryan Bundy, who represented himself at the trial. We also have another attorney joining us today, Mr. Todd McFarlane, who is a NewsBud legal analyst and formally represented the Finnecom family. As always, I'm joined by editor and founder of NewsBud's Sebel Edmonds. Mr. Bell, how are you? Very well, good. Thank3/179
you, Spiro, and it's great to be here. And I'm really excited for this follow-up episode, and I'm so glad that we are doing this back-to-back while things are still really fresh. And last time we had a great long conversation with Todd, and unfortunately we couldn't connect with Roger. And today we'll get to ask some questions about these trials and his experience with the trial, which is,4/179
I think, is one of the most amazing, pleasantly surprising cases that I have seen in years, I have to say, especially coming out of the federal course. I have dealt with federal course with my own case. My own case went all the way to the Supreme Court. So it's good to be with you, gentlemen. And let's start with Roger. Roger, you were there, and you heard5/179
the verdict. And let's just briefly have you describe your reaction. What were you expecting? Because talking with Todd, we heard that the case, government's case, was so weak. Unfortunately, in federal course, you don't have real-time cameras set so that people like us journalists or people or family members of defendants, nobody can sit and watch and go through all this evidence. And we know that the federal6/179
government spent millions, millions of dollars, no tampering court. They brought in dozens and dozens of witnesses, more than a dozen informants. And they couldn't, in the end, make a case. So you had 12 men and women sitting there, hearing all this million dollars case piled up by the federal government, the phony case. Against the defendants, they conferred, they came and they issued the not guilty verdict7/179
in all counts. But where are you expecting this, Roger? I actually, well, I had my fingers crossed. I'll tell you, we met every single prosecution claim with evidence for the defense. And I think that we successfully countered every single piece of government evidence. Was I expecting it? I hate to say it. It is a shame that none of us, the system has become so favorable to8/179
the government that we're surprised when innocent people are found not guilty. And it's a shame, but I frankly, I was expecting the jury would come back with some not guilty verdicts, at least for some of the defendants. And I knew that frankly, the defendant I was working for Ryan Bundy and his brother, Ammon Bundy, were the real targets of the Justice Department. And that was my9/179
biggest fear, I think, was that the jury would come back with some kind of a mixed verdict and would clear some of the other defendants, but might just to give the government a bone sort of. I guess I was a little bit fearful, but I knew that Ammon and Ryan, really all the defendants were not guilty of the crimes they were accused of. And so was10/179
I surprised? It's hard to say. It is a shame, but maybe in a little bit I was surprised that the jury saw through the government's disinformation and came back with the proper verdict. So let me step back a little bit here and ask you this, why did you take the case? Why did you say sure? I will help you represent yourself to Ryan Bundy. Well I11/179
had gotten several phone calls and I was aware of the case even before it was even before LaVoy was murdered. And so I was following it a little bit and I worked for another client who actually was very in tune and was very closely watching and following the case. He called me up and he said Roger you really need to get involved in this case. They12/179
really need you out there and I had actually several people who actually paid my way out to Portland to see if I could help out in any way. And of course a lot of us who familiar, I know Subel, you're familiar. Most of us who are familiar with federal court, you just said it yourself. We are used to losing. I mean the powers of government have13/179
become so powerful that we all anticipated that what would happen is those poor guys would be led down a road where they'd simply be told to plead guilty. There would be some plea agreements in which they would plead guilty to some counts. Maybe other counts would be dropped. That's the typical modus operandi of the Justice Department. Anyway, I had people say Roger you need to get14/179
out there and help those guys do whatever you can. And so I initially met actually with Ryan Payne initially had some discussions with his team. Ultimately he retained his attorney out there. When I learned that Ryan Bundy had essentially fired his court appointed lawyer, I actually went to the Multnomah County Geo just to visit and say hello to Ryan Bundy. You know lawyers Todd can, Todd15/179
can attest to this. Lawyers are so over regulated. We are not allowed to approach a potential client or a potential defendant who we know is represented by another attorney. We have to go through that attorney. The system has so many ways of controlling the outcomes and one of the ways of controlling the outcomes is by keeping good lawyers from meeting with good defendants who need the16/179
good lawyers. And it's so sad. I mean, I could tell you a thousand stories about this. But anyway, at the point that I read that Ryan Bundy was firing his court appointed lawyer, I said, well, why don't I just go visit with Ryan Bundy in the jail, which I did. I have a Rhode Island bar card actually. I'm going out of out of state lawyer and17/179
I was able to get in and had a nice conversation with Ryan Bundy and he very much wanted me to work on his team. And I said, okay, and we had some preliminary discussions. I had actually later on several weeks before the trial started submitted an application to be a second standby lawyer, a second to Lisa Ludwig. You know, the modern court process is so evil,18/179
I think. And I'll just say it that a lot of lower federal courts have overturned Supreme Court rulings allowing people to represent themselves. A case called the Ferreta versus California, a very famous case, US Supreme Court decision. It says the Sixth Amendment right to counsel gives you an absolute right to counsel if you choose and an absolute right if you choose to represent yourself. And I19/179
hate to say it, but the lower federal judges in the year since Ferreta v. California have virtually overturned the case because what happens in real practice is in federal court at least upon a defendant firing his lawyer and saying he wants to represent himself, Todd can tell you what really happens. The judge then imposes a government approved lawyer or a judge-improved lawyer. I don't want to20/179
pick on Lisa Ludwig. She did some good things. She didn't know okay job, and frankly, but imposed upon Ryan, Lisa Ludwig, a good lawyer by the way, to be stand by counsel. And so I, right before trial, I filed a motion to be second standby counsel to Ryan and then allowing him to represent himself with me and Lisa helping him. Judge did not like that. I21/179
don't know what it was. She didn't like me. I'm not a state lawyer. I'm not part of the little establishment there. And I'm just, you know, that's the real world that lawyers have to navigate through. And so I actually almost begged. I don't know if Todd was there that day, but I practically had to beg just to be a paralegal in the case. I finally approved22/179
it, and so I was able to sit at the desk at the table with Ryan Bundy. But I was not allowed to speak. I was able to assist him, whisper in his ear, shuffle paperwork, do research, you know, talk between, you know, I was able to assist in every way, but I was not able to speak in the courtroom. It was sort of astounding, but I23/179
actually had a great time, and I think I helped him a lot. And I just want to chime in and say, I think Roger really did help a lot, not just with Ryan, but with the entire case. And one of the reasons I want to say that is because with all the legal teams involved, very few of them actually have the kind of background with these24/179
kind of what I'm going to call liberty issues that Roger does. But again, by the time they got Marcus Mumford and Morgan Philpock involved, and obviously they had to be privately retained to get attorneys who that had that kind of background, those kind of qualifications. And I'm just going to put it like this, who really care about these kinds of issues. And I think that that's25/179
one of Roger's biggest qualifications is that he cares. He's not just appointed, you know, a lot of attorneys, of course they've got egos and all of that stuff. They love to win cases if they're given an opportunity to, but when it comes to the real issues, and I think that applies to some of the attorneys in this case. Actually, they're on the other side of the26/179
fence philosophically. They are very liberal. They come from Portland. This case was, they were fish out of water in terms of dealing with this case. But Roger comes from a completely different background and expertise and experience. So he brought a lot to the table. And I think he played a very invaluable role for Ryan Bundy. That's my opinion. That's a very important point, Todd, because I27/179
represented over 144 whistleblowers, government whistleblowers. And I can tell you from the experience, firsthand experience, but also through the experiences of high level veteran agents and analysts with agencies like FBI, CIA, NSA, when we did the right thing, when we exposed government criminality, when we went down this pad called whistleblowing journey, one of the hardest things was to even find that attorney was willing to represent28/179
us. You have no idea, especially in Washington, DC area, how many doors were slammed. They said, first of all, it will be costly and nobody. And this is what they said, nobody would win ever against those intelligence law enforcement agencies. So even for publicity, they wouldn't be, they wouldn't take it. And then of course, it's being incestuous because when you're in Washington, DC, about seven or29/179
eight out of 10 law firms, they have some sort of government contracts. So you're going to knock on the door and you say, I need an attorney. I was someone to protect my first amendment right. And they would say, oh, we are representing DOJ in this case and this case. And we have several FBI case and we are really getting paid well. So even if they30/179
had less than a department or division that could take us, it would, then they would get retaliated against these law firms by the government. And that was their bread and butter basically government contracts or government, the word of mouth through the government. So you had all these honorable people, let's exclude me here. I don't want to call myself honorable here. But really people with solid cases,31/179
first amendment cases. And we could not secure attorneys. So I learned one thing here. For example, with the things that we are doing here with the activities that we are involved, which all involve first amendment. We get into some situation. I know that you taught and you Roger are going to get calls. So I'm so glad. I'm so heartened to see that there are actually, I32/179
know there are all these jokes about lawyers that attorneys, they are attorneys out there who still really have conscious. And they do things because they believe in it's so rare to see. Or at least it was maybe East Coast is a little bit different than the West. And especially in the Western states, but it's really heartening. Now Roger, I went through this steps with Todd and33/179
I know I'm going to sound like an idiot. But I'm going to do that and sound like an idiot again because we had almost, almost nine months where the mainstream media, the pseudo alternative liberal media and publications like Oregonian build up this false notion, this false case in the heads of people around the country. I would say around 98% if I were to throw statistics, people34/179
throw statistics freely right and left. I'm going to go ahead and throw my 98% of the people in the US, they believe even right now, maybe because they think that all the jury members were crazy or something, but they believe that these men engaged in other violence, they were engaged in violence against law enforcement, they were engaged in violence against the local people. They inflicted millions35/179
of dollars of damage to this reserve, to this land where they were protesting and that they are the scumbag, low lives who are violent and they take their guns and they just go and shoot people. This is the picture that was painted for seven months led by Oregonian because they happened to be the local news organization. I don't want to even at this stage call them36/179
news organization. That's why I'm going to go ahead for the sake of those 98% who have heard nothing but those made up fiction and walk you through the same thing. These 12 members of jury, their verdict was not guilty in the case of these men, these defendants, seven of them here, inflicted any violence and injured or hurt anyone or shot at anyone with their guns. Did37/179
they shoot people? Did they injured anyone? Any of these defendants, seven defendants, Roger? In no way, absolutely not. In fact, what really became astounding is that the narrative the government was building was so overwhelmingly false and disproven in front of the jury. And yet, that narrative still prevailed in the newspapers that were reporting on the trial. It was really astounding. I think, I heard someone say38/179
that the Oregonian newspaper should get a Pulitzer. Oh my God. Their coverage was horrible. It was horrible. In fact, if you got your information from the Oregonian or any of the largest so-called news outlets. You would be forgiven in believing those defendants had no defense whatsoever. When in fact, the evidence that was being presented in the courtroom was so different. One thing, I'll just give an39/179
example. The government put on photographs of these heavily armed militia guys standing next to a highway. These guys had body armor helmets and they were wearing AR-15 or some semi-automatic rifle re-totally with ammunition, pouches of all kinds. The government put those photographs into evidence. When it became time for the defense, we were able to show that in fact, those photographs are of people that were outside40/179
the refuge. They weren't among the defendants. They were some militia guys that had come down. Some of them publicly disavowed the defendants. This is astounding. The government put on pictures of people who disavowed the defendants and yet tried to link the defendants to those pictures. It really was astounding. It was deceptive, frankly. The same thing was true with the gun show, all the guns. They bring41/179
in 34 guns that were found at the refuge, but they were not able to tie hardly any of them to the defendants in the case. I think our example after example of exactly what Roger is talking about, of basically the way the prosecution tried to deceive the jury. But the mainstream media has used all of that same kind of evidence to deceive the American public. That's42/179
in a nutshell, because they've been so biased and slanted in their approach that the public, they don't get the opportunity to see the other side of the story like the jury had the opportunity to once the defense started putting on its case. That was exactly the point I wanted to show. So our viewers, especially the 98% of our nation, who sat there and watched their CNN43/179
and read their Washington Post, they read their salon magazine, Mother Jones, you name it. Basically 90% of them are owned by their government mouthpiece, operated via these foundation, the alternative ones. They call themselves alternative, mostly funded by George Soros. But okay, so basically these publications, the media and that includes the so-called alternative media, they were giving the public these pictures and these images that they basically44/179
were getting from the government. They were their helping government make its case. Now question number two, as far as threatening people Roger, from what I understand and from what the jury verdict says, these men and women never went around treading anyone. Did they go around with their guns and treading anyone Roger? You know, it's astounding that not a single piece of evidence of a single threat45/179
by any specific defendant aimed at any BLM employee or US Fish and Wildlife Service employee was ever introduced. I mean, what the government was trying to do was stack inference upon inference, like Todd mentioned, all this ammunition, all these rifles and firearms and things, and taking a stand and this kind of thing. And well, they did have people at the front gate. But we showed that46/179
in fact the guys at the front gate, more or less, were there as, well sort of to protect the people inside from some kind of an attack. They were greeters like you'd see at Walmart. They were a security, a security team that was, you know, the real purpose was to, for the safety of all concern, including the fact that there were women and children in there47/179
and they needed someone at the gate to keep everyone safe and to be friendly. The one young man that we put on, God, I forget his name now, maybe Todd remembers, nice, nice young man in his 20s who admitted on trial on the stand. And of course, he was threatened in every way by the Justice Department with prosecution himself. I mean, they openly said, well, he48/179
needs to retain counsel. Someone needs to get a defense lawyer for him before he testifies. Well, the kid, Matthew, death, which is named, great young man. He took the stand very bravely and he said, yeah, I was there. I stood so called guard duty and I saw my duty as being as friendly as I could to everybody who came to the front gate and to let49/179
everybody in, including US Fish and Wildlife Service or BLM employees. So another point I think it's important with respect to the guards and the entry point, all of that, that if you understand this whole concept of adverse possession and an ammon Bundy, his position was that he was staking an adverse possession claim. There's a whole bunch of different elements of adverse possession. But one is that50/179
you have to control access. And so at the very least, even if they were allowing everyone to come through and do all of that stuff, they were still doing what was necessary in terms of controlling access. You see all kinds of private property and even public property do that sort of thing, even in parking lots where they will have a cable across or something so that51/179
they can block that off. Even if it's once a year or once a month or whatever the case may be so that they can claim that at whatever point they controlled access in such a way that no one else could claim an adverse possession claim. And so I think it goes hand in hand with what they were trying to accomplish in that regard too. Okay, Roger.52/179
One other of, according from what I find out, I have been finding out it's been established as a fiction, but let the 98th person of our nation know. And this again, Oregonian broadcast is constantly in fact, spirit and I believe in central Oregon. We are in Bend, Oregon and even our local publication, which is mainly about cafes and coffees and dope and tattoos, but they even53/179
had it on their on their front page that these violent man, these horrible violent man caused millions of millions of dollars damage on this national land. Now is this true? Had that jury reached this conclusion that these men and women damaged millions inflicted millions of dollars of damage? Absolutely not true. In fact, you know, that actually is something that I was initially working on a lot.54/179
I had lined up some accountants and some an auditor who was going to fly up and even an economist to try to pick apart and analyze that those claims. The government has had a series of press conferences and press releases in which they have made these bizarre astounding claims. Six point, I believe eight million dollars of damages that they are claiming in some public press releases55/179
that were caused by the defendants at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Interestingly enough, the government at the trial sort of stipulated that they weren't going to bring that stuff up because they knew that we were getting ready. We really were. We were getting ready to meet every one of those claims with some counterclaims and some we were going to really cross examine that stuff hard. And I56/179
think when they realized that, they sort of stipulated, no, we're not going to bring that stuff up in this trial. And every time we tried to bring up the fact that they were sort of gilding the lily if you've ever heard that phrase, they were over exaggerating the monetary damage claims. And we wanted to get that in because they were, I mean, they literally were lying57/179
and I, I, it might come into play in the next trial in Portland. It may actually come into play in restitution arguments that are going to take place with some of these gentlemen who have already pled guilty. Okay. So this, these kinds of claims may still be have some hearings and things, all right. But I can tell you that some, some auditors and, and accountants who