Latest Federal Killing in Minnesota Echoes Ruby Ridge

Latest federal killing in Minnesota echoes Ruby Ridge by James Beauvard.

On Saturday, federal agents in Minneapolis killed

protester Alex Priti, shooting him in the back ten times after they had taken away

the pistol he legally carried. White House deputy chief Stephen Miller quickly

settled the issue. A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law

enforcement and the official Democrat account size with the terrorists.

A few hours after Priti was killed, I commented on X.

How many of the Trump supporters cheering the killing of the Minneapolis

demonstrator today would also cheer for the FBI sniper

killing Vicki Weaver in her cabin door at Ruby Ridge in 1992?

This outraged plenty of Trump supporters, but the parallels between the federal

killings in 1992 and on Saturday are striking.

The Ruby Ridge case, a landmark case for civil liberties and gun rights,

involved the entrapment of Randy Weaver on firearms charges by an

informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

On August 21, 1992, three U.S. marshals dressed in ninja outfits with face masks

illegally intruded on Weaver's Idaho land and ambushed Weaver's 14-year-old son Sammy

and 25-year-old family friend Kevin Harris firing sub-machine guns at them as they

came down a road in the woods and killing the boy's dog.

A firefight ensued that left one marshal dead.

As the boy was running back home towards the family's shack,

a marshal shot him in the back and killed him.

The next day, FBI snipers arrived and

within an hour of taking position, every adult in the cabin was either dead

or severely wounded, even though they had not fired a shot at the FBI

and even though the FBI never called out for them to surrender.

FBI sniper Lawn Haruchi shot Randy Weaver in the back as he stood outside his shack

and then fired a shot that killed Vicki Weaver

as she stood by the cabin door. The FBI initially claimed that the killing of

Vicki Weaver was justified because she had been in the front yard aiming at

an FBI helicopter. After that ludicrous claim collapsed,

the FBI said its sniper didn't intend to kill her.

Trump supporters insisted there was no comparison between

Pretty's death and Vicki Weaver because Weaver was unarmed.

But Vicki Weaver had a 0.380 pistol on her side

under her sweater when the FBI sniper blew her head off as she was holding her

ten-month-old baby. Neither she nor Pretty was

brandishing before getting shot to death by the feds.

Trump officials justified killing Pretty because he had a pistol,

even though vast numbers of conservatives have brought pistols and rifles

to protests in recent years. Similarly, the rule of engagement for

FBI snipers was any armed male adult observed in the vicinity of the Weaver

cabin could and should be killed. In a federal appeals court ruling,

Judge Alex Kaczynski denounced that rule as a new James Bond

007 standard for the use of deadly force against American citizens.

After Pretty was shot more than ten times,

DHS Secretary Kristi Noam said he was a domestic terrorist

who sought to inflict maximum damage on individuals

and to kill law enforcement. Noam announced that pretty

approached border patrol officers with a 9-millimeter

semi-automatic pistol. The officers attempted to disarm this individual

but the suspect reacted violently. Videos of the killing

show that Pretty had a cell phone in his hand, not a gun, before federal agents

knocked him down and began beating and pistol whipping him.

Trump's DHS considers videotaping federal agents to be the equivalent

of a hostile attack that justifies a violent federal response.

A similar threat inflation paved the way to federal killings in Idaho.

At a January 6th 1995 press conference, FBI chief Louis Free effectively

exonerated all FBI officials involved with Ruby Ridge.

Freech declared that the Randy Weaver crisis was one of the most dangerous and

potentially violent situations to which FBI agents have ever been assigned.

This was peculiar considering that camouflaged FBI snipers had been hiding in

the woods 200 yards away when the Weavers were shot.

As Judge Kaczynski scoffed, a group of FBI agents formulated rules of

engagement that permitted their colleagues to hide

in the bushes and gun-down men who posed no immediate threat.

Such wartime rules are patently unconstitutional for a police action.

Some Trump supporters declared that Pretty deserved his fate because he

intentionally chose to place himself in deadly peril by

purportedly assaulting federal agents. At the 1993 trial,

federal prosecutors asserted that Randy Weaver

long conspired to have an armed confrontation with the government.

Bizarrely, the Fed's claim that his moving from Iowa to Ruby Ridge near the Canadian

border in 1983 was part of that plot.

In both the Minneapolis and Ruby Ridge cases,

federal officials claimed a right to preemptively kill their targets and then cover up the

killings. After killing Pretty, DHS officials seized

cell phones of bystanders and blocked Minnesota state law enforcement officials

from conducting any investigation at the crime scene.

DHS's apparent cover-up was so brazen that a Trump-nominated federal judge

issued an emergency order on Saturday.

Near midnight ordering DHS not to destroy further evidence.

It remains to be seen how much honest evidence will be permitted to be disclosed.

Unlike most police departments, most ICE and Border Patrol agents

don't wear body cameras to videotape their shootings.

Congressional Republicans following the Trump White House lead,

blocked efforts by Democrats to require those federal agents

to wear body cams. Similar shenanigans happened in the Weaver case.

After an Idaho jury found Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris

not guilty on key charges, federal judge Edward Lodge condemned the FBI

for showing a callous disregard for the rights of the defendants and the

interests of justice. Judge Lodge issued a lengthy list detailing the

Justice Department's misconduct and fabrication of evidence.

Two years later the director of the FBI's violent crimes

and major offenders section, pled guilty and was sent to prison

for shredding the FBI after-action report on Ruby Ridge.

One of the biggest FBI disgraces since the FBI chief L.

Patrick Gray was forced to resign for destroying evidence

in the Nixon Watergate scandal. Many Trump supporters

would vigorously condemn the FBI killing of Vicki Weaver nowadays.

But the issue is not how many people disapprove of her killing

after the cover-up collapsed. I helped crack that cover-up with

pieces in the American spectator Playboy and Wall Street Journal,

an article which FBI chiefreech publicly condemned.

A heroic Idaho jury that refused to cow-tow to

Justice Department flim flams helped shatter the official storyline.

The issue is how many people supported the FBI killing in 1992

because they mindlessly swallowed outlandish federal claims

and the vilification of the Weaver family.

Trump officials are already dropping a cloak of sanctumony over the latest

federal shooting in Minneapolis. According to Border Patrol Boss

Gregory Bavino, pretty was only there to kill people

and it was a good job for our law enforcement

in taking him down before he was able to do that.

This standard would preemptively justify killing any individual

who defends label as a threat after shooting him.

What we ever learned the rules of engagement that DHS agents are now using

to shoot American civilians. Will we ever see the possibly panic

texts and emails from DHS bosses in Minnesota to the Trump White House

about another bloody public relations fiasco?

Will we ever see the evidence that federal agents seized after

pretty was perforated? How can anyone who is paying attention,

a proof of pretty's killing, despite all the false and far-fetched

federal claims regarding his demise?

How can freedom survive if so many Americans blindly

believe any proclamation by government officials

and political hacks? For more content like this visit

mises.org