Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

FBI agent is indicted in shooting during Oregon standoff

LaVoy Finicum

Jarod Opperman / The New York Times

LaVoy Finicum, a rancher from Arizona, speaks to reporters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., Jan. 5, 2016.

WASHINGTON — A member of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team who was involved in a deadly confrontation last year with a prominent anti-government protester in Oregon has been indicted on charges of lying and obstruction, according to federal court documents.

The indictment of the agent, Joseph Astarita, 40, is a blow to the reputation of the hostage team, which carries out the bureau’s riskiest missions in the United States and abroad.

Astarita was accused of lying to supervisors about firing his weapon in the effort to arrest Robert Finicum, known as LaVoy, who was killed during a standoff at a remote federal wildlife refuge in January 2016. Finicum was part of a small band of armed militants who said that the federal land had been improperly taken from area ranchers and demanded that it be returned to local or private control.

Astarita pleaded not guilty to all five counts on Wednesday in Portland, Oregon, and was released pending court appearances. An FBI spokesman declined to discuss the case but said Astarita had been assigned to administrative duty.

The case was being investigated by the Justice Department’s inspector general along with federal prosecutors in Oregon.

Finicum was protesting at the Malheur Federal Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, on Jan. 2, 2016, where the show of defiance led to a lengthy standoff with the FBI and the local authorities.

When Finicum left the refuge to attend a nearby meeting several weeks later, Oregon state troopers and several members of the FBI team tried to stop his truck and another vehicle. Finicum’s truck then crashed into a snowbank. He then fled and the state troopers shot him after it appeared he tried to reach for a gun.

The local investigators determined the shooting was justified but suspected that one of the FBI agents had tried to cover up whether he had fired any shots. The bullet casings were never recovered.

Video footage recorded by a passenger in Finicum’s truck shows that two shots were fired after Finicum stepped out of the vehicle, one shattering its window. Authorities said the only person who could have fired those shots — based on an analysis of surveillance videos and photographs — was one of the FBI agents.

Six rounds were fired by the state troopers and two by the FBI, the investigators found. Three rounds struck Finicum, 54.

Prosecutors accused Astarita of misleading the Oregon authorities who were investigating the shooting.

Former team members remained perplexed why Astarita would not acknowledge firing the rounds if he had done so. At worst, they said, he might have been kicked off the team and reassigned. They said that Astarita was relatively new to the team when he was deployed to Oregon.

The Hostage Rescue Team was formed in 1983. Its members go through exhaustive training, working closely with military commando units such as the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force in Iraq and Afghanistan. The unit participated in the arrests of terrorists in Libya in 2014, including a suspect in the attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

In recent years, the team has been involved in a number of rescue operations in Alabama, Idaho and Georgia. But the unit has also been associated with the deadly raids in the 1990s in Waco, Texas, and in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

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