Controversial radio host Alex Jones found necessity in defending himself after his media properties’ recent assertions that a Reid family solar energy deal with the Chinese was the driving cause for the Bundy ranch standoff began to deteriorate. Breitbart News recently covered in depth that although a number of peripheral elements in Jones’ theory are absolutely true, the central claim is off by a mile—more than 20 miles, actually.
Jones took direct aim at Breitbart News for apparently colluding with “the establishment” likes of Glenn Beck, MSNBC and CNN.
… And then they got Breitbart, who has a lot of great articles and a lot of truthful stuff, so I’m not going to say the whole organization is bad but they have an FBI informant, Brandon Darby, saying we’re making it up that there was ever a plan that the Chinese and Rory Reid and all the rest of them…and they just show you a giant map of the state and it’s a 130-mile-long deal and just show you another end of it—and say see, this is another side of the state, playing on ignorance. We have the BLM documents from the BLM website—[the BLM] took them down and then they got them off Google cache. We have all the proof of that…
It’s a fact, folks, it’s a fact that the Chinese are involved with the BLM all over the country.
…They just say that it’s a conspiracy theory so that we can’t come together.
Prior to this radio segment, a PrisonPlanetLive report drew direct attention to the BLM’s removal of documents as a presumed smoking gun.
“The article revealed that one of the key reasons why the BLM wanted Cliven Bundy off the land, and therefore began seizing his cattle, was to clear it to make way for a solar energy project.”
Again, Jones is making some claims that are in fact true. Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby did work undercover with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force as an operational source—most notably in the case of Riad Hamad, a Palestinian nonprofit guru who attempted to fund suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and he cooperated in 2008 to help detain two far-left individuals who had plans to use Molotov cocktails at the Republican National Convention. Why Jones finds this worthy of repeating in a sneering tone remains unclear.
Breitbart never contradicted Jones on the fact that the Reid family had varying degrees of involvement with solar energy projects. The outlet did not discount claims that the Bureau of Land Management was fond of the delete key when it came to reports referencing the Bundy family cattle’s “trespass” issue. Mr. Jones’ claims about BLM documents were left untouched because of prior third party confirmation–some coming from this outlet–or a lack of objective evidence to assume otherwise.
The purged documents invoking the Bundy name do not support Jones’ theory, however, if one reads what was actually removed. Infowars screen-grabs two sections from the BLM summarizing the two decade legal battle that Breitbart News originally set out to confirm. The documents, although apparently purged, do not indicate that Bundy had to vacate to make way for solar farms on his (then-lapsed) lease.
Despite all of Jones’ justified harping on missing documents, he clumsily discounts Breitbart News’ analysis that BLM plans for solar development currently on the books or removed from Google cache clearly state such projects were slated for different tracts of land than once permitted to the Bundy family (until their functional forfeit in 1994). Jones’ favorite red herring involving the Chinese company ENN Mohave Energy—which Breitbart News reported Rory Reid’s involvement in—fell through in 2013 for lack of “market support.” Unless Bilderberg managed to corrupt Google Maps, the site of the once proposed ENN solar project remains a 3 hour drive from the formerly-leased Bundy property. Recent plans to develop the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone highlighted by Infowars is somewhat closer to the old Bundy lease—yet is more than 20 miles away. Jones’ criticism of Breitbart News using a second map to dupe readers is easily dismissed when one sees that that the Bundy lease is so far removed from the Dry Lake project that it was not included on the official map.
The federal courts maintain an evidentiary record of the map outlining the old Bundy lease.
Bundy II Map by BreitbartTexas
Old Bunkerville Allotment formerly permitted to Bundy family marked in red.
Understanding that theorists will seek tactical fallback positions in the face of contradictory evidence, allow Breitbart News to preempt the next theory involving “Available Lands for Application Through the Variance Process” that are indeed close to the old Bundy allotment. Based on available maps from the BLM, there are tracts of land adjacent to and potentially overlapping the old Bunkerville Allotment formerly permitted to the Bundy ranch. Even if such an application were sought by any party, the ranch would not have any recognizable standing to challenge the process given their allowing grazing permits to lapse in the early 1990s.
The federal government is not without fault in this unfortunate episode, however. As Breitbart News reported, after the Bundy family stopped paying grazing permit fees in 1993 and claimed to “fire” the BLM, the family forfeit its federal land use rights in 1994. Even after the U.S. Department of Interior successfully obtained two separate court orders to impound trespass cattle in 1998 and 2013, threats to remove cattle were slow to be acted upon—effectively intensifying any alleged damage caused by the trespass cattle.
Follow Logan Churchwell on Twitter @LCChurchwell
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