By Bryan Denson and Matt Pearce
Los Angeles Times
PORTLAND, Ore. — An FBI agent has been indicted on suspicion of lying about firing two shots at Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, one of the leaders of the armed standoff at a wildlife refuge in Oregon last year, according to court documents made public Wednesday.
W. Joseph Astarita, a member of the FBI’s hostage response team, faces three counts of making false statements to FBI supervisors and two counts of obstruction of justice on suspicion of lying to Oregon State Police about shooting at Finicum.
Astarita, who is not accused of firing the fatal shots that killed Finicum after a hectic police chase on Jan. 26, 2016, was expected to appear in U.S. District Court in Portland later Wednesday.
The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General has been probing the circumstances of Finicum’s shooting death since investigators revealed their suspicions in March 2016 that an FBI agent had fired at him and failed to admit it during multiple interviews.
Finicum, a 55-year-old Arizona rancher, had traveled to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., to join armed occupiers who had taken over the federal refuge on Jan. 2, 2016, to protest the government’s wildlands policies and its treatment of ranchers.
The takeover culminated in a tense standoff with law enforcement officers, who surrounded the refuge and ultimately peacefully arrested the heavily armed occupiers — with the exception of Finicum, who had previously hinted at his willingness to die for the armed occupation.
Oregon State Police and the FBI’s elite hostage rescue team, which included Astarita, had tried to arrest Finicum on a rural stretch of highway as he led a two-truck convoy filled with some of the occupation’s leaders.
But after initially stopping when pulled over by law enforcement, Finicum sped away, then crashed his truck into a snowbank and nearly hit a law enforcement officer as he apparently tried to avoid a police roadblock. Finicum staggered out of his truck and was fatally shot by state troopers while apparently reaching for a loaded gun inside his jacket.
All of the troopers’ shots were deemed justifiable, “and, in fact, necessary,” Malheur County District Attorney Dan Norris said last year after reviewing the shooting.
But investigators were concerned that they could not account for the shots apparently fired by an FBI agent that missed Finicum and left a bullet hole in the roof of his truck.
“Of particular concern to all of us is that the FBI operators did not disclose their shots to our investigators, nor did they disclose specific actions they took after the shooting,” Deschutes County Sheriff L. Shane Nelson said at a news conference last March, without specifying to which actions he was referring.
Finicum’s death inflamed anti-government sentiment. One Medford, Ore., man, John Martin Roos, 62, was convicted in November of possessing pipe bombs and posting online threats to kill President Barack Obama and FBI agents after telling investigators that he was upset about Finicum’s death.
