Student Who Distupted Illegal Land Auction Charged With Two Felonies By Obama DOJ

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sat Apr 04, 2009 at 11:30

The leases were subsequently invalidated, because the hurried process of bringing them to bid violated federal regulations.  Although he had no money to pay for the leases when he bid on them, DeChristopher subsequently did get the money to cover them, as the result of becoming an instant folk hero.  He was prepared to pay for the leases, but the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) couldn't accept the money, since the leases had been invalidated.  

Now, however, DeChristopher is being charged with two felonies, even though the only reason he didn't make good on the payments is because the sales were withdrawn.  Apparently, the act of exposing the rigged nature of the bidding was crime enough--"disrupting" the tacit collusion whereby bidding stopped well short of what the bidders were actually willing to pay.

And this is the Obama Department of Justice we're talking about now.

Story from Democracy Now! on the flip.

AMY GOODMAN: Tim DeChristopher had been hoping the Obama administration would not press charges, but on Wednesday US Attorney Brett Tolman indicted DeChristopher for two felonies. If convicted, Tim faces up to ten years in prison and a $750,000 fine.

Tim DeChristopher joins us on the phone right now from Utah. Tim, were you surprised by the charges announced this week?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: I was somewhat surprised by that. We didn't really see it coming, and we thought that-that since the Salazar decision had pretty much decided that this was an unjust and inappropriate auction, that they weren't following their own rules, we had figured that they would probably just want to sweep this case away rather than have us kind of discover all the rules that weren't followed in this case and all the corruption and manipulation involved in this auction. And so, I was pretty surprised that the US attorney's office moved on this case and is now pushing it to trial.

Pretty surprised, indeed.  What earthly reason is there for him to be prosecuted?  If the Bush Administration had followed the law, the auction would never have happened in the first place.  Whatever disruption he caused, he was disrupting an unlawful proceeding--one that Obama himself should have, and could have taken action to prevent.  This auction was rather high-profile, moreso than many of the "midnight regulations" and other surreptitious actions being taken by the Bush Administration in its waning days.  The process had been so hurried that all the required inter-agency procedures hadn't been followed.  (In fact, even the normal intra-agencies hadn't been followed, which is why DeChristopher was able to so easily infiltrate the proceedings.)

Obama could have, and should have spoken out and said that all such questionable actions were going to be reviewed, and that in the case of actions that involved clear violations of laws and regulations such as this land auction in particular the entire proceeding would be voided, so there was no point in going ahead with it in the first place.  This is what a truly aggressive break with the lawlessness of the Bush years would have looked like, and it would have eliminated the need for DeChristopher to have taken action in the first place.

AMY GOODMAN: After the Obama administration came in and Ken Salazar became the Secretary of the Interior, didn't he nullify or say that the land could not be sold?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Yes, yes. All the parcels that I bid on were part of that decision, so all of those were nullified. That's why we had raised the funds to actually make the payments on there and offer that payment to the BLM, but they weren't able to accept that because of the Salazar decision, because it was all invalidated. And I think that they made that decision because they saw all the rules that the BLM didn't follow in this case, that they didn't give this auction the due process that it deserved. And so, I saw that really as an official ruling that what I was standing against was something illegal and unjust, and so I was surprised that they still wanted to prosecute me for my opposition to that unjust procedure.

Hmmmm.  Looks like the community organizer in chief is not that kindly in his views of citizen activism after all, I guess.  His own reluctance to speak out in advance against a clearly unlawful auction was the only reason DeChristopher had to act in the first place, yet here his DOJ is, going after DeChristoher, and ignoring all the insider lawbreaking involved in this case.

AMY GOODMAN: How much support have you received, Tim, since the December auction?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: I've received a huge amount of support really of every kind. I have received countless emails and calls from people expressing their support from around the country and around the world. I've received financial support, both back when we were trying to raise the funds to actually pay for the leases and financial support for my legal team. And we're collecting those donations again for my legal fund through the website bidder70.org. I had my amazing legal team of Patrick Shea and Ron Yengich step up to defend me, and they're donating their time.

And I think, most importantly, I've had a huge number of people step up in solidarity of my act and say that they, too, share my concern for our future and see that urgent need for action, and they're willing to take those sacrifices as well. From the group that we started called Peaceful Uprising to encourage this kind of act in the future and any kind of nonviolent direct action to defend our future from climate change, we took thirty students out to Washington, D.C. for the Power Shift conference and the Capitol Climate Action. And so, that was very powerful for me to see, to see this growing and to see more people step up and starting to take risks.

AMY GOODMAN: Tim DeChristopher, can you-

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: I think that's probably the most important part of the support I've received.

It's really important that he's getting this sort of support, because without it, the Obama DOJ would just roll over him like he was a bug, apparently.  Now here's the really good part, where he explains what he's being charged with:

AMY GOODMAN: Tim, can you explain exactly what you were charged with?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Yes. I was charged with two counts: one of making a false statement to the government and one of violation of the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act, which was supposed to establish a competitive bidding process for oil and gas leases.

So, "making a false statement to the government".  You mean like Bush did to Congress in taking us to war with Iraq?  Well, then, we'll be seeing charges filed against Bush any day now, right?  Yeah, right.

And here's the great irony behind this second charge:  by stepping in and bidding up the prices of a number of parcels before he finally managed to buy one himself, DeChristopher inadvertantly demonstrated that the bidding was essentially rigged.   It was not the competitive bidding process that the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act was supposed to establish.  People were paying substantially less than they would have been willing to pay if there was a truly competitive bidding process.  The pattern of bidding that occurred with him in the process clearly showed this.  What he did caused no harm at all to anyone--except a bunch of corporate crooks trying to rip off the government.  Indeed, what he revealed was a long-standing pattern of collusive bidding that has cost the government untold thousands, probably mil;lions, if not tens of millions of dollars.  

There should be investigations and felony charges, all right.  But not against DeChristopher.  Those charges should be brought against the oil and gas companies that have been defrauding the government for who know how many years.

More info at Bidder70.org and PeacefulUprising.org, where you can also donate to his defense fund.