Update 7/28/2017 – One of the readers of the article below contacted Darryl Thorn about Maxine’s report of an alleged “confidential source” who reported an alleged statement made by Darryl to the FBI. Darryl categorically denies that any such statement was given to anybody. He didn’t even know who Michael Emry was and still didn’t until he was called by the reader this article. Since there was a telltale timing problem between the alleged statement and Michael’s arrest, it supports the allegation that Maxine’s statement in the article about Darryl Thorn was a pure fabrication. In other words, it was a bald-faced, out and out lie.
Maxine Bernstein of the OregonLive news has been covering the stories arising out of the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for over a year but she still can’t get the story straight. What’s her problem? Is she thick or do the OregonLiars have an agenda? The lies are so unnecessary and vicious, one has to believe it’s the later.
Yesterday, Michael Emry was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for possession of a machine gun not registered to him. Michael’s case had nothing to do with the occupation of the Wildlife Refuge – except that Michael went to Oregon to cover the story of the rally for the Hammonds. In doing that he saw how desperately the people in eastern Oregon needed independent journalism to get out the truth about what was happening there so he stayed to try and help them set up a sister media operation to TVOI News.
In Bernstein’s article, she reported:
Michael Emry was sentenced Wednesday to 2 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to possessing a fully automatic .50-caliber machine gun that he brought to Oregon in a van loaned to him by Ammon Bundy, one of the leaders in the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
Michael did possess a .50 caliber machine gun. He DID NOT bring it to Oregon in a van loaned to him by Ammon Bundy. The protest occupation of Malheur was NOT an armed takeover. All defendants in the governments case against the leading occupiers in Oregon were found NOT GUILTY. And those cases had NOTHING to do with Michael. So why the hate-filled statement Maxine? What’s your problem?
The gun that Michael had was not a “fully automatic machine gun”. It was a box of parts and it wasn’t even a complete set of parts. As was reported before, it didn’t have a stand; didn’t have a cocking handle; didn’t have a belt; and it didn’t have ammunition. The gun was a “show and tell” weapon that he and Jim Weaver, used to take to gun shows. Jim is a licensed Class II weapons dealer and the owner of the gun. Michael worked for him for about 10 years. Even though Michael didn’t work for Jim anymore, he let Michael use the gun repair shop whenever he wanted. That’s why Michael had the key to the shop. He DID NOT steal the gun. He borrowed it for “show and tell”.
The reason the gun was in the shop and it was a “show and tell” weapon was because it had some kind of problem in the internal workings of the frame. Michael told the officers when he was arrested that it would be dangerous to shoot it with live ammo.
The picture on the left is a fully functioning .50 caliber machine gun. The picture on the right is what Michael had.
.50 caliber machine guns are LEGAL as long as they are semi-automatic. They aren’t even illegal to possess if they are automatic as long as they are licensed and registered with the ATF.
Maxine’s story:
Emry, 55, of John Day admitted that he stole the machine gun from a man in Idaho, obliterated its serial number and traveled with it from Idaho to Oregon in December 2015 in Bundy’s van. He, Bundy, Ryan Payne and others stayed in a house in Burns at that time, according to the prosecutor.
Everything in the above paragraph is a lie – except for the obliteration of the serial number which I’ll get to below. Michael never said that he stole the gun. He borrowed the gun from the shop of his friend Jim Weaver who is a licensed Class II Weapons dealer. He did not bring it to Oregon in December when he came to provide media coverage for the rally for the Hammonds. He didn’t stay at a house in Burns with Bundy, Ryan Payne and the others. Michael was just a guy with a video camera, a computer and a fledgling news website who wanted to tell a story about a rally for the Hammond Family.
Ammon Bundy asked Michael to cover the rally for the Hammonds because the mainstream media can’t be trusted to tell the truth. Michael’s car was not in condition to make the trip so Ammon offered to loan him an SUV for the trip. After the rally Ammon announced the occupation of Malheur and presumably, he went out there. Michael went to the meeting at the fair grounds. After the meeting at the fair grounds, Michael stayed at the Quality Inn I believe is the name. I’d have to check my credit card receipts because I paid for it. The two previous nights that Michael was in Burns, he stayed at the Sundown Motel with the Idaho III%. Why didn’t he stay the third night with the Idaho III%? Because of me. I had a verbal knock down drag out on facebook with one of leaders of the III%. It was not about Michael but they took it out on him anyway so I paid for a motel for Michael. After that, Michael stayed at the Silver Spur Motel in Burns with the other reporters and there are motel records to prove it.
As has been stated so many times, Michael stayed in Burns to cover the occupation. That’s it. That’s all. Around the 7th of February, Michael and Thom Davis, a local cowboy from Burns drove Ammon’s SUV back to Boise. They dropped it off at Ammon’s house and had lunch with Lisa before returning to Burns.
Maxine continues:
On Jan. 11, 2016, Emry told a Deschutes County sheriff’s deputy at a law enforcement checkpoint at the Burns airport that a .50-caliber belt-fed machine gun was on the refuge, according to a court filing by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Lichvarcik.
The deputy perceived Emry’s statement as an attempt to intimidate law enforcement during the occupation of the eastern Oregon refuge.
Except for a few hold outs, the occupation effectively ended with the assassination of LaVoy Finicum and the arrest of the Bundys. That was on January 26, 2016. It was never reported that a .50 caliber belt-fed machine gun was found on the refuge. If what the Deschutes County sheriff’s deputy said was true (if he actually did say it), then why didn’t they find the gun when law enforcement took possession of the refuge? They didn’t find the gun because the story wasn’t true. It was another flat out lie told by either the Sheriff’s Deputy or made up out of whole cloth by OregonLiar Les Zaitz and repeated by OregonLiar Maxine Bernstein.
Maxine wrote:
A confidential source told the FBI that it was a good thing law enforcement seized the machine gun from Emry because Oregon standoff defendant Darryl Thorn had wanted another refuge occupier to retrieve the machine gun from Emry and had asked for training on how to use it, the federal prosecutor wrote. Thorn was subsequently convicted of federal conspiracy and other misdemeanor charges in the refuge takeover.
This part of Bernstein’s story is obviously a blatant lie. There is a timing problem with it. The gun wasn’t seized until May 6th – the day Michael was arrested. The occupation – even with the holdouts was over in February. If Darryl Thorn had made such a statement to the FBI or if one of the confidential informants had made the statement after the occupation was over, there is no doubt the FBI would have been able to obtain a search warrant on the basis of the statement and they would have arrested Michael in February – if they’d found it – which they wouldn’t have because it wasn’t in Oregon. Since the FBI was rounding up anybody and everybody, it’s simply not believable that there was any such informant who made any such statement. It’s pure fake news.
Maxine wrote:
Before FBI agents executed the search warrant on his trailer in John Day on May 6, 2016, Emry had been negotiating to sell the Browning M2 machine gun in Oregon to an undercover law enforcement officer who posed as a convicted felon and captain of a Texas militia group, Lichvarcik wrote in the court filing.
This is really interesting. They changed the story to protect the guilty and clean up the story. When Michael was trying to start a new media operation in eastern Oregon, a group of concerned citizens with Michael’s help organized a Committee of Correspondence. The purpose of the Committee of Correspondence was to monitor the news including meetings and activities of local officials. What they were to do then would be to become their own reporters – reporting the news to the people because as you can see from the OregonLiar report that is the subject of this article, mainstream media lies either overtly or by omission and mislead. The reports from the Committee of Correspondence would then be published by Michael’s new media operation, The Voice of Grant County.
One of the men who was a member of Committee, Marc S. “Doc” O’Dell knew of Michael’s expertise with guns. He approached Michael about opening a gun building business in one of the unused outbuildings on Harry Stangel’s ranch. Building and selling guns is legal as long as a license is obtained from the ATF. O’Dell was living on Stangel’s ranch at the time and Stangel was also a member of the Committee of Correspondence but O’Dell was the one doing most – but not all of the talking Harry and himself.
Michael explained to O’Dell all of the licensing requirements to build guns. Harry was supposed to be the one to get the license and he would provide the start up capital. All of the discussions were about a legal business. O’Dell even took Michael and Becky out for a tour of the ranch to look at the building that was being considered for the venture.
It was within the context of a legal business venture that Michael went to Boise to get the gun for show and tell. He wanted to show O’Dell and Harry Stangel the quality of his welding skills. After that, O’Dell kept leading Michael on – stalling. It was at the point when O’Dell changed the name from Harry to Larry that Michael knew he was being set up. He panicked and tried to scratch off the serial number to protect his friend Jim Weaver. If he’d thought about it for a minute, he would have realized the futility of it because Michael had let O’Dell take a picture of the gun – with the serial number showing. He did that because he thought they were discussing a straight up, legal business deal.
What Maxine did in the paragraph above was to completely cut out Marc S. “Doc” O’Dell from the story and replace him with this Larry character. Why would she do that? Because Marc S. “Doc” O’Dell is like the steaming pile that the neighbor’s dog leaves in your yard. O’Dell is a career criminal and professional FBI informant. O’Dell makes his living setting people up. He was first arrested in 1993 for theft of military jeeps, trailers and medical supplies.
Marc S. “Doc” O’Dell
Thief, Con Artist, Gigolo, KKK Grand Wizard, Imposter, JDL operative and FBI Informant
TVOI News wrote several stories about O’Dell. We were able to obtain a 296 page compilation of O’Dell’s history compiled by his victims. One of them was so angry about what he did to her, she hired a private detective who found other victims. Together they put up a website looking for other victims of this career criminal. The following are two of the TVOI stories about O’Dell:
Maxine wrote:
A conviction for possession of a machine gun brings a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a $10,000 fine and three years of supervised release. The sentence imposed resulted from a plea deal.
“I applaud federal and state law enforcement officers for their swift and decisive action in removing a very dangerous weapon from the community,” said Billy J. Williams, Oregon’s U.S. attorney. “Transporting stolen weapons is a serious crime and will be met with equally serious consequences.”
The plea deal kind of went like this:
If you plead guilty and don’t fight us, we’ll give you 30 months. If you don’t plead guilty and you fight us, you’ll spend at least three years in jail before you ever go to trial plus the prosecutor told Michael that he would add charges so that Michael would spend the rest of his life in jail. There were also a couple of side “incentives” for Michael to take the deal that were like an offer from the Godfather. Michael’s attorney was a family law attorney – divorces, child custody . . . that sort of thing so Michael made the rational choice. He pleaded out.
The statement by Billy Williams, the U.S. Attorney sounds like a boilerplate response to a leading question because it didn’t relate to Michael Emry and the charges against him. That’s a perfect ending to an Oregon Liar story.
The full archive of stories on Michael Emry can be found HERE.