Biden Land Management nominee 'collaborated with eco-terrorists,' traded testimony for immunity

From Fox News.com (June 16):

President Biden's nominee to serve as the head of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) "collaborated with eco-terrorists" in a tree spiking plot before trading her court testimony for legal immunity, according to court documents reviewed by Fox News.

In 1993, Biden's nominee to head up BLM, Tracy Stone-Manning, was granted legal immunity for her testimony that she retyped and sent an anonymous letter to the U.S. Forest Service on behalf of John P. Blount, her former roommate and friend, those documents reveal.

The letter told the Forest Service that 500 pounds of "spikes measuring 8 to 10 inches in length" had been jammed into the trees of an Idaho forest.

"The sales were marked so that no workers would be injured and so that you a--holes know that they are spiked," read the letter obtained by Fox News. "The majority of the trees were spiked within the first ten feet, but many, many others were spiked as high as a hundred and fifty feet."

"P.S., You bastards go in there anyway and a lot of people could get hurt," the note concluded.

Tree spiking is a dangerous and violent eco-terrorism tactic where metal rods are inserted into trees to prevent them from being cut down. The metal rods damage saws that, in turn, have severely injured people, such as a mill worker whose jaw was split in two from an exploding saw.

Stone-Manning admitted to mailing the letter for Blount in 1989 after receiving the letter from him but said she was unaware the spiking had occurred until reading it.

The nominee testified that she was "somewhat shocked" by the letter but rented a typewriter regardless and retyped the letter "pretty much word-for-word." Stone-Manning said she slept on the idea of mailing the letter and followed through the next day. [read more]