Trump Appointed Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Of Dakota Pipeline Protesters Who Were Attacked By Police

A Trump-appointed judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by Dakota Access Pipeline protesters who alleged that they were the victims of police brutality five years ago. The stories at the time were vivid and frequent, with police officers firing water cannons in sub-freezing temperatures, firing rubber bullets into the crowds, and many other instances of extreme aggression. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

It's been nearly five years since the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and unfortunately these protestors continue to lose very important court cases over the brutality that they suffered while protesting the placement of this pipeline. Recently, they lost yet another lawsuit that tried to argue that the police were overly brutal in their treatment of the protestors, using excessive force, using means that left people with disabilities, you know, significantly injured them. Cost them tons of money and hospital bills all because were exercising their first amendment rights, the right to assemble. And unfortunately this latest legal defeat comes at the hands, of course, of a Trump appointed judge. Of course, I don't know that it would've fared any differently with a Obama appointed judge or a Biden appointed judge or a Bush appointed judge. Most of these presidents for the record have been appointing people to lifetime judicial appointments from corporate defense law firms.

You know, law firms that, that represent companies that place oil pipelines, that manufacture pharmaceuticals. So yeah, it's a Trump appointed judge and of course that grabs headlines. But again, I don't think it'd be any different if it were Obama, Bush or Clinton who had appointed this judge. This is what happens when you pick these corporate defense lawyers. So here's the thing. Here's some of the allegations, and of course we have to say allegations because nobody's been convicted of it, but we all know this because we all read about it at the time. We all covered it at the time. So here it is. Several peaceful protestors who gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation to struggle against the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure were assaulted by law enforcement officers on November 20th, 2016. Police sprayed demonstrators with water cannons, amid sub freezing temperatures that night.

They also used tear gas and fired rubber bullets and exploding munitions indiscriminately into the crowd. And some of these other lawsuits, last January a lawsuit was thrown out that was filed by pipeline protestor claiming that law enforcement used excessive force at a 2017 protest site. The order came weeks after a similar ruling in a case brought by another demonstrator. One of the individuals claimed that police targeted her with a concussion grenade during the November 20th, 2016 confrontation. She suffered a left arm injury in an explosion and had multiple surgeries to save the limb. And that's just one individual here, folks. This is the kind of treatment these individuals received at the hands of these police officers that were there, of course, at the request of the Dakota Access people. And the judges are saying, nope, I think this is, I think this is justified.

I think the police did everything they should have done. I don't see anything wrong with this. And this is what is wrong with our justice system today. You may not agree with the tactics of these protestors and we could argue the merits of that all day long. I do agree with them for the record. I think what they did was right and what they did was justified and what they did was constitutionally protected. But no matter how you feel about it, randomly firing rubber bullets into these people, using concussion grenades, just throwing them out into the crowd, tear gassing them, and then literally trying to give them hypothermia.