Sheriff/coroner backtracks from ‘suicide’ narrative in Phil Haney investigation

FBI’s insertion into the case is latest cause for concern

The Amador County Sheriff on Monday walked back his previous statements on the suspicious death of Philip Haney, a prominent whistleblower who exposed how the Obama administration blew off research data that would have helped the government prevent Islamic terror attacks on U.S. soil.

In a hasty statement issued within a few hours of the discovery of Haney’s body last Friday on the side of a state highway in rural California, the sheriff, who also doubles as the county coroner, said Haney “appeared to suffer from a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

That comment planted in the minds of the mainstream media the idea that Haney killed himself. Most did not even report on the death and those that did, like Fox News, played it as a run-of-the-mill suicide.

But after a long weekend in which calls and emails flooded into the office of Sheriff Martin Ryan, and he likely read some of the many accounts of Phil’s exemplary life from conservative bloggers and journalists who knew him, the sheriff changed his tune.

Ryan must have realized this was not any ordinary man whose body turned up on the side of the road in his county, less than three miles from where he was staying in the Pinetree RV Park outside of tiny Plymouth, California.

Haney’s closest friends, including Congressman Steve King, his pastor and his fiancée have all said that he was not in a suicidal state of mind in the days leading up to his death.

Read LeoHohmann.com’s first-hand account of Haney’s life and mission.

The Sheriff’s Office’s new statement Monday was much more open to the possibility that Haney could have been killed, not by his own hand but by someone else.

Presumably, those who stand to benefit from Haney’s death will now be given a good long look by investigators. We can only hope.

But the coroner/sheriff’s statement also points the finger at the bloggosphere as putting out “misinformation” about Haney’s death.

As our friends at World Net Daily point out, the source of that misinformation was the coroner/sheriff himself.

WND reports:

“The ‘misinformation’ was issued Saturday in an initial statement by the coroner himself, saying deputies and detectives at the scene Friday morning found a firearm near Haney’s body and believed he suffered a “single, self-inflicted gunshot wound.'”

Here’s the new, corrected statement, issued Monday afternoon by the Amador County Sheriff’s Office:

On February 22, 2020 the Amador County Sheriff’s Office released initial details regarding Philip Haney being found deceased in our jurisdiction. Mr. Haney was located in a park and ride open area immediately adjacent to State Highway 16 near State Highway 124. Highway 16 is a busy state highway and used as a main travel route to and from Sacramento. The location is less than 3 miles from where he was living.

Currently we have scheduled a forensic autopsy to be performed by forensic pathologists from the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office. Additionally we have reached out to our law enforcement partners in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to assist in analyzing documents, phone records and a lap top that were recovered from the scene and Mr. Haney’s RV. We are currently in possession of his vehicle, the firearm located at the scene, and his RV and we will be requesting evidence processing assistance from the FBI on those items as well.

Our investigators conducted a neighborhood canvas and interviewed his RV park neighbors on the day of the incident along with checking key areas for any video surveillance that may exist from that time. The investigators are continuing to follow-up with the overwhelming number of persons who are calling our office from throughout the United States asking for detailed information on our investigation.

Unfortunately, there was misinformation immediately being put out that we have determined Mr. Haney’s death to be a suicide. This is not the case. We are currently in the beginning phase of our investigation and any final determination as to the cause and manner of Mr. Haney’s death would be extremely premature and inappropriate. No determination will be made until all evidence is examined and analyzed.

This investigation is still active and will be ongoing. No further details will be provided at this time.

The good news is that the coroner/sheriff has ordered a forensic autopsy.

The bad news is that the sheriff/coroner has invited the FBI into the case.

Given the Bureau’s record of corruption and cover-ups over the last few years, I am deeply concerned about its influence over a case involving the potential murder of a man with a 10-year record of challenging the federal bureaucracy’s official narrative on Islam.

Remember, all of the FBI’s abusive tactics vis-à-vis the coup attempt against the Trump administration involved it covering up for the deep state, the entrenched bureaucracy, whatever you want to call it.

The problem is that the FBI operates above the law.  How else can you explain the fact that not a single one of the FBI conspirators against Trump — James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, or Andrew McCabe — have been charged with a crime?

Islam, according to notorious deep-state actors like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, James Clapper and John Brennan, has no relation to terrorism. The corruptive hand of the FBI has every reason to loom large over this case, to erase once and for all the impact of Phil Haney’s ground-breaking research on keeping America safe.

In my book, Stealth Invasion, I reported how in 2011 John Brennan played a key role in getting all references to Islam, jihad, Muslims, etc., scrubbed from federal law-enforcement training manuals.

It was the FBI that refused to investigate the Tsarnaev brothers before they carried out the Boston Marathon bombing, even though they were alerted by the Russian government.

In the video below, skip to the 11-minute mark, where former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann brilliantly lays out the malfeasance of the FBI in investigating jihadism.

Bachmann warned at the time,  in 2016, that “it almost cost Philip Haney his career” to warn the government about the Islamic threat.

In the end, it may have cost him his life.

Let’s hope and pray that this small-town Sheriff, who most likely wants to do the right thing, won’t be steered in the wrong direction by the FBI’s skilled cover-up artists.

John L. Work, a longtime former police detective, told journalist/author Diana West that the Amador County Sheriff’s Office blew it on every level in its initial response to the discovery of Haney’s body.

Take note of Work’s checklist of what needs to be done, as reported by West:

“If I understand the initial coroner’s report, the “determination” that Philip Haney died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound was immediately made at the scene when officers first arrived.  Now, that is some shoddy police work, if ever I saw shoddy work – if that is in fact when the “determination” of apparent suicide was made.  Very poorly written coroner’s report.

Gunshot residue tests would have to be done, looking for nitrate traces on his strong hand and clothing.  That takes some time and laboratory analysis.  That test wouldn’t have been done at the scene.  Even that test would not rule out a homicide, if nitrates were found on his hand and clothing.  A complete post-mortem should have been done and a thorough background investigation should have been conducted before this was declared an apparent suicide (emphasis added).

There has not been adequate time to do this investigation and come to any sort of conclusion.  Whoever wrote that initial coroner’s report should be fired for incompetence.  This stinks to high Heaven.”

If it makes the sheriff feel better to blame his malpractice on others, that’s fine. At least he’s saying the right things now. We can only hope he is sincere and will follow up his words with the due diligence Haney’s family deserves.

Leo Hohmann is an independent freelance journalist, author of the 2017 book “Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad.” He is working on a follow-up that will investigate the Interfaith movement, which is ushering false and antichrist ideas into Western churches. To support his research and writing projects, please consider a donation of any size.