Day: September 10, 2026

Earlier today I teased context to a video clip I recorded from Thursday’s wild Mineral County Commissioner’s meeting where the usual methods of keeping Federal investigations and Confidential Criminal Justice Information insulated from public disclosure were thrown out the window by outgoing Sheriff, Ryan Funke, and his “specialized” LEO lawyer, Lance Jasper.

What is going on here?

If you’re Deb Jackson, who represents the Mineral County Attorney’s Office, what’s going on is an effort to obtain a copy of a contract proving a deal exists between the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office and a Kansas-based company, called ESU Pursuits, to provide six vehicles to the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office for $170,000 dollars (this dollar amount represents half the order, so just 3 vehicles–thank you for the clarification from a reader).

But this company, counters Funke and his LEO lawyer, Lance Jasper, is entangled in an FBI investigation, so HOW DARE Jackson subpoena Sheriff Funke AND Shawn Smalley, the former County Commissioner who resigned from his position just before questions about this deal started getting asked months ago.

Publicly available information that one can glean from online searches is one thing, but privileged information about knowledge of an FBI investigation is something else, which is why I figured an attempt to give Lance Jasper a call would be worth rolling the dice on.

I mean, it’s not like he would be dumb enough to call me back and talk about what he just blabbed about in a public during a County Commissioners meeting, right?

Right?

I called Reep, Bell and Jasper to confirm if Lance Jasper was still employed by this law firm, since I heard it was no longer in existence. A woman named Jessica answered and, instead of telling me that Lance Jasper is running a NEW law firm now called LPJ Law, she massaged the truth into a lie-adjacent omission that this new law firm exists by simply saying “yes” to my inquiry. I then gave her my name and number, not expecting the special LEO lawyer to call me back less than an hour later.

The 8 minutes I spent talking to the raspy-sounding Lance Jasper were concerning for reasons that will become glaringly apparent.

I told Jasper that, from what I had just watched online, it appeared he and the Sheriff (and former County Commissioner) were turning a simple request for records into a public spectacle for reasons that made no sense, so I asked which FBI office was involved.

Did I get a clear answer? No, Jasper mentioned “Monte”, as in Monte Shaide, but then said the investigation was being handled by the FBI in another state.

Hmmm.

After about two or three minutes I started thinking this whole conversation with Lance Jasper wasn’t making sense, so I asked a very direct question:

“When is the last time you had a drink of alcohol?” I asked Lance Jasper point blank, half-expecting him to hang up on me immediately. Instead, he kept going, but without answering my question, so I asked him again more emphatically.

“I’m not a public figure,” he said, dodging my question again, to which I pointed out he was representing one, and that there were rumors about his alcohol abuse. I got another refusal to answer and started wondering if maybe it wasn’t alcohol, but something that could keep a person up for 2 or 3 days.

I pressed Lance Jasper on my knowledge of his previous law firm’s role in the parity pay litigation against Missoula County on behalf of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, then hit him with my reporting that David Barsotti had allegedly died recently.

“I didn’t know David was dead,” Lance said. Do I believe him? No.

After Jasper agreed with me about LEO corruption in Western Montana, giving me (unsolicited) the name of a client he represented in Ravalli County I should look into, it was ME who ended the conversation.

WTF is going on here?

I’d ask Lance’s partner, Jenna Penielle Lyons Dubler-Houser, but she’s probably still recovering from Burning Man.

Tomorrow Lance Jasper has assured the Mineral County Commissioners he’s going to bring the contract for the Sheriff vehicles in order to account for the $170,000. I reached out to a few officials, including leaving a voicemail on Ryan Funke’s direct line to let him know how much I enjoyed chatting with his special lawyer.

Exactly how special, well, that remains to be seen.

If you appreciate my coverage of what happens in our neighboring county please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. I’m going to keep a close eye on this story as it develops because I think there’s more to discover, and it ties directly to the judge who enjoys nibbling on nothing burgers.

UPDATE: sounds like the Friday meeting will NOT be happening.

Thanks for reading!

Before I read this article I thought it was illegal to publicly masturbate around children, but now, thanks to a female prosecutor in Florida, I understand that ALL THINGS THAT ARE WRONG ARE NOT ILLEGAL.

A Soros-backed Florida prosecutor told the public that a man pleasuring himself on a park bench in front of children was “wrong,” then insisted it is not a crime.

Ninth Judicial Circuit State Attorney Monique Worrell used a press conference to defend her office’s refusal to charge Kevin Chapman, 61, after his arrest at Kit Land Nelson Park in Apopka.

A father and his two-year-old were at the splash pad. Witnesses, park staff, photos and video put Chapman on a bench with his hand in his shorts, facing the children, for minutes. The park manager said his shorts dropped when he stood up.

When negative attention descended on this female prosecutor she did what any woman in a position of power has the power to do: she cast herself as a victim of men, specifically the Florida AG and Governor:

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier put it in a formal letter: her office not only skipped pretrial detention, it declined to charge him at all and called the case “not suitable for prosecution.”

“Central Florida deserves better than a state attorney who prioritizes the guilty over protecting the innocent,” Uthmeier said. “She gave this guy a free walk in the park, and now other kids are in jeopardy of having a tragic incident happen to them.“

Worrell’s counter was that the toddler supposedly did not clock what was happening, and that no other adult saw the genitals clearly enough. In other words, a man can sit in a children’s park and finish the job so long as the two-year-old is too young to give a courtroom speech about it.

She then turned the argument into a grievance about Gov. Ron DeSantis, who suspended her in 2023 for dereliction of duty. Voters put her back. The children at the splash pad did not get a vote.

“It is clear that the underlying intention here is to unjustly remove me from office, yet again,” she said. Of Uthmeier: “He struts and shouts as if volume can mask ignorance, but all he’s proven is that he’s a punchline in a job that demands serious leadership.”

Closer to home, Missoula’s past “leadership” in the County Attorney’s office also had a soft spot for criminals, like the drug dealer who stabbed a young man to death in “self defense” when his drug deal went wrong in a Missoula restaurant bathroom.

How did Pabst accomplish this feat of not prosecuting a killer for killing someone? I’m still not exactly sure, but it had something to do with fear and what a “reasonable” person might do to protect their drugs when someone starts hitting you in the head.

For more context, here’s how NBC Montana reported this at the time:

We began to look at case of a young man stabbed to death in a Missoula restroom on New Year’s when his family asked us to help answer their questions.

The attacker, Joshua Paniagua, admitted he did it. But prosecutors didn’t charge him with homicide for stabbing Benjamin Mousso, 18. The reason — simply put, Paniagua claimed self-defense.

…

Prosecutors later charged Paniagua with two felonies — tampering with physical evidence and criminal distribution of dangerous drugs — and one misdemeanor.

Missoula County Attorney Kirsten Pabst explained it this way, “We are bound ethically to follow the law and can only file charges where probable cause is met and where we are likely to obtain a conviction.”

First off, this idea that prosecutors only bring charges “where we are likely to obtain a conviction” is total bullshit. The example that immediately comes to mind is the prosecution of Brandon Bryant for intimidation when SOMEONE ELSE sent City Council edited videos of Bryant’s recorded speech.

It’s possible, though, that I’m biased and/or NOT the kind of reasonable person who would be “afraid” if my meth-for-weed drug deal went south.

But don’t tell that to Kirsten Pabst:

Paniagua admitted he stabbed Mousso four times.

The charging document claims, while Paniagua’s conflicting story made investigators question the “appropriateness of his actions and the level of force he used in response to Mousso’s attack … Paniagua maintained he ‘had no choice in the stabbing.’”

“We are looking at the reasonable person standard,” said Pabst.

Montana law specifically allows someone, in this case Paniagua, to use force, including deadly force, to prevent a robbery.

Here’s how that statute reads: 45-3-102.Use of force in defense of person. A person is justified in the use of force or threat to use force against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that the conduct is necessary for self-defense or the defense of another against the other person’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, the person is justified in the use of force likely to cause death or serious bodily harm only if the person reasonably believes that the force is necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily harm to the person or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

Not long after Missoula’s “reasonable” prosecutors sided with the reasonable drug dealer, the reasonable drug dealer “freaked out” and less-reasonably suggested in charging documents that his mother was possessed by the devil.

Don’t worry, the drug dealer had devised a very reasonable “torture chamber” in which to reasonably deal with his devil-possessed mother.

Paniagua’s mother called 911 around 11 p.m. on Saturday to report her son was “freaking out,” stating he had screwed all of the doors shut and saying his mother was “possessed by the devil,” Missoula County prosecutors said in charging documents. The woman was calling from a neighbor’s house, where she had fled after he “came at her with a hammer,” according to court documents. Paniagua had similar episodes on previous occasions, typically induced by alcohol and drug use, she told authorities.

When law enforcement from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department arrived, the woman told a sergeant Paniagua had made a “torture chamber” in the home and said she was fearful when he had brandished the hammer toward her. Charging documents do not further describe the chamber.

Not coincidentally, it was around this time that I started wondering if perhaps Missoula was NOT being led by reasonable people. In fact, I began suspecting they might be either deeply corrupt or dangerously retarded.

While I could see that this was dangerously insane reasoning six years ago, I failed to appreciate how declaring unreasonable people reasonable would impact my own life and threaten the very fabric of society, but here we are.

A year ago today a sizable portion of Americans found it more than reasonable that someone would want to assassinate Charlie Kirk because of his politics. How many of those people also condemned Kyle Rittenhouse for reasonably defending himself with lethal force against violent rioters? How can those two things exist in the same brain?

Unlike Pabst, who DEFENDED her reasonable killer instead of prosecuting him, prosecutors in Wisconsin had no problem ignoring Rittenhouse’s reasonable fear of bodily harm in order to charge and fully prosecute him for murder, which he was eventually acquitted of.

Is our criminal justice system professionally objective or politically and/or hormonally schizophrenic?

To continue pursuing answers to these tough questions, resources DO tend to help, so to help me and my serious LACK of resources, online donations can be made here, at my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!