Tracy Stone-Manning, President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management, was part of a radical eco-terror group in 1989 that engaged in tree-spiking, a dangerous activity that can cause serious physical injury to loggers.
The Daily Caller News Foundation broke the news on June 11, revealing that Stone-Manning had penned a threatening letter to federal forestry officials, warning they could be harmed if they sawed down trees that had been spiked with metal rods.
‘A Lot of People Could Get Hurt’
Stone-Manning testified that she sent the letter after she “received legal immunity to testify in a 1993 criminal trial,” the Daily Caller reported. “The trial resulted in a 17-month prison sentence for tree spiking, a violent tactic used to prevent logging.”
“The letter warned that a local forest in Idaho set to be logged had been sabotaged with tree spikes, according to the documents,” the Daily Caller stated. “P.S. You bastards go in there anyway and a lot of people could get hurt,” the letter read.
The Daily Caller cited a 1990 article from a Washington, D.C., newspaper detailing just how violent an act of protest tree spiking could be. From that article:
“George Alexander, a third-generation mill worker, was just starting his shift at the Louisiana-Pacific lumber mill in Cloverdale, Calif., when the log that would alter his life rolled down his conveyor belt toward a high-speed saw he was working on.
“It was May 1987, and Alexander was 23. His job was to split logs. He was nearly three feet away when the log hit his saw and the saw exploded. One half of the blade stuck in the log. The other half hit Alexander in the head, tearing through his safety helmet and face shield. His face was slashed from eye to chin. His teeth were smashed and his jaw was cut in half.
“Alexander had never even heard of a sabotage tactic called tree spiking until he became a victim of ‘eco-terrorism.’ Someone who objected to tree cutting had imbedded a huge steel spike in the log that violently jammed the saw.”
The article went on to explain that “[t]ree spikes are among the most vicious of [eco-terror] strategies.” “While the tree is still in the forest, the spike is driven in at an angle so the head is hidden in the bark. It can shatter a chain saw on impact, sending pieces of razor-sharp steel flying.”
From Saving Trees to Hugging Land Developers
Stone-Manning’s radical past does not seem to have hurt her rise in Democratic Party ranks in Montana. She served for six years as a regional and state staff director and senior adviser to Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) from 2007 to 2012 and was Democrat Governor Steve Bullock’s chief of staff from 2014 to 2017.
[bookpromo align=”left”] Along with her eco-terror ties, Stone-Manning is facing questions about a discounted-interest loan she received from a Montana land developer while serving as an aide to Tester. Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS), during a June 8 hearing, “pressed Stone-Manning on a personal loan of between $50,000 and $100,000 that she took out,” Fox News reports.
“According to your disclosure it looks like you received that [loan] at an interest rate of 6% but the going rate for a consumer loan was 11%,” Marshall queried Stone-Manning during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing. “Do you feel like that’s some type of conflict of interest?”
“Ethics are deeply important to me,” Stone-Manning replied, Fox News reports. “Like many families in 2008, we got smacked by the recession and a friend loaned us some money to make sure that we could get through it. And we came to terms and we honored the loan.”
From spiking trees to Save the Earth to nabbing favorable loans from a land developer in less than 20 years. Stone-Manning’s combination of radical progressivism and establishment insider baseball would seem to make her a natural fit for the Biden administration.
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Read more from Joe Schaeffer.
