BCA Statement on Misconduct Accusations in Hells Angels Case
Following FOX21’s reporting on the case against members of the Iron Range Hells Angels, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension sent us a statement.
The statement referenced accusations made by the defense, that a BCA Special Agent had been involved in monitoring privileged jail communications between at least one defendant and their attorney.
The statement from Public Information Officer Jill Oliveira said:
“I’m not going to speak to suppositions contained in motions and hearings that are a standard part of pre-trial legal wrangling, nor can I speak about an open and active case. But I can tell you this: The BCA reviews jail communications, including jail phone calls and text messages – which are public – as part of active investigations. Any communication containing attorney/client privileged information is supposed to be removed before we ever have access to it. However, if we receive information that we believe should have been removed, we immediately close the file and contact the county attorney. That is certainly what happened here.”
In our reply, we asked Oliveira if the BCA had any comment regarding the latest proposed order in the case, which was written by the defense on October 10, 2024, and states, “It is uncontested that government actors violated attorney-client privileged communications in this case, as evidenced by the written filings of the parties and the statements in open court on October 4, 2024.” The order has not been signed by the judge in this case, Judge Robert Friday, who has set an evidentiary hearing for November 22, 2024. At the time of publishing, we had not received a reply from the BCA.
This article was edited to make the following change(s): A previous version of this story incorrectly said that the court order was submitted by Judge Robert Friday. However, the order referenced in this story was actually submitted by the attorney for defendant Anthony Debelak and has not been signed by Judge Friday.
