Feds back off fine for activist

The government is pulling back on a fine against the college student accused of disrupting a federal lease auction for oil and gas drilling around Utah's redrock national parks.

A deputy solicitor for the U.S. Department of the Interior said Saturday the government is dropping an $81,000 administrative fine until criminal charges are resolved against Tim DeChristopher, an economics major at the University of Utah.

Lawrence J. Jensen said the Bureau of Land Management is just putting the civil case and demand for payment on hold, but lawyers for DeChristopher are asking the Interior Board of Land Appeals in Arlington, Va., to dismiss the case for good.

"All we're doing is waiting until the criminal proceeding is over before taking action," Jensen said Saturday. "We're suspending the collection effort."

The BLM fined DeChristopher a day after his criminal indictment April 1 by a federal grand jury. He faces a trial starting July 6 on felony counts of interfering with a federal auction and making false representations at an auction by bidding for parcels and running up prices at the BLM's December lease sale in Salt Lake City.

"I'm glad the BLM is starting to get things straight and approach the case from a unified position," DeChristoper said.

Some saw the fee as a strategy to distract DeChristopher's legal team, he said. Now, his attorneys can focus more of their attention on the criminal case against him.

"We felt the sense, to use a pro-wrestling term, like we were being piled on," said Pat Shea, one of DeChristopher's defense lawyers.

The Interior Board of Land Appeals must approve Jensen's offer of dropping the fine. In response to that, Shea filed papers asking the administrative court to prohibit the government from trying to ever fine DeChristopher again.

"(The hold) is something I'm encouraged to see," DeChistopher said. "I didn't think the fine had much merit of weight."

At the Dec. 19 lease sale, DeChristopher grabbed a bidder's paddle, drove up prices and won 22,000 acres of land for $1.7 million — an amount he later said he didn't have the means or intention to pay. He has said at street rallies and college lectures it was an act of civil disobedience meant to focus attention on climate change.