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A federal judge ordered prosecutors to provide a "road map" of the evidence they plan to use against Stockton resident William Keebler, accused of trying to detonate an explosive device at a remote BLM cabin on the Arizona Strip.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Choate told Magistrate Judge Paul Warner on Friday that his office received 170 DVDs of digital evidence from the FBI, which spent more than a year undercover in Keebler's small militia and built him two inert explosives — one, said prosecutors, to blow up the unoccupied cabin, the other in case the militia encountered law enforcement.

"At this point, I believe it's not weeks, it's probably months of video," Choate said, adding that most of the video is "action-packed" in terms of relevant evidence.

"Would you plan on just plugging in the DVDs on the big screen and saying to the jury, 'Here's some popcorn, watch this for the next three days'?" Warner asked.

"I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm trying to be helpful," he said. "... This reminds me a little bit of the Jeremy Johnson matter."

Warner was also a magistrate judge in the case against Johnson, a St. George online entrepreneur who was sentenced Friday to more than 11 years in prison, and said he heard 19 status conferences because of challenges presented by the volume of evidence against Johnson.

Friday, Warner scratched Keebler's Sept. 12 trial and set another status conference for Aug. 26 so they could have "an intelligent conversation" about the length of discovery.

"It just seems to me that the amount of material you provided [federal defender Lynn Donaldson] is daunting unless he has some reasonable way of sorting it out," he said. "... Mr. Keebler will languish in detention while he does that. The trial will be delayed interminably. That's not going to happen."

Choate said he believed Donaldson would have to mount an affirmative defense — hinting that he believes the video evidence will prove Keebler's involvement in the attempted bombing.

Such a defense would require Donaldson to review all the evidence, anyway, he said — a point on which Donaldson seemed to agree.

"We certainly need to know the genesis of the relationship between Mr. Keebler and some of these undercover officers," Donaldson said.

Keebler, 57, is accused of leading an anti-government militia composed of about eight members — including two undercover FBI agents and one informant — as the group scouted targets at BLM and FBI offices and at a mosque in Salt Lake City.

He took part in the 2014 armed standoff between federal law enforcement and southeastern Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and later worked as volunteer security for the family of LaVoy Finicum, killed Jan. 26 at a roadblock by Oregon state police amid a 41-day standoff at a wildlife refuge.

Twitter: @matthew_piper