Cliven Bundy emerged to supporters\u2019 cheers, while environmental and conservation advocates worried that the dismissal of his charges would bolster \u201cviolent and racist anti-government\u201d followers who aim to erode established parks, wildlife refuges and other public lands controlled by U.S. officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not done with this,\u201d the 71-year-old Bundy declared in his first minutes of freedom since his arrest in February 2016.<\/p>\n
The family patriarch and states\u2019 rights figure said he had been held as a political prisoner for 700 days and promised that if U.S. Bureau of Land Management agents come again to seize his cattle over unpaid grazing fees, they will encounter \u201cthe very same thing as last time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole world is looking at us,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2018Why is America acting like this? Why are we allowing the federal government, these bureaucracies, to have armies?\u2019 That\u2019s a big question the whole world wants to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stunning collapse of the federal criminal case against Cliven Bundy and his sons Ryan and Ammon marked a new low for government lawyers whose work is now under review by the Trump administration. Prosecutors have faced several losses in Oregon and Nevada arising from armed Bundy standoffs over federal control of vast stretches of land in the U.S. West.<\/p>\n
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions launched an investigation into the Nevada case last month after Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial. On Monday, she dismissed outright all 15 counts against Bundy, his sons and Montana militia leader Ryan Payne.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe court finds that the universal sense of justice has been violated,\u201d Navarro said as audible gasps and sobs erupted in a court gallery crammed with Bundy supporters.<\/p>\n
It comes after prosecutors failed to gain full convictions in two trials against six other defendants who acknowledged carrying assault-style weapons during the April 2014 confrontation outside Bunkerville, 80 miles (129 kilometers) northeast of Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
Jurors in Portland, Oregon, also acquitted Ryan and Ammon Bundy more than a year ago of taking over a federal wildlife refuge in early 2016 and calling for the U.S. government to turn over public land to local control.<\/p>\n
The judge ended the latest case by ripping government prosecutors, led by First Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Myhre, for \u201cintentional abdication of \u2026 responsibility,\u201d \u2018\u2019flagrant misconduct\u201d and \u201csubstantial prejudice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Navarro found \u201cdeliberate attempts to mislead and distort the truth\u201d and blamed FBI agents for \u201creckless disregard\u201d of requirements to turn over evidence relating to government snipers and cameras that monitored the Bundy homestead.<\/p>\n
The defense also should have been given records of government threat assessments that concluded the Bundys would probably protest but not become violent if agents enforcing court orders began rounding up their cattle, the judge said.<\/p>\n
Navarro set a Feb. 26 trial date for four defendants still awaiting trial, including two more Bundy sons, Mel and David.<\/p>\n
Nevada\u2019s newly appointed acting U.S. attorney, Dayle Elieson, released a one-sentence statement saying she will make a determination about whether to challenge the ruling before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n
Ian Bartrum, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, law professor who has written about the Bundy case and federal land policy, called the complete dismissal a \u201cpretty incredible result\u201d for the family and its followers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some ways, it vindicates what they\u2019re claiming,\u201d Bartrum said of people who believe federal agents and prosecutors overreached to indict 19 people on charges that included conspiracy, assault and threats against federal agents.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only did they not go to prison, but they drew attention to their political cause \u2014 rethinking land management policy in the West,\u201d Bartrum said.<\/p>\n
Kieran Suckling, an official with the Center for Biological Diversity, which fought for decades to protect endangered desert tortoises on rangeland where Bundy cows graze, called the prospect of a wider audience for the states\u2019 rights figure cause for concern.<\/p>\n
\u201cFederal prosecutors clearly bungled this case and let the Bundys get away with breaking the law,\u201d Suckling said. \u201cThe Bundys rallied a militia to mount an armed insurrection against the government. The failure of this case will only embolden this violent and racist anti-government movement that wants to take over our public lands.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bundy emerged to supporters\u2019 cheers, while environmental and conservation advocates worried that the dismissal of his charges would bolster \u201cviolent and racist anti-government\u201d followers who aim to erode established parks, wildlife refuges and other public lands controlled by U.S. officials. \u201cWe\u2019re not done with this,\u201d the 71-year-old Bundy declared in his first minutes of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13,193,1263],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-101997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-land-use","tag-ranching"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101997"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=101997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}