150 Militia Take Over Makhuer National Wildlife Preserve Headquarters

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Ammon Bundy tells his story to the jury as told by Oregon Live

http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-sta..._saying_h.html


Ammon Bundy says he tried to resist father's push to rally around Oregon ranchers

Ammon Bundy carried a worn Bible to the witness stand Tuesday and portrayed himself as a weak underdog pitted against a powerful federal government that has tried to crush his family.

Asked where he lived, Bundy said, "At the Multnomah County jail...just across the street. I've been there eight and a half months.''

Bundy became emotional on the stand several times, his voice quivering as he described how "useless'' it seems fighting against the federal government who has put his father, his brothers and himself in jail.

Bundy, the leader of the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to prevent federal employees from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management from carrying out their work through intimidation, threats or force during a 41-day occupation of the federal wildlife sanctuary. He was arrested Jan. 26 as he and other leaders were driving to a community meeting in John Day.

The 41-year-old also faces indictment in Nevada, along with his father, Cliven Bundy, and his brothers, stemming from their 2014 standoff with federal officers from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management who were attempting to corral the senior Bundy's cattle based on a federal court order. The Bundys and hundreds of armed supporters thwarted the federal agency, and its officers backed away. Federal charges weren't issued in the Bunkerville case until after the takeover of the refuge in Oregon had occurred.

Ammon Bundy told jurors that his family has grazed cattle at their ranch near Bunkerville since they homesteaded in the 1870s. But he didn't mention anything about his father owing the government more than $1 million in grazing fees. His father stopped paying after the bureau ordered him to restrict the periods when his herd roamed the 600,000-acre ranch land as part of an effort to protect the endangered desert tortoise.

Instead, Bundy said his family faced a "tremendous amount of abuse'' for trying "to protect these grazing rights that we own.''

Bundy said the Bunkerville standoff "certainly affected'' his viewpoints towards the federal land management agency. Since the 2014 event, he said he was driven to find ways to protect his family's grazing rights and other ranchers' property rights, calling it their "life blood.'' He said he worked with Nevada lawmakers to push for a Nevada Resource Rights Registry, which would have required the state to defend what he called "vested property rights'' – be it water, grazing, logging or mineral rights – from federal control. It wasn't passed.

"This is the dangerous point the federal government doesn't want anyone to know...we do have rights to these lands,'' Bundy told jurors. "In my belief, there has been a strategic effort by the federal government in taking these rights.''

His voice choking with emotion, Bundy said it's been nearly impossible to challenge the federal government. "We can't do it against these people. They're too smart. They're too strong. We can't fight them. Now they're prosecuting us....My dad and brothers are all in jail right now, every single one of them. It's wrong,'' Bundy said, tears filling his eyes. "It's wrong....again, I'm sorry.''

Bundy said he initially resisted his father Cliven Bundy's push in the summer and fall of 2015 to get involved in the case of Harney County ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steve Hammond. As a child, Bundy noted, his father took his children "with him wherever he went.''

Bundy said he didn't know anything about the Hammonds' case, but his father kept bringing it up. In October, he said Cliven Bundy asked him again what he knew about the Hammonds' sentencing.
"He said, 'I'm afraid what's happening...,'' Ammon Bundy said, pausing mid-sentence as he fought back tears, unable to get more words out.

Struggling to compose himself, he continued, trying to complete what his father had told him, "He said, 'I'm afraid what's happening is the same thing that happened to us.' ''

"At that time I said, I can't fight another battle. We're doing the best we can to keep our family from going to prison,'' testified Bundy, a pocket Constitution in the left front pocket of his blue jail scrubs.
Ammon Bundy told his father he couldn't get involved, and that's what partly led him to move his family from Arizona to Emmett, Idaho in the fall of 2015. Bundy told jurors he's a married man with six children, and a family Christmas photo was displayed to jurors. His wife, Lisa Bundy, sat in the public gallery Tuesday.

But less than a month later, Ammon Bundy said he had a change of heart. While in bed on the evening of Nov. 2, he said he picked up someone's message on his phone, and clicked on a story about the re-sentencing of Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steve Hammond.

He said he still tried to resist "this overwhelming feeling that it was my duty to get involved, and try to protect this family.''

"I had to suppress that feeling a little bit and say no, that was not my responsibility until I couldn't any longer,'' Bundy testified.

Later that night, he started searching the Internet and reading everything he could find on the Hammonds' case, he said.

On Nov. 3, Ammon Bundy said he typed a letter, addressed "To: Aware Citizens and Government Officials,'' and posted it on his family's blog, Bundyranch.blogspot.com.

It began, "Our hearts and prayers go out to the Hammond family with deep empathy.''
The lengthy letter called the "injustices'' they believed the Hammond family was facing "hard to comprehend'' and alerted federal officials that further incarceration of the Hammonds could lead to civil unrest.

"We warn federal agencies, federal judges and all government officers that follow federal oppressive examples that the people are in unrest because of these types of actions,'' it read.

Ammon Bundy said he then decided to travel to Oregon to meet with the Harney County ranchers to "understand who they were.''

Ammon Bundy said he met with Steven Hammon initially. Steven Hammond gave him a ride in the back of his pickup to his ranch, about 30 miles away.

The Hammonds were convicted in June 2012 of arson to federal land. Dwight Hammond Jr. was convicted of one count of arson to Bureau of Land Management land in Harney County. His son was convicted of two counts of arson on Bureau of Land Management land, as well as land belonging to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, the judge instructed jurors.

The father initially was sentenced to three months prison in October 2012, and his son to one year and one day of prison. On Feb. 7, 2014, the 9^th U.S. District Court of Appeals overturned the sentence and the father and son were re-sentenced in October 2015 to serve out a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison. The arson statute they were convicted under is part of the wide-ranging Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that Congress passed in 1996. A five-year sentence was required under the enhanced penalties provision for use of explosives or arson crimes, the judge told jurors.

Of his visit with Steven Hammond, Bundy said, "I began to understand he was pretty tired of fighting and he was pretty much broken emotionally...He was just going to take what was given.''

Bundy's lawyer, Marcus Mumford, asked his client how he responded to Steven Hammond's position.
"I didn't understand until I spent 8 ½ months in prison, how he felt,'' Bundy testified.

Co-defendant Ryan Payne, who had come to support the Bundy Ranch near Bunkerville in 2014, ended up joining Ammon Bundy in Burns last November. Together, he said, they visited with Dwight Hammond Jr. and his wife, and later with Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward.

Ammon Bundy is expected to return to the witness stand Wednesday morning.

As he remained on the witness stand Tuesday afternoon, his attorney played for jurors clips of video capturing part of the 2014 standoff in Bunkerville. They captured a woman Ammon Bundy identified as his "Aunt Margaret'' getting thrown to the ground by a federal officer after she stood briefly in front of a government vehicle, and then Ammon Bundy getting shot with a stun gun three times after he parked his four-wheeler in front of a government dump truck. Bundy said his goal was to find out what the dump truck was hauling away, as he and others suspected it was his father's dead cattle.

"I truly believed they didn't have a right to be there, and my family had a right to be there,'' Bundy testified.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ethan Knight earlier had objected to the videos being presented to jurors, arguing they only revealed a limited slice of what went on at Bunkerville

"Bunkerville is the evidence equivalent of a Pandora's box in this case,'' Knight argued. "Once we go down this road...we are really embracing more than a mini trial...but events that are not before this court.''

U.S. District Court Judge Anna J. Brown said the prosecution's concerns are legitimate, "but that's a reality in a case like this.''

The judge ruled the videos from Bunkerville could be played solely for showing the impact on Ammon Bundy's state of mind as he came to Oregon. They could be played for jurors, but won't be provided to the jury as evidence during their deliberations in the case, the judge said.

-- Maxine Bernstein
mbernstein@oregonian.com
503-221-8212
@maxoregonian