Prosecutors: Cliven Bundy is 'Lawless and Violent' Man Who Poses Flight Risk, Danger to the Public

The Justice Department lays out its case against the 74-year-old “domestic extremist” in a strongly worded, 34-page document filed this week that helped convince a federal judge that Bundy is not only a flight risk, but poses a danger to the community. He remains in custody without bond.

The document contends that Bundy, his sons and more than 400-armed militia supporters from 10 states were involved in an “unprecedented act” in April 12, 2014, when they pointed sniper rifles, a 50-caliber machine gun and other firearms at Bureau of Land Management agents who had a court order to confiscate Bundy’s cattle for not paying grazing fees to U.S. taxpayers for two decades.

“The officers … thought either they or unarmed civilian (contractor employees) in front of them were going to be killed or wounded,” the document says. “Many of these (federal) officers, some of them combat veterans, remain profoundly affected emotionally by this event to this day.”

Bundy was arrested by FBI agents on Feb. 10 at the Portland International Airport after getting off a flight from Las Vegas to Oregon, where he allegedly planned to join four remaining occupiers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore. He is charged in a federal criminal complaint with six felonies: conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States; assault on a federal law enforcement officer; use and carrying a firearm in relation to a crime of violence; obstruction of justice; interference with commerce by extortion and aiding and abetting. A grand jury in Nevada is expected to return an indictment containing those charges, and possibly others, in the coming days.   

The newly filed document gives a broad overview of the case the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors have prepared behind the scenes for almost two years. For the first time, the document also gives a sense of the massive scope of the FBI investigation of Bundy and his followers.

“To date, the government has conducted hundreds of witness interviews; executed over 40 search warrants; reviewed, organized and analyzed hundreds of thousands of pages of documents (mostly from social media); reviewed, organized and analyzed thousands of pages of telephone records; and organized, reviewed and analyzed hundreds of hours of audio and video recordings,” the document says.

There’s also this surprise revelation: During the Malheur standoff, before the FBI arrested Ammon and Ryan Bundy and others on Jan. 26, some of the occupiers left the Oregon refuge and sought safe haven at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada. According to an unidentified informant, the document says, “an individual armed with an AR-15 [assault rifle] was providing security for the MNWR occupiers who were staying at Bundy Ranch.”

The document makes it clear that federal authorities view Cliven Bundy as the mastermind behind the April 2014 armed conflict in Nevada, the precursor of his sons’ –– Ryan and Ammon –– Jan. 2 takeover of the federal wildlife preserve in Oregon.

The FBI investigation revealed Cliven Bundy was responsible for recruiting militia groups from 10 states to travel to Nevada to help him confront the BLM and make its agents back down, which they eventually did, fearing the 2014 Bunkerville conflict was about to turn deadly. Afterwards, Bundy gave media interviews and made social media posting “openly celebrating his role in driving the BLM out of the area,” the court document says.

“The justification, according to Bundy and his followers: BLM was acting unconstitutionally in impounding his cattle. In other words, BLM was enforcing the law and Bundy didn't like it –– so he organized an armed assault,” the court document says.

“Bundy is lawless and violent,” the court filing goes on to say. “He does not recognize federal courts –– claiming they are illegitimate –– does not recognize federal law, refuses to obey federal court orders, has already used force and violence against federal law enforcement officers while they were enforcing federal court orders, nearly causing catastrophic loss of life or injury to others.”

Bundy has made it clear he is willing to call in militia supporters and “to do so again in the future to keep federal law enforcement officers from enforcing the law against him,” the document says.

The document, drafted by Justice Department prosecutors, also presents a unique picture of Cliven Bundy’s cattle ranching operation, with headquarters at “the Bundy Ranch” located near the Virgin River where Interstate 15 crosses from Nevada into Arizona, approximately 90 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The Bundy Ranch is surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of federal public lands called the Gold Butte area where Bundy’s cattle graze.

“While Bundy claims he is a cattle rancher, his ranching operation -- to the extent it can be called that -- is unconventional if not bizarre,” the document says.

Rather than managing and controlling his 1,000 head of cattle, Bundy “lets them run wild on the public lands with little, if any, human interaction until such time when he traps them and hauls them off to be sold or slaughtered for his own consumption.”

Bundy doesn’t vaccinate or treat his cattle for disease and doesn’t use cowboys to control the herd, the document says.  His unbranded cattle “stray as far as 50 miles from his ranch and into the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, getting stuck in mud, wandering onto golf courses, straying onto the freeway, causing accidents on occasion, and foraging aimlessly and wildly.”

The document alleges his cattle “roam over hundreds of thousands of acres of federal lands that exist for the use of the general public for many other types of commercial and recreational uses such as camping, hunting and hiking.

Bundy doesn’t bring his cattle off the public lands in the off-season to feed them when the already sparse food supply in the desert is even scarcer, the document says.

“Raised in the wild, Bundy's cattle are left to fend for themselves year-round, fighting off predators and scrounging for the meager amounts of food and water available in the difficult and arid terrain that comprises the public lands in that area of the country,” it says.  

“Bereft of human interaction, his cattle that manage to survive are wild, mean and ornery,” so unruly that Bundy has to trap them for slaughter, the document says.

Bundy’s “strong, anti-federal government views,” are built around his notion that the federal government can’t own land under the U.S. Constitution, federal authorities claim.

His unprincipled views are without legal merit, the Justice Department memo says, but they nonetheless have been a vehicle for him to convince followers that he has some reason for acting lawlessly. In reality, the document contends, Bundy’s ideology “serves his own ends and benefits him financially.”

“Untethering himself from the law, Bundy claims he can do with his cattle as he pleases, including not incurring the expenses to manage or control them and not paying for the forage they consume at the expense of federal taxpayers,” the document says.

“Contrary to the fiction recited by Bundy and his Followers to others, including children, there is no First or Second Amendment right or other right recognized in the law anywhere that gives anyone the right to use or carry, let alone brandish, raise or point, a firearm in order to assault, intimidate, interfere with or prevent a federal law enforcement officer from performing his or her duties –– whether one thinks the officer is acting constitutionally or not,” the document says.

“While that should be obvious to any law abiding citizen, Bundy espouses to the contrary.”