Bunkerville Militia Defendant Gets 68-Years in Prison
The remaining defendants in the 2014 Cliven Bundy vs. federal government standoff in Bunkerville, Nevada, got a sobering message this week.
One of their associates, Arizona militiaman Gregory P. Burleson, was sentenced Wednesday to 68 years in prison by a federal judge in Las Vegas for his role in the standoff. Identified as a “follower-gunman” supporter of Bundy and his sons, Burleson was convicted by a jury of assaulting and threatening federal officers.
He also was convicted of interference with interstate commerce by extortion, obstruction of justice, interstate travel in aid of extortion and several firearms counts. He faced a mandatory minimum sentence of 57 years. “I was hell bent on killing federal agents that had turned their back on ‘We the People,’” Burleson told an undercover FBI agent posing as a documentary filmmaker after the standoff. He also posted various threatening, antigovernment statements on his Facebook page. “Yes, I said a lot of crazy things,” he told U.S. District Judge Gloria Novarro at the sentencing hearing. “I’m ashamed of them actually. Looking back at them, it’s like, ‘Wow, obviously I shouldn’t drink,’” Burleson told the court, according to a report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The 53-year-old militia member was photographed with a rifle during the standoff, moving around in a sandy wash where federal agents were attempting — in vain, it turned out — to executive a court-ordered roundup of Cliven Bundy’s cattle for non-payment of federal grazing fees.
Burleson and Todd C. Engel, accused of conspiring with the Bundys in a “massive armed assault” against federal law enforcement officers, were convicted by a jury in late April following a lengthy trial that began Feb. 9 in Las Vegas.
Engel was photographed holding a firearm in the area above where the cattle impoundment was occurring on April 12, 2014. He was convicted of obstruction of justice and interstate travel in aid of extortion, and faces up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced in September. While Burleson and Engel were convicted in the first trial, a mistrial was declared for four other defendants — Eric J. Parker, O. Scott Drexler, Richard R. Lovelien, and Steven A. Stewart. They are now being re-tried in a second jury trial that began July 10 in Las Vegas. In approximately 30 days after that re-trial ends — likely in mid- to late-October — Cliven Bundy and his sons Ammon and Ryan will stand trial in a case that’s expected to draw widespread attention in antigovernment, Patriot and militia circles.
