Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy and his sons had their charges dropped after they were accused of leading an armed standoff against federal agents who were attempting to round up his cattle in 2014.
The Associated Press reported on Monday that Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro ruled in Las Vegas that federal prosecutors acted with willful disregard for constitutional due process rights of 71-year-old Bundy, sons Ryan and Ammon Bundy, and Montana militia leader Ryan Payne.
Navarro dismissed outrights the 15 counts against the Bundys and Payne after U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions launched an investigatin into the case after Navarro first declared a mistrial.
According to the AP, Bundy said, “We’re not done with this,” in his first minutes of freedom since his arrest in February 2016.
Bundy has said he has been a “political prisoner” during his incarceration.
“The whole world is looking at us,” he said, according to the AP. “’Why is America acting like this? Why are we allowing the federal government, these bureaucracies, to have armies?’ That’s a big question the whole world wants to know.”
The AP reported that Navarro found “deliberate attempts to mislead and distort the truth” and blamed FBI agents for “reckless disregard” of requirements to turn over evidence relating to government snipers and cameras that monitored the Bundy homestead.
Pity about the Bundys being back on the street. Pity about people who run into their wayward cattle and wreck their cars and bodies. They will get the same treatment the citizens of Nevada who work for the federal government got.
Every where I travel the back roads of this great area I see water tanks and pipe to supply the water.
Roads maintained to service these cattle tanks it all costs money and the tax payers and cattlemens
associations pay for this expense. I assume the Bundy family feels it can use these facilities for free.
(SO SAD)
I hope Cliven can use his free time to clean up his ranch. In any other community, it would have been condemned years ago.