Threats target agencies after Oregon standoff
Caller to state governor’s office: ‘We’re going to shoot to kill’
Like her husband, Carol Bundy has little faith in the federal judicial system.
“This is going to be won in the court of public opinion,” the mother of 14grown children and wife of renegade cattleman Cliven Bundy predicted earlier this month.
She was referring to more than three dozen indictments recently handed down against her husband, four sons and other armed militants involved in the January wildlife refuge takeover in Oregon and a Nevada land occupation two years ago.
But some of that public opinion has dissolved into threats from Bundy supporters and is now being investigated by state and federal authorities.
In email, phonemessages and Facebook posts, supporters have threatened retaliation for themassarrests and the death of Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, 54, a Nevada rancher and a spokesman for the militants who was shot and killed during the 41-day occupation in Oregon.
The messages target law enforcement officers and government officials, according to a sampling of threats released last week by the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office. Investigators gathered more than 80 threats as part of the office’s investigation into the Finicum shooting in neighboringHarney County.
“We’re going to shoot to kill,” said an anonymous caller to Gov. Kate Brown’s office on Jan. 27, the day after Finicum was killed by Oregon State Police troopers in a confrontation on a road near the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Another caller to Brown’s office warned, “You killed an unarmed rancher so now one of you must die Goodbye.”
Some messages were profanity laced, and one sent to a police agency asked if the FBI’s roadblock used to stop Finicum and other occupiers was illegal. “If this is so,” the sender wrote, “let me know so we can set up road blocks and kill (state troopers) and FBI because they stand against whatwe believe in.”
Other local, state and federal agencies have collected similar messages, including the Bureau of Land Management, which has a long dispute with Cliven Bundy over his Nevada cattlerights.
This month, he and others— nowin jail in Portland facing charges related to the Oregon takeover — were charged in Nevada for the 2014 armed standoff sparked by a dispute over Bundy’s alleged failure to pay $1 million in grazing fees and penalties. Altogether, 26 militants have been charged in Portland
unfortunately. and 19 in LasVegas, some of them in both cases.
Besides the 69-year-old patriarch, four of Bundy’s sons are also in federal custody.
A threat sent to the BLM said that if Cliven Bundy and others were not released and indictments instead issued for federal agents and Gov. Brown, then “I am going to begin returning fire!!!!!!”
An investigation found that five shots were fired at Finicum’s pickup truck when he sped from a traffic stop outside the refuge. Three other shots fired by state troopers stuck Finicum as he stood next to his truck, said Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson.
Bundy supporters who saw a grainy video of the shooting concluded Finicum had been murdered, but the investigation determined that the rancher was reaching for a gun when he was shot and ruled the shooting justified. Two other errant shotsmay have been fired by members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s inspector general is probing the agents’ actions.