There are now so many charged in both the Oregon and Nevada Bundy conflicts it’s hard to keep track of what who is charged with. Fortunately, a brilliant Twitter chart can help (click and scroll to enlarge):
If you guessed Cliven Bundy, you’d be wrong. But his eldest son, Ryan Bundy, could take an award for the most (20) charges against him to date.
In total, six BundyBoyz are now in jail, five of them on charges related to Oregon/Nevada. The sixth is in prison on an unrelated charge though he WAS actually caught abusing BLM land while working for a tour company on ATVs. One lone son remains free, and he’s not quite 18. Judging from an interview with him that I viewed, he’s appears to be afflicted with the same nonsense as the rest of the males in the family.
Cliven Bundy has 19 charges (for Nevada, alone) with self-proclaimed “journalist” Pete Santilli having the next highest amount, 17, related to both Oregon and Nevada.
In reading the government’s 59-page memo in support of their motion to detain prior to hearing (Santilli won his release in Oregon, but lost his case for release in Nevada and will not be released), there were some surprising claims I was unaware of that are pretty damning. And the memo, itself, tells the story of Nevada in a way no journalist ever did.
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So the answer is: Pete Santilli is the dumbest of them all. And here’s why.
Let me set the stage with the government’s first pronouncement about pointing guns at law enforcement (and note, for those of you watching the Oregon arguments relative to Finicum, many of the Finicum supporters say that a citizen has the right to protect themselves with a weapon against the government, which, of course, they don’t. Pete said it, as well, BTW. ):
As the Court knows, it is a violation of federal law to use a firearm to assault, interfere with or intimidate a federal law enforcement officer. And contrary to the fiction incanted by Bundy and Santilli to stir up support for Bundy, 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. While that should be obvious to any law abiding citizen, Bundy and Santilli espouse to the contrary.
You decide; does the following allegation sound like the action of a “journalist”?
Shortly after 1:00 p.m. on April 9, Santilli successfully led between 30 and 40 Bundy Followers in a violent ambush of a BLM convoy as it made its way out of the desert and back to the Impound Site. The convoy was traveling on a narrow dirt road in the desert when it approached a sharp turn to enter onto a paved highway leading back to the Site. A video recording posted on Facebook by one of Bundy’s Followers and recordings from various law enforcement dash-cams show that Santilli drove his car to block the lead vehicle in the convoy as it approached the highway from the narrow dirt road. Surrounded on all sides by sagebrush and unable to move, the convoy remained in place until Santilli, prompted by the Ranger occupying the lead vehicle, backed out of the way, allowing the convoy to re-start and slowly enter the highway. [emphasis mine]
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During an appearance on Adam Kokesh’s blog show, Santilli admitted that he interfered with the convoy, claiming that he was attempting to conduct an “investigation” into whether BLM was killing cattle.
Here are the specific mentions of conspiracy mentioned elsewise in the brief:
• April 8: Used his blog to threaten violence to law enforcement officers and broadcast a call-to-arms to militia, specifically calling for people with guns to go to Nevada to “kick out the feds.”
• April 9: Led an ambush of a BLM convoy as it was leaving the field after conducting impoundment operations.
• April 9: Made numerous threats of force and violence against law enforcement officers and issued at least three calls-to-arms to gunmen, calling for an armed confrontation with law enforcement officers.
• April 10 and 11: Conducted reconnaissance of hotels where BLM employees were staying while they were conducting impoundment operations.
• April 11: Threatened the SAC of the Impoundment with force and violence and issued an ultimatum to him, telling him there was going to be a confrontation and to leave before it occurred or else face arrest or injury.
• April 12: Incited others in the crowd at the Rally that preceded the assault, calling for the arrest of the Sheriff for being “unconstitutional.”
• April 12: Moved from the Rally Site to the Impoundment Site for the purpose of forcing the BLM to release the impounded cattle; threatened law enforcement officers with force and violence
Other alleged Santilli actions:
On April 10, BLM was conducting impoundment operations in Overton, Nevada, about 25 miles from Bundy Ranch, when Santilli went to the area with an individual he identified as “Lt. Col. Roy Potter.” Encountering a BLM Ranger who was performing outer-ring security for the operation, Santilli demanded that the BLM release the impounded cattle and claimed that he was going to arrest Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillispie for failing to do his constitutional duty to expel BLM from the area. Following this encounter, Santilli called the Southern Nevada District Office of the BLM. Speaking with a representative of that office, Santilli threatened that “they [the BLM] were on notice” and “they had an hour to remove their equipment.” [emphasis mine]
Santilli said he took actions NOT as a journalist:
Later, Santilli returned to Post 1 of the Impoundment Site where he asked to meet again with the SAC. Although at times he feigned writing in a notebook as if taking a statement, Santilli never stated the object of the meeting. But whatever its purpose from Santilli’s perspective, Love used it as an opportunity to warn him against interfering with the impoundment operation in the future. Referring to the April 9 ambush, Love told Santilli that if he interfered again with impoundment operations, he would face criminal charges for impeding a federal officer. Santilli feigned surprise at this, and, while admitting that “he crossed the line a bit,” he claimed that he stopped the convoy while “acting in a law enforcement capacity, calling for an investigation,” that he “had a reasonable suspicion that a crime was being committed [by the BLM]” and he “stopped the convoy to call for an investigation.” Serving his own ends, Santilli explained to Love that when he “is out in the field, [he is in] a media capacity” but in the case of April 9, he was a “citizen, acting in a law enforcement capacity.” As the meeting broke up, Santilli said to Love: “This needs to end well. There are a lot of people out there. ”Following this meeting with Love, Santilli appeared on Gary Franchi’s blogtalk show under the tagline: “BREAKING: MILITIA ARRIVES AT BUNDY RANCH,” During this appearance, Santilli told Franchi’s listeners (falsely) that BLM officers had pointed firearms at him on April 9, stating – as he had with Love – that he (Santilli) was acting in a law enforcement capacity when he stopped the convoy. [emphasis mine]
After the events, Santilli made many, many statements about his activities. Among them is this one:
[W]e were prepared to die in this effort….there were fingers on triggers on both sides . . . Bundy told the Sheriff you are accountable to the people . . .you have one hour to deliver all the AR-15s to the people. . .never heard from the Sheriff again . . . Bundy said get the cattle. . . we the people shutdown the north and south bound 15 freeway. . . we were joined by thousands on the freeway. . . we told them to stand down . . . after the tense gun to gun standoff the BLM announced that they were standing down . . . if one person pulled the trigger it would have been a disaster and a lot of people would have died. . . we totally outnumbered them. . . crowd safety issue and they had to stand down. . . would have been loss of life. . . we are going to enjoy the success and use as a model for what the American public can do. . . very tense moment backed up by credible threat by the Second
Amendment. . . something happened with Waco. . . FBI and DHS may be coming back to retaliate.
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I don’t know about you, but I have yet to hear a journalist admit to being a non-journalist while acting in the field to threaten, stop and intimidate government workers then later lean on his “journalist” creds to claim it’s all about journalism.
Much of the government’s case against Santilli, particularly those I have read relevant to the 2014 Bundy Ranch debacle, is taken from social media including telephone/satphone interviews, video etc. It’s just damning as all hell.
Of all the government motion memos in these cases so far, this stands as perhaps the most revealing about what happened in Nevada next to that they wrote about Cliven Bundy. If you get a chance, it’s worth reading the entire 59 pages on Santilli. It almost reads like a drama it’s that full of surprises.
Many have gotten a little hinky about where to draw the line between the rights of a journalist and what Santilli has done allegedly in that mode. I include myself in that hinky bunch or at least did until I had read the government’s memo several times since it was released. Looking back to Occupy Wall Street and other movements where journalists were roughed up, threatened and often illegally arrested, we all have good reason to be skeptical and hinky about this. But what Santilli did is entirely different.
I offer the above as but a brief insight into that difference.