In January 2016, Cliven Bundy鈥檚 sons Ammon and Ryan鈥攁cting on what they said was divine inspiration鈥攍aid siege to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, in Harney County, Oregon. Writer James Pogue drove over Mount Hood and arrived on the second full day of the standoff, spending most of the next weeks holed up with the leaders in the building they commandeered as a headquarters. In this excerpt from Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West (), Pogue meets Ammon for the first time as the eldest Bundy son laid out the little-discussed Mormon philosophy that guides so much of the modern anti-public lands movement.

鈥淗ey, man, I like those boots.鈥� I looked up and saw Ammon Bundy鈥檚 bodyguard wearing truck-stop sunglasses, a camo ball cap, a camo jacket, and a little .38 revolver on his hip鈥攖he same getup he鈥檇 be seen wearing later that night in a clip on The Late Show. This sentence made up the first words spoken in what was to become maybe the oddest friendship of either of our lives. It was just after the morning press conference, four days into the standoff, and we were talking on the snowy access road that led from the gate of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge down to the cluster of buildings that had been taken over. The morning was gray, but the cloud roof was so high that it was hard to call the weather anything but clear, and you could still see all the way across the Harney Basin. My boots were a cross between western riding boots and traditional work boots, made by Red Wing and slightly too big for me, and 滨鈥檝别 never been able to find a pair to replace them.

鈥淭hanks, man,鈥� I said. I was heading up toward the parking lot to meet a photographer who had just driven in from Portland, Oregon.

鈥淏ack home they know me because I shotgun my boots,鈥� the guy said, and indicated the way his jeans were tucked into his own Ariat western-cum-work boots. 鈥淚鈥檓 a big boot guy.鈥�

I admitted that I held a lot of my net worth in boots, and I told him about my three pairs of Luccheses, and we got to talking about how I鈥檇 ended up there as much on a bizarre sightseeing trip as I鈥檇 come as a reporter. I mentioned that the previous April I鈥檇 been at the Sugar Pine mine鈥攁n earlier and, up to this point, even larger standoff with the BLM in Southern Oregon鈥攁nd that the people who had been there mostly knew and trusted me. He registered something in his eyes. 鈥淗old on, I want to find someone,鈥� he said abruptly. 鈥淚鈥檓 Wes Kjar, by the way.鈥� He pronounced his last name 鈥淐are.鈥� Then he went off down the hill, and I went up to the parking lot and found Shawn Records, the photographer.

We had barely finished hugging and walking over from his silver Tacoma toward a looming tower used as a wildfire lookout when one of the rotating cast of camo-clad militiamen in balaclavas came and said, 鈥淗ey, are you James?鈥� I said I was, and he said, 鈥淵ou want to come with me for a minute? I don鈥檛 know what it鈥檚 about, but I鈥檓 supposed to bring you to Ammon.鈥�

He showed us to the small stone office, where Wes was manning the door, past several reporters who had been standing outside hoping for admittance. Wes showed us in, and Ammon rose to greet us. He was wearing the same brown felt cowboy hat and blue plaid shirt jacket he鈥檇 wear through the whole standoff, and he was burly and bearded but improbably well-proportioned for his bulk.

He shook our hands, said he鈥檇 heard about us, and, without explaining that comment, directed us to take a position at his desk, in the far corner of the room. Shawna Cox, one of Ammon鈥檚 father鈥檚 first and most fervent followers, was there, sitting alert next to his oldest brother, Ryan, who slouched in a swivel chair with a windbreaker, cowboy hat, and a revolver on his hip. Facing them was a family of ranchers arrayed in a semicircle, ranging from a redheaded little 11-year-old in a Stetson, boots, and a big belt buckle to what appeared to be his mother and father to a gravel-voiced and foulmouthed old man draped over a folding chair and wearing a giant hat. There was a whiteboard in front of them with diagrams and quotes from the Constitution. These were locals, some of the dozens who stopped by every day to talk to Ammon and receive his teachings. He鈥檇 wanted us to see the lesson.

It鈥檚 hard to explain how surreal and thrilling this was. Everyone at the refuge treated Ammon like a prophet. His name鈥攜ou could hear it on the radios, you could hear it in the way the more peripheral militia guys enunciated it鈥攚as like a passcode. Reporters at the press conferences received his smiles like benedictions, and then bragged over their whiskeys back in town at the Pine Room bar about the solo access they鈥檇 gotten. He and his family were already well known to anyone who followed the standoff at the ranch in Nevada, and now the American politico-media complex had made him instantly one of the most famous people in the country, and maybe even, briefly, in the world鈥攁 sort of early avatar for all the divisions and insanity of 2016.

Living on the refuge, it was easy to get a heightened sense of his magnetism. He鈥檇 summoned us to this tiny office with its ratty gray carpet and cheap swivel chairs and one overused toilet and a little kitchen good only for making coffee, and somehow the setting seemed far more intimate than even a one-on-one interview could have been. He smiled at us and took up a spot at the whiteboard. 鈥淪o what we were saying,鈥� he said, 鈥渋s, what鈥檚 supposed to happen when two entities have a conflict?鈥�

There was a pause. The boy pushed his hat back and looked ready to say something. His mother nudged him encouragingly. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e supposed to work it out themselves?鈥� he said.

鈥淧erfect,鈥� Ammon said, with infectious graciousness. 鈥淭he Lord said, God said, you鈥檙e supposed to love thy neighbor as thyself.鈥�

滨鈥檝别 heard Ammon give the lecture he was giving that afternoon so many times now that I could probably recite it by rote. He gave it every day on the refuge, to all the ranchers who visited to offer supplication or just to see the thing up close, and it was always astonishing how often even the skeptics came away convinced. One afternoon a guy named Buck Taylor asked for an audience, wanting to persuade him to take the show home. 鈥淭hat rancher is fucking tearing into him in there,鈥� someone told me when I asked what was going on. They talked for a while, and the next time I saw Taylor was at a community meeting an hour away from the refuge in the tiny windswept village of Crane, where he was one of dozens of converts shouting down a guy with the temerity to question Ammon鈥檚 vision of the Constitution. 鈥淚鈥檓 drinking the Kool-Aid,鈥� he told Oregon Public Broadcasting that night. 鈥淚 haven鈥檛 swallowed it, but I鈥檓 drinking it.鈥� People brought up Kool-Aid a lot in reference to Ammon.

The effectiveness of the message is due to Ammon鈥檚 delivery and to the fact that components of the message have been seeded throughout the rural West for generations. At the beginning of that meeting in Crane, I heard Ammon quiz the crowd: 鈥淲ho is the final arbiter of the Constitution?鈥�

A lone, timid voice called out: 鈥淭he Supreme Court?鈥� There was an instant, angry, and honestly slightly disturbing chorus of nos and howls and boos from the assembled ranchers, which, even after years of seeing all this, frankly shocked me鈥攖his was damn near the entire adult male population of a strange town Ammon had never visited, where, if you believed the news reports, his ideas had no purchase, and yet these people seemed offended to the point of violence by the idea that the Supreme Court was responsible for interpreting the Constitution. 鈥淩ight,鈥� Ammon said. 鈥淭he people interpret it.鈥�

The Bundys are Mormons who believe that the Constitution was inspired, if not more or less dictated wholesale, by God鈥攁nd that the founding of the United States was the first step toward the restoration of Zion on the continent where most of the Book of Mormon takes place. They鈥檝e taken much of this from W. Cleon Skousen, a fervent Mormon and formative figure of the postwar America extreme-right who believed in a divine America beset by internationalist conspiracies to overthrow the Constitution. The Bundys have identified parts of the Skousenite philosophy and built their own system on top of it鈥攁s much a practical guide to living as a political schema, and it鈥檚 something they teach as all their own, without citing any influences besides the Constitution and the Bible.

The Constitution, for the Bundys, is an expression of certain natural rights, which are basically our rights to life, liberty, and property, with a heavy emphasis on property. These are supposed to have been implanted by God and so natively obvious that all people sense them intrinsically. Property, for them, is gotten and maintained, in a very frontier way, by your right to 鈥渃laim, use, and defend鈥� it, as they repeat ad nauseam. It鈥檚 a strange irony of the Bundys鈥� ability to generate media attention that this is maybe the key trio of words in their entire ideology, but that if you Google 鈥渃laim, use, defend鈥� along with the name 鈥淏undy,鈥� they seem to have not been able to get a single reporter to quote the phrase.

Ideal government, of which the Constitution is a more or less perfect expression, derives from the need to adjudicate between two parties claiming, using, or defending their rights or property when one or more isn鈥檛 acting in good faith. Ammon explained this theory of government in a perfect western vernacular.

鈥淪o say there鈥檚 a conflict some people have, say over a fence. What are they supposed to do?鈥� he asked that afternoon. 鈥淚 think you鈥檙e supposed to talk it out,鈥� the little 11-year-old said.鈥� Ammon beamed. 鈥淧erfect! Did you hear that? The first thing we have is a right to work it out among each other. But let鈥檚 say that there鈥檚 someone that鈥檚 hardheaded or that doesn鈥檛 believe in God,鈥� he paused. 鈥淥r, I鈥檓 not saying that鈥ut I think there鈥檚 good people that鈥︹��

鈥淭hey just get crosswised,鈥� the boy鈥檚 mother said.

鈥淵eah,鈥� Ammon said. 鈥淢aybe I鈥檓 wrong by saying that. But anyway鈥濃�攈e paused thoughtfully鈥斺�渓et鈥檚 just move on. So how do you resolve a situation where two people can鈥檛 work it out amongst themselves?鈥�

鈥淭hey go to the court?鈥� the boy said.

Right again, Ammon said. The states, in turn, existed to adjudicate intercounty disputes, and the federal government to deal with interstate. The logical follow-up to this was that if someone felt abused by their county government鈥攔ather than a citizen of the county鈥攖hey could appeal to the state government, and such-wise for state and federal governments. 鈥淏ut now,鈥� he said, 鈥渨hat happens if you have a problem with the feds and you appeal?鈥�

鈥淟ose-lose?鈥� said the mother.

鈥淭hey go to the feds!鈥� Ammon said. 鈥淭hey go to themselves. You know my dad says that going to federal court is like when a man walks into your house, and he beats up your wife and children. And so you take him to court. And a man walks into the courtroom in a black robe, and they say, 鈥楢ll rise for the honorable judge,鈥� and it鈥檚 the very man that beat up your wife and children. The problem is that the federal government doesn鈥檛 have the right to own rights,鈥� he said.

鈥淥r land,鈥� Shawna, who was by Ammon鈥檚 side almost constantly at the refuge, jumped in to say. 鈥淭hey can鈥檛 own land.鈥�

鈥淭hey do, but it鈥檚 very limited,鈥� Ammon said. 鈥淎nd the federal agencies don鈥檛 have the right to own rights.鈥�

鈥淲hat made them think they do?鈥� the mother asked.

鈥淭hey started it in about the turn of the century,鈥� he said, referring to the creation of the forest reserves and the Forest Service. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a whole history. But people didn鈥檛 challenge it at that time.鈥�

鈥淎nd now it鈥檚 expanded,鈥� she said sadly.

鈥淪o look at what they鈥檝e done to establish their rights around here. They claimed the land. They put their signs up and their logos on it. They restricted the use of it, saying now we鈥檙e going to lease it back to you. And you know dang well that they鈥檙e willing to defend it. The nice thing is that knowing all this makes it so easy to see how to fix it. And that鈥檚 why we鈥檙e here,鈥� he said.

鈥淲elcome,鈥� the mother said.

鈥淎nd so the solution is,鈥� he said, 鈥渨e claim our rights, we use our rights, and we defend them.鈥�

Now came the stage where Ammon drew a map of the United States on the whiteboard. He then drew a box representing Washington, D.C., which he invariably located somewhere on the latitude of Connecticut, and quoted selectively from the Constitution to say that the federal government was allowed to own only the 鈥溾�榯en miles square,鈥� or actually that鈥檚 a hundred square miles because ten by ten,鈥� of Washington, D.C., along with 鈥渇orts, dockyards, and other needful buildings鈥� that could be built on lands ceded by the state. 鈥淭he BLM thinks it owns 87 percent of Nevada,鈥� he said. 鈥淚s that a fort, dockyard, or other needful building?鈥�

This argument is so compelling in its simplicity that it鈥檚 hard to even talk it through with people who have heard it once. Because it seems to say it right there in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17鈥攖hat Congress shall have the right:

鈥淭o exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dockyards, and other needful Buildings.鈥�

It鈥檚 hard to see how this would allow half the land in the West to fall under federal authority, and you could read this, if it was in your interest to do so, as restricting federal authority to precisely the places listed. But a fair-minded person could also read the intent of the clause as having to do with establishing a national capital and having basically nothing to do with the treatment of public lands thousands of miles away, which is how courts have always seen the matter. There are lots of things the Constitution doesn鈥檛 specifically address鈥攊ncluding, in this exact clause, the question of how Washington, D.C., ought to be governed, since the exact text suggests that Congress ought to have the same authority over the city as it does over a military dockyard. And the Bundys conveniently never quote the Property Clause of Article 4, which is the article that was actually written to outline the relationship between the various layers of government, and which directly contradicts the whole point:

鈥淭he Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.鈥�

The Bundys are great defenders of the idea that anyone with passion and a pocket Constitution ought to be able to interpret the document, and on this question, at least, that seems fair: 鈥淣othing in this Constitution鈥濃�攁nd one would have to think that this line applies to the bit that came before about the forts and dockyards as much as it does to anything else鈥斺�渟hall be so construed as to Prejudice any claims of the United States.鈥� The clause specifically articulates the government鈥檚 right to regulate territories that have never fallen under the jurisdiction of states, and it specifically says that prior wording in the document, such as what the Bundys cite, shouldn鈥檛 be misread to infringe on that right. It鈥檚 not exactly complicated.

But in the Bundyite interpretation, the BLM and the Forest Service openly and merrily violated the Constitution in order to trample on westerners鈥� property rights, which in their schema wasn鈥檛 a small-bore range management question out on the fringe of the North American outback, but rather a violation and a mockery of a literally spiritual order of rights laid down in the Constitution, which itself was a mile marker on the road to Zion. The BLM was the family鈥檚 particular obsession, but in theory it was sort of incidental鈥攊t just seemed to them like the biggest violator. A man named Bert Smith, a Utah outdoor-store magnate who became a close collaborator with Skousen, mainstream Utah politicians, and with many far less well-known range warriors and ranchers, spent his life and a large part of his fortune pushing this general idea鈥攚ithout it ever crossing over to a national discussion. But this is where the family鈥檚 odd native political genius came in.

After the election of Barack Obama, so-called Patriot militia groups like the Oath Keepers grew so quickly that they became hard to track or even to define鈥攚ith the lines between militias and angry, beyond-the-fringe Republicans getting harder and harder to draw. Glenn Beck started promoting Skousenite philosophy on Fox News, and Skousen鈥檚 1981 book outlining his view of America as a heavenly project, The 5,000 Year Leap, quickly became the top seller on Amazon and stayed in the top 15 for all of the fervid summer of 2009. Militias all over the country began calling themselves constitutionalists and seeing the Constitution as a sacred document as much as any Mormon.

For the most part, they were careful to avoid looking like the white supremacist militias of the 1990s, and for all their numbers, they made little noise publicly. But when Cliven and Ammon linked the cause of ranchers and the rural way of life with the Patriot cause, it provided the movement a moral urgency it had lacked before, and also provided a neat trick for cryptoracists and white identity types.

In Britain, it鈥檚 very hard to talk about fighting for an 鈥淓nglish way of life鈥� without making it clear that some specific sorts of people aren鈥檛 welcome in that vision of the country. But the Bundys took a picturesque, iconic version of an American way of life and made the argument that it was the purest representation of the way of life the Constitution, and God, had set down to follow. Patriot groups learned that you could preach cultural nationalism without ever really talking about anything but the Constitution. This trick has filtered up to Republican politicians across the country, which is why Republicans in state legislatures are always trying to ban Sharia law. They aren鈥檛 anti-Muslim, of course, they just want to make sure we all follow the Constitution.

This has made it very hard to say who, exactly, in all of this, is a racist. I personally don鈥檛 think Ammon is nearly so animated by racial identity as most people on the left would assume鈥攚hich isn鈥檛 to say he doesn鈥檛 feed and feed off the same white tribalism that drove the 2016 election. It鈥檚 just that he鈥檚 so lost in his religious mission that he pretends race is not a motivating factor. But he has given space to genuinely hateful people like Jon Ritzheimer and Blaine Cooper, two of his lieutenants at the refuge, who like to do things like wear 鈥淔uck Islam鈥� T-shirts and make videos of themselves wrapping pages of the Koran in bacon and burning them. And there are some kinds of company you can鈥檛 be forgiven for keeping.

The standoff united the ranchers and the Patriots who rallied to them in a family crusade to get more and more ranchers to refuse to pay grazing fees on public land鈥攁nd eventually, by armed defiance, to break the entire land management system. From there, they envisioned a whole reordering and deregulation of American life and a rawhide-tinted vision of a West where public lands were held as a commons, with an overlapping system of claimed private rights working to let some people hunt, some people graze cattle, some people mine, all while sharing a good-old-days sort of open range.

At least some ranchers had already signed on to the revolution, declining to pay their grazing fees and waiting to see what, if anything, the federal government was going to do about it. Now the Bundys were looking for more. They didn鈥檛 advertise that part at the press conferences, but they said it at their workshops with the ranchers. At the meeting in Crane, Buck Taylor, the jowly rancher who鈥檇 said he鈥檇 been drinking the Kool-Aid, stood up and asked Ammon what would happen if he joined the cause and the feds came to arrest him.

Brian Cavalier, known as Booda, Cliven Bundy鈥檚 giant, grizzled, ogre-looking bodyguard, got up. He鈥檇 never met any of the Bundys when the standoff at the Nevada ranch popped off鈥攈e鈥檇 just driven up after leaving behind a job as a tattoo artist and a warrant for a bar fight back in Arizona. He鈥檇 ended up staying for two years, and now he was converting to Mormonism. 鈥淚 was there when they came for Cliven,鈥� he told Taylor. 鈥淎nd if you stand with us, I鈥檓 going to be right there on your porch when they come for you, cowboy.鈥�

The post The Religious Ideology Driving the Bundy Brothers appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Last week, the judge overseeing the trial of Cliven Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan, and a militia leader named Ryan Payne聽unexpectedly sent the jury home. She had already called a hearing and 聽the defendants, who up until then had spent almost two years in pretrial detention. Now she called for a sealed hearing to discuss a growing file of .

This trial focuses on the four so-called 鈥渕ost culpable鈥� leaders of the standoff between federal agents and militias and Bundy loyalists at the family鈥檚 Nevada ranch聽in 2014. It is the latest in a series of trials covering the events in Nevada and the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which was led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy. The trials had already been proceeding shambolically鈥攎arred by delays and a growing collection of seemingly key and exculpatory evidence that prosecutors聽have failed to turn over to defense lawyers during聽discovery.

video footage,聽evidence that an FBI agent had an AR-style rifle near the family home, and FBI 鈥渢hreat assessments,鈥� all of which seem to have the potential to back up a central plank of the defense: that the family brought armed protesters to the ranch in self-defense, because they were surrounded by what they feared was a hostile force of government 鈥渟nipers.鈥� The situation could 鈥渦ndermine the confidence in the outcome of the trial,鈥� presiding judge聽. 鈥淭he court is inclined to find that this information was not timely provided.鈥�

But another piece of potential evidence鈥攁 sealed whistleblower report apparently leaked and shared by a Washington state representative鈥攊s news of a different order, a report that seems likely to upend the government鈥檚 case against the Bundys, and that will probably do more than any event since the shooting death of LaVoy Finicum to add anger and recrimination into the already-fervid conflict over public lands in the West.

滨鈥檝别 before, and wrote about their movement. I hadn鈥檛 even had a chance to read the report by the time news of it began flying around the Internet. I got a breathless call from a聽sometime Bundy supporter who has tried to be a voice of moderation called me. 鈥淎fter all this trying, you know, to be sane and moderate,鈥� he said,聽鈥渋t鈥檚 like every bad thing they say about what the government does is true.鈥�

This is overstating it, but if true, the report is damning. It was written by a man named Larry Wooten, who describes himself as the BLM鈥檚 lead investigator on the case that led to the failed attempt to round up the family鈥檚 cattle, which had been grazing on federal land without permits for 20 years. 鈥淭he longer the investigation went on,鈥� he writes, 鈥渢he more extremely unprofessional, familiar, racy, vulgar and bias-filled actions, inappropriate electronic communications I was made aware of, or I personally witnessed. In my opinion, these issues would likely undermine the investigation, cast considerable doubt on the professionalism of our agency, and be possibly used to claim investigator bias/unprofessionalism.鈥�

The details are lurid and slightly funny. Wooten聽says the investigative team described subjects as 鈥渞*tards, r*dnecks, overweight woman with the big jowls, d*uche bags, tractor-face,鈥� among other things. He also accuses Dan Love, the now fired special agent in charge, of sending photos of his feces and 鈥渉is girl-friend鈥檚 vagina,鈥� to subordinates鈥攚hich is maybe less serious than the fact that Wooten聽alleges Love operated in a more or less private fiefdom and ignored warnings from state and federal law enforcement to lead 鈥渢he most intrusive, oppressive, large scale, and militaristic trespass cattle impound possible.鈥�

He alleges a systemic anti-Mormon bias, and that the agency was actively engaged in helping Dan Love to cover up misconduct, which leads to the most relevant and disturbing accusation: that Steven Myhre, the lead prosecutor and acting U.S. Attorney for Nevada, was aware of major issues within the BLM and of substantial evidence that could aid the Bundys鈥� defense. 鈥淣ot only did Mr. Myhre in my opinion not want to know or seek out evidence favorable to the accused, he and my supervisor discouraged the reporting of such issues and even likely covered up the misconduct,鈥� he writes.

A later investigation by a supervisor pushed back on Wooten鈥檚 claims about evidence being withheld, but the report is nonetheless hard to swallow. The general sweep of it backs up a list of concerns that anyone following these issues could have had since even before the trials began. Love has often been accused of being out of control, being beyond any oversight, and of acting like a bully鈥攁nd he鈥檚 for demanding free tickets to Burning Man, threatening that 鈥済renades will go off鈥� if he didn鈥檛 get his way, and giving away artifacts that were supposed to be evidence in an investigation. The fact that he led the roundup has been a problem for the government鈥檚 case since the beginning.

It鈥檚 too early to say if Wooten鈥檚 report will lead to any specific piece of exculpatory evidence that hadn鈥檛 been turned over to the defense, but the problems in that department are already legion: there are reportedly 14 outstanding evidence issues under discussion, and the troubling thing about the whistleblower report is that it alleges intentionality on the part of the government to withhold evidence. Bundy supporters are already prone to conspiratorial thinking. This report will only stoke their fervor.

The disarray and credible allegations of malfeasance aren鈥檛 just a product of this trial鈥攖hey鈥檝e been present since the moment Ammon and Ryan Bundy were arrested聽in the shootout that killed LaVoy Finicum and led to the end of the Malheur takeover. An of that shooting by the Deschutes County Sheriff鈥檚 Office found that two shots were fired as Finicum exited his truck鈥攐n synced video he can be seen emerging and putting his hands up just as the shots were fired. Finicum then went for a gun in his jacket pocket and was killed as he did so.

The trouble for the government is this: the FBI officer who allegedly fired those earlier shots didn鈥檛 disclose them to investigators, and his shell casings disappeared. He was ultimately charged in federal court with lying in an attempt to obstruct justice鈥攁n explicit admission that at least one federal agent had engaged in a quite literal cover-up.

Moments like this鈥攁nd the Wooten report, and countless other instances鈥攁nd the suspicion they engender聽have helped to make it difficult to actually convict anyone in the Bundy cases. The government issued 38 indictments in the standoffs at the Bundy ranch and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. They included indictments of five members of the Bundy family, a few of close family loyalists and militia leaders who were involved in both events, and dozens of mostly bit players, who up till now are the only participants in either event to聽face serious penalties.

Thus far, the government鈥檚 biggest victory is of a 53-year-old Phoenix man named Greg Burleson, who was one of the many loners who ended up being 鈥渕esmerized,鈥� as his attorney put it, by the Bundys and their peculiar brand of family charisma. Burleson liked to drink, and he liked to brag, and despite being a pretty marginal player in the Nevada drama, he drunkenly incriminated himself to FBI agents who claimed they were聽producing a documentary for a sham company called Longbow Productions.

鈥淚 was hell-bent on killing federal agents that had turned their back on we the people,鈥� he told them at the time. In July, blind and in a wheelchair, Burleson was convicted of assault, threats, obstruction of justice, and gun charges. He got 68 years. 鈥淵es, I said a lot of crazy things. I鈥檓 ashamed of them actually,鈥� he said during his sentencing. 鈥淟ooking back at them, it鈥檚 like, 鈥榃ow, obviously I shouldn鈥檛 drink.鈥欌��

The other indictments have produced 鈥攐f Ammon and Ryan and five others鈥攁 couple of minor convictions, and a smattering of plea deals, resulting in sentences far shorter than Burleson鈥檚, generally for people much more involved in the actual events.

The current trial may be the last chance the government gets to convict the ringleaders of either event. The Bundys and Payne are each facing 15 felonies, including conspiracy, assault, firearms charges, and extortion. The seriousness of the charges鈥攁nd federally mandated聽minimum sentences鈥攎ean that the Bundys are effectively on trial for their lives, and their response has been to doggedly insist that they were responding to federal threats, intimidation, and bureaucratic overreach. Wooten鈥檚 report will bolster the Bundys鈥� argument that they were the victims of a vindictive campaign of intimidation by Dan Love and the BLM.

This argument has already worked for the Bundys in Oregon, where they were able to argue that they鈥檇 shown up to protest what they said were longstanding abuses by the BLM. 鈥淲ere we threatening to anyone?鈥� Ammon Bundy asked me incredulously,聽if a bit disingenuously, before his聽trial. 鈥淲e were there as peaceful鈥攂asically鈥攑rotestors.鈥� The acquittal set off a storm of anger on Twitter and in op-ed pages, alleging that a particularly naked strain of white privilege had been at work. 鈥淎pparently it鈥檚 legal in America for heavily armed white terrorists to invade Oregon,鈥� Montel Williams聽tweeted. 鈥淚magine if some black folk did this.鈥�

This was probably fair, but the outrage obscured the fact that the government had hardly put together a convincing case as to why Ammon Bundy or his followers ought to be facing counts leading to decades in prison. 鈥淒o these folks even know what it took to arrive at a verdict on any one of these counts?鈥� one juror later . 鈥淗ow could 12 diverse people find such agreement unless there was a colossal failure on the part of the prosecution? Don鈥檛 they know that 鈥榥ot guilty鈥� does not mean 鈥榠nnocent鈥�?鈥�

As for the current trial, the parties will reconvene on Wednesday. The presiding judge, Gloria Navarro, has suggested the possibility of a mistrial, and lawyers for both Ammon and Cliven Bundy have filed motions to have the case dismissed. The government has been very clear about its zeal to see the Bundys go to prison, on very grave charges. It now seems possible that same zeal has undermined their case.

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