US

Bundy: US Attorney Threatened Hammonds With ‘Less Desirable Prison’ If They Talked To Me

Kerry Picket Political Reporter
Font Size:

Nevada rancher Ammon Bundy claimed Sunday the federal government threatened embattled Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond with a worse prison locale if the embattled son and father spoke to Bundy.

Bundy and two of his brothers joined forces with the Hammonds, the father and son who seized and occupied the Malheur National Wildlife refuge in Harney County on Saturday afternoon with other militiamen protesters. The Hammonds, though, offered to give themselves up to law enforcement on Monday to serve a five-year prison sentence in California for arson convictions.

Nevertheless, Bundy stressed to The Daily Caller in a phone interview that those occupying the refuge are armed but not violent.

“We are armed and, of course, as any individual would, I guess, or most individuals would, we are willing to defend ourselves which is our right to do,” Bundy told TheDC Sunday night. “But we have no intention on being violent,” he said.

“We have no intention on being the aggressor. That is not what we are about. That’s not what we are doing here. What we are doing here is making a stand. And we are going to begin to unwind these unconstitutional land transactions,” Bundy said.

“This refuge is 187,000 acres and almost 50 miles long and 40 miles wide and at one time all of that land was owned by private ranchers, and now all of those ranchers have been removed or put in duress so that they would sell, or their (land) was purchased.”

“Give them back to the people — the land and resources back to the people, and we are going to protect the people while they use them until this is stabilized and then go home.”

Similar to the Bundy family dispute that came to a head with the federal government in 2014, the Hammonds’ battle stems from a decade’s old fight with the federal government over their ranching property that is adjacent to government land near Burns, Oregon.

Dwight and Steven Hammond are the father and son Oregon ranchers at the center of the land battle. Dwight is 73 and Steven is 46. The government charged and convicted both father and son for setting fires that spread to federal land the family leased for their cattle to graze.

The Hammonds claimed they lit the 2001 fire as a prescribed burn to lessen brush growth and lit the 2006 flame as a backfire to protect their own property from an incoming wildfire caused by a lightning strike.

“The one in 2001, which was a prescribed burn, what happened is that fire jumped over the property line onto federally controlled the land. All it did was burn grass and the Hammonds put the fire out themselves,” Bundy said. The Hammonds say on their website they contacted the local fire department prior the prescribed burn.

The government charged that the Hammonds lit the 2001 fire to cover up for “illegally” slaughtering “several deer on BLM property.”

In 2006, a lighting strike caused a massive wildfire that traveled miles and closed in on the Hammond property.

“They lit a backfire which is a useful tool in putting fires out because when the two fires meet they run out of fuel,” Bundy said. However, the fire burned into public land.

Both father and son served time and were released: Dwight for three months and Steven for 12 months. The government then appealed their sentences to the Ninth Circuit Court, and they were re-sentenced to five years in prison under the Federal Antiterrorism Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The men agreed to give themselves up to authorities to serve their new sentences on Monday.

“Neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond Family,” the Hammonds’ lawyer W. Alan Schroeder wrote to Harney County Sheriff David Ward.

Bundy told TheDC that while he does not speak for the Hammonds, there is no friction between the two families.

“Well that was their attorney, not them, and they fired their attorney, by the way. They fired him way before he said that. When we first met with the Hammonds, they told us they were not going to spend one more dime on an attorney,” Bundy said. “That’s what they told us. Because they spent upwards of $1 million on attorneys trying to defend themselves with what’s coming at them.”

Bundy added, “They were threatened for speaking to me by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. They were threatened that if they continued to open communications with me, that they would be detained early and be put in a less desirable prison.”

“There are really no demands. We are simply going to restore the rights back to the people of the counties,” Bundy told TheDC from the Wildlife Refuge. “There are really no demands.”

Local law enforcement said Sunday that Bundy and his group of protesters came to town under false pretenses.

“These men came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers, when in reality these men had alternative motives to attempt to over throw the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States,” Ward said in a statement.

Follow Kerry on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel