What The Hell America!

In August 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, antigovernment leader Ammon Bundy and his supporters stormed the Idaho Capitol during a special session of the state’s Legislature to protest pandemic health measures. Bundy and others were charged with misdemeanors for trespassing and resisting and obstructing officers. When he refused to leave the premises, officers sat him on a desk chair and wheeled him out. Videos and pictures of the incident went viral and led to many memes mocking Bundy.

In 2021, a jury found Bundy guilty of two misdemeanors. A judge sentenced him to three days in jail, 40 hours of community service and a $1,089 fine. The judge gave Bundy credit for his time already served in jail, and Bundy paid the fines. However, he appealed the conviction to district court to no avail, which led him to take his case to the Idaho Supreme Court.

It took almost five years, but an Idaho Supreme Court ruling in early April finally put the case to rest.

In the April opinion, the Idaho Supreme Court found that the state’s trespass law was constitutional, and that Bundy had violated it. In the opinion, which all five justices signed, they lambasted Bundy’s reasoning.

“We are not persuaded by Bundy’s overly complicated interpretation of the statute or his argument that he was free to ignore lawful requests to leave because he was complying with lawful conditions imposed on access,” one passage reads. “Idaho’s criminal trespass statute provided adequate notice to Bundy that he was prohibited from staying in the Lincoln Auditorium after being asked to leave and that the exceptions to trespass do not apply to him.”

The Idaho Supreme Court also detailed how the trespass charge was based on Bundy’s conduct and not speech, saying the violation was “not based on the content of his speech, but on his conduct in violating the trespass notice itself.” In the end, the Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s rulings.

Bundy and his family first made national headlines in 2014 when they forced the Bureau of Land Management and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department into an armed standoff in Nevada over grazing rights. The incident became a rallying point for militias across the country. Bundy instigated another armed confrontation over federal land management issues at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016.

Bundy emerged as a leader in the antigovernment movement, peddling his ideas throughout the Pacific Northwest. He presents his standoffs with the government as models for armed opposition and tries to convince other so-called “patriots” to follow his family’s example.

Bundy stormed the Idaho Capitol while he was creating his People’s Rights Network, which shifted the target from public land managers to officials trying to slow the spread of COVID-19. Capitalizing on the fear the pandemic generated and the conspiracies about the virus, the People’s Rights Network recruited followers to local chapters and targeted public health officials through such practices as physically shutting down meetings, showing up at officials’ homes and claiming any attempts to slow the spread of the virus were threats to freedom. At one point, Bundy told supporters in Idaho that he would bring antigovernment forces to help people wanting to defy public health orders.

Bundy’s impact and that of his People’s Rights Network started to wane in July 2023, when an Idaho jury ruled that Bundy and his associates had to pay St. Luke’s Health System a total of $52.5 million in damages for swarming its Boise hospital and harassing medical personnel, forcing it to briefly shut down. The case revolved around the infant grandchild of Diego Rodriguez, a leader of the People’s Rights Network, being ordered by doctors into temporary protective state care. The child showed signs of malnourishment that led medical professionals to seek further evaluation from child protection specialists. Bundy and his supporters falsely accused the hospital of kidnapping the child.  A few months after the court verdict,  the judge issued a warrant for Bundy’s arrest, because he repeatedly failed to show up for court proceedings. Bundy went into hiding until he was located in Utah in March 2024.

Recent press reports showed that he was selling truck parts online in a business with his brother, and law enforcement has shown little interest in trying to extradite him to Idaho. The lack of interest appears to be due to the warrant being civil, not criminal, in nature. Because of this, Bundy doesn’t appear to be concerned.

“I’m not running at all,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I don’t even have the location-share off on my phone. They can find me any time they want.”

Image at top: Ammon Bundy at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho, for an arraignment hearing in a different case in 2023. (Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)