Right-Wing Extremist Ammon Bundy Arrested On Contempt Charges
Far right extremist Ammon Bundy was arrested Friday evening at his son's football banquet on contempt charges after violating a court order to avoid witness harassment and intimidation, with a bond set at $10,000.
The charges relate to a lawsuit brought against Bundy and a group of his supporters called the People's Rights Network by St. Luke's Hospital System in Idaho, where Bundy had led armed Q-Anon militants in an assault on the hospital, blocking ambulance bays and harassing patients and staff, based on a conspiracy theory that the hospital was kidnapping children for pedophilic purposes.
Several emergency ambulance arrivals, including women in labor, had to be diverted to different hospitals due to the standoff.
In March 2022, Bundy and Diego Rodriguez, an advisor for his failed gubernatorial campaign, organized the armed protests at St. Luke’s locations in Meridian and downtown Boise after a child welfare case involving Rodriguez’s grandson. Bundy and Rodriguez claimed the hospital had kidnapped the child, when in reality the child had been removed from the home for malnourishment.
Bundy has refused to participate in or attend any court hearings related to the lawsuit.
Jurors last month awarded St. Luke’s and other plaintiffs more than $52 million in damages in a defamation case against Bundy, Rodriguez, his gubernatorial campaign, and the People’s Rights Network for their pedophilia claims against the hospital.
As of the posting of this article, Bundy has not posted bail and continues to sit in a Gem County, Idaho jail. Erik Stidham, a lawyer for St. Luke’s Health System, told The Daily Beast in a statement, “Mr. Bundy could easily get out of jail now by paying an extremely low bond. He is not paying the bond because he wants to use his arrest and time in jail to further a false narrative that he is some kind of martyr.”
Bundy became famous in a standoff with the federal government in 2014 when his family refused to pay over $1 Million in unpaid grazing fees to the Bureau of Land Management for use of their cattle ranch on federal land in Nevada.
Bundy launched a failed Idaho gubernatorial campaign in 2022 where he received 100,000 votes, about 17% of the vote, as an independent candidate.
