Armed group says it has accessed government files at refuge
Source: Associated Press
Armed group says it has accessed government files at refuge
Rick Bowmer, Associated Press
Updated 6:32 pm, Monday, January 11, 2016
BURNS, Ore. (AP) — The leader of a small, armed group occupying a national wildlife refuge in southeastern Oregon said Monday he and his followers are going through government documents stored inside refuge buildings.
Ammon Bundy told reporters the documents will be used to "expose" how the government has discriminated local ranchers who use federal land for cattle grazing.
Bundy said the documents would also help secure the release of Steven and Dwight Hammond, two area ranchers convicted of arson who returned to prison last week to serve longer sentences. The Hammonds' case set off the occupation of the Burns-area refuge on Jan. 2.
Bundy said his group is not accessing government computers at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, including personnel files.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/science/article/Call-for-supplies-as-Oregon-standoff-enters-6750211.php
= new reply since forum marked as read
Almost as exciting as secret emails!!
will those in charge cut off all utilities and access? Starve them out then a trial and three hots and a cot for about 10 years. Will the taxpayers never be released from these locusts?
in High Country News...
A look at how the feds have — and have not — punished individuals for defying regulations.
One of the reasons Ammon and Ryan Bundy and their armed friends are holed up at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, deep in the frigid sage plains of Oregon, is to protest what they see as an unjust punishment of a father-son pair of local ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond.
In October, a judge ordered each of the Hammonds to finish a five year required minimum sentence for lighting fires on public land back in 2001 and 2006. Critics say that’s far too harsh. And, indeed, it is a much greater punishment than the Bundys’ father, Cliven, has so far received for grazing his cattle illegally and without paying fees on a Bureau of Land Management allotment for decades. In fact, Bundy has yet to be punished at all, either for that or for his role in inciting supporters to threaten federal agents at gunpoint back in May of 2014.
Former federal officials blame the Bureau of Land Management's inaction in the Bundy case for the debacle that’s unfolding in Oregon today. “At the end of the day, most people have a common respect for the law, and with Mr. Bundy, he just believes differently, that he’s above the law,” Bob Abbey, former director of the BLM, told High Country News recently. “The fact that their trespass hasn’t been dealt with in a timely matter reinforced beliefs.”
HCN took a look at a handful of similar cases involving BLM land, and at the punishment for whatever transgressions might have occurred in order to see how consistent, or otherwise, the agency has been.
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much more at link
http://www.hcn.org/articles/the-people-v-the-blm-bundy-hammonds-malheur
