A federal judge on Monday threw out a criminal case against a
Nevada rancher and three other men over a 2014 militia standoff with federal
agents, saying prosecutors had repeatedly withheld evidence from the defense.
U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro dismissed the case “with
prejudice,” meaning that rancher Cliven Bundy, two of his sons and a militia
member will not face another trial. Navarro had declared a mistrial last month.
Navarro’s decision was a rebuke to prosecutors in the
politically charged case, which arose from Bundy’s grazing of cattle on federal
land without paying fees for two decades. His defiance galvanized right-wing
militia groups challenging U.S. government authority over vast tracts of public
land.
Bundy emerged from the courthouse to cheers from about 100
supporters and said he still did not recognize federal authority over the land
where he grazed his herds.
“They stuck the guns down our throats and that’s definitely not
what our Founding Fathers meant to happen in America,” the 71-year-old rancher
said, his wife, Carol, at his side.
Navarro told a packed Las Vegas courtroom that prosecutors made
“several misrepresentations to the defense and to the court” that amounted to
misconduct and prevented a fair trial for Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan and
militia member Ryan Payne.
She said more than 1,000 pages of Federal Bureau of
Investigation memos were kept from the defense until well past an October
deadline. The agency failed in its duty despite years of investigations and two
years of trial preparation, she said.
Prosecutors appeared stunned after the judge’s decision, and
Bundy family members wept in the spectators’ section.
The 2014 revolt at the heart of the trial was sparked by a
court-ordered roundup of Bundy’s cattle by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management,
after the rancher had refused to pay federal grazing fees.
Hundreds of supporters, many of them armed, rallied at his ranch
in a show of force to demand the return of his impounded livestock. Police and
federal agents retreated rather than risk bloodshed and no shots were fired.