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By Scott Rohter, March 2017<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Ammon-and-Ryan-Bundy-1-300x216.jpg\")
Ammon and Ryan Bundy<\/p><\/div>\n
The occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is over. It\u00a0ended back in January of 2016 with the tragic shooting death (murder) of Lavoy Finicum. It\u00a0also ended with the arrest of Ammon and Ryan Bundy\u00a0and about two dozen other protestors who were\u00a0 at the Refuge with them. The occupation of the Refuge by the protestors is long over,\u00a0but the occupation of\u00a0half of the State of Oregon by the Federal government still continues to this day. In fact the occupation of\u00a0 700 million acres of land in twelve Western States\u00a0goes on unabated to this day.<\/p>\n
It\u00a0is a fact that half of the land in twelve western states is owned, managed, and controlled by Congress. through two federal agencies… the Bureau of Land Management and the United States Forest Service.\u00a0 This amounts to about\u00a0twenty-five percent of all the land in the\u00a0whole\u00a0country. It is\u00a0a direct violation of the United States Constitution and it is an even bigger violation of the Equal Footing Principle by which all new States were supposed to be admitted to the Union on the same basis as all of the other States. (See map below)<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Brown-Anna-judge.png\")
Judge Anna Brown<\/p><\/div>\n
The defendants in the\u00a0occupation trial of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge were divided into two groups by the judge. That should have never been allowed. It\u00a0gave the government two chances to try the protestors on the exact same charges, albeit using different defendants. Ammon and Ryan Bundy\u00a0and five other defendants went on trial first in September of 2016. After a six week long trial they were all found NOT GUILTY on all\u00a0counts in the indictment\u00a0which included a felony charge of conspiracy to impede federal officials\u00a0and\u00a0a felony charge of\u00a0 possessing firearms\u00a0on a Federal facility.<\/p>\n
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Then the next group of seven defendants was scheduled to go\u00a0on trial in February 2017. After three of them\u00a0accepted\u00a0a plea deal in which the government agreed to drop all of\u00a0the more serious felony charges if they pled guilty to one misdemeanor count of\u00a0trespass,\u00a0\u00a0the\u00a0remaining four defendants went on trial. One of them was\u00a0Darryl Thorn. The government offered him the\u00a0same plea, but he\u00a0opted not to take it. Instead he chose to stand trial with Jake Ryan, Duane Ehmer, and Jason Patrick who were not offered\u00a0a plea deal. Those were the last four defendants to go on trial in Oregon over the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Federal_Land_map_of-300x231.jpg\")
Un-equal distribution of Federal lands in U.S.A.<\/p><\/div>\n
The second trial resulted in a very different outcome than the first trial… Without the presense of Ammon Bundy in shackles and\u00a0prison scrubs, and Ryan Bundy\u00a0acting as his own attorney,\u00a0 the\u00a0final four defendants were all convicted of at least one felony.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Jason Patrick and Darryl Thorn were convicted of participating in a conspiracy. In addition Mr. Thorn was also convicted\u00a0 of violating\u00a0federal firearms statutes which prohibit carrying any firearms onto federal property. Duane Ehmer and Jake Ryan were\u00a0convicted of “depredation of government property”<\/em> for digging a hole with an excavator which carries an even longer prison sentence than the conspiracy charge does.<\/p>\n Now we have a bitter irony. The leaders of the so called conspiracy were all found not guilty of\u00a0 any conspiracy\u00a0but two of their followers\u00a0were found guilty of a conspiracy by a different jury.\u00a0This \u00a0is the fickle and whimsical nature of the law.<\/p>\n The occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is over… It ended in January 2016 with the tragic shooting death of Lavoy Finicum and the arrest of Ammon and Ryan Bundy and about two dozen other protestors who were with them at the Refuge, but the occupation of half the State of Oregon by the Federal government still goes on to this day. In fact…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,6],"tags":[835,697,836,789],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9912"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9912"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10161,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9912\/revisions\/10161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"