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Oregon sheriff David Ward said Ammon Bundy and his armed supporters repeatedly threatened “to overthrow” him and tore apart his small rural community, in the first testimony in the high-profile militia standoff case.
Ward’s town is still recovering from the impact of the Malheur national wildlife refuge occupation, the sheriff told a packed federal courtroom in Portland on the second day of the trial.
“We’re still dealing with a lot of the fallout,” he said.
Ward, the local sheriff in rural Harney County, was thrust into the national spotlight at the start of the armed occupation, which began on 2 January when brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy led a takeover of the Malheur national wildlife refuge to protest against the federal government.
The Bundys and their followers have long argued that federal authorities have no right to own or regulate public lands, and the activists traveled to Burns, a small town in eastern Oregon, to support two ranchers facing prison time.
Father and son Dwight and Steve Hammond were convicted of federal arson charges in a case that for some ranchers and rural communities in the west symbolized government overreach. The Bundys had hoped that Ward, as the top county law enforcement leader, would take a stand against the federal government and defend the Hammonds from imprisonment.
During the Bundys’ infamous 2014 standoff with US officers at their ranch in Nevada – stemming from the patriarch Cliven’s refusal to pay grazing taxes – the local Clark County sheriff, Doug Gillespie, expressed sympathy for the family and was critical of the federal government.
But Ward made clear from the start that he wanted the Bundys gone and the occupation over.
The sheriff told reporters that the Bundys were leading dangerous militia groups in an attempt to “overthrow” the government, and within days, Ward said he and his family were facing death threats.
The sheriff also met with Ammon on a remote road outside of the refuge during the first week of the standoff, offering to escort the protesters out of Oregon. The Bundys declined the offer.
He became particularly emotional when he reflected on the occupation in the immediate aftermath of the standoff, which dragged on for 41 days.
Ward testified that Ammon and another protester, Ryan Payne, met with him last November and threatened “civil unrest” if the sheriff didn’t intervene in the Hammonds’ case.
“I was told that my responsibility was to prevent them from going to prison,” Ward said. “If I didn’t do those things, they would bring thousands of people to town to do my job.”
Ward said the ultimatum was concerning and that the men told him: “We can’t control what they may or may not do.”
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