Militia leader Ammon Bundy says he won’t appear in court because there’s too much paperwork. Witnesses against him say they won’t appear because they’re afraid of retaliation.
Bundy, the leader of the right-wing activist group People’s Rights Network (PRN), is facing a lawsuit from St. Luke’s, an Idaho hospital that accuses Bundy and his followers of defamation and harassment. Since St. Luke’s filed its lawsuit last May, Bundy has refused to attend court dates or respond to legal filings. Instead, he’s boasted of throwing court documents in the garbage, while the PRN has urged members to come to Bundy’s home to shield him from police.
But a flurry of recent filings have put Bundy in new legal jeopardy. After a series of legal losses, he’s filing to move the case to federal court, while evading arrest on contempt charges.
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Stephen Piggott, a program director at the extremism-monitoring nonprofit Western States Center, said Bundy’s response to the lawsuit has been part of a larger campaign to strongarm opponents.
“Since its inception, PRN has relied on threats, intimidation, and political violence as a key strategy,” Piggott told The Daily Beast. “I think the goal of this strategy has been to have a chilling effect on the democratic process. The St. Luke’s case is just the latest in a long line of examples.”
Bundy’s feud with St. Luke’s began in March 2022, after the infant grandson of a PRN member was treated in the hospital for malnourishment against the family’s wishes in a child welfare case. Bundy led the PRN in a protest that temporarily shut down the hospital. PRN supporters flooded hospital phone lines with explicit death threats, and hospital staff became targets for doxxing and QAnon-flavored lies about sex trafficking.
St. Luke’s responded with a defamation suit against Bundy, the PRN, and several associates. But rather than fight the defamation claims in court, Bundy has ignored the lawsuit, refusing to appear in court or acknowledge legal documents.
“I just throw it all away,” he said in a December video, while holding a stack of court papers. “I literally just take it from the mail and throw it in the garbage.”
The tactic has not won him favors with the court. A judge last month issued a civil arrest warrant for Bundy, citing his behavior in the case. The following week, the judge handed St. Luke’s a default ruling in its lawsuit against Bundy, due to Bundy’s failure to appear in court.
Days later on March 1, Bundy finally sent a document to the court—not to acknowledge his loss, but to demand the trial to be moved to federal court. His justification: the volume of paperwork in the state case was too much for him.
“Petitioner Ammon Bundy, has never appeared in the State Case, due to the tens of thousands
of documents thrust upon him who is Pro Se and has no counsel,” his petition reads.
But some legal documents haven’t even made it to Bundy’s garbage can, according to recent court filings. Last month, St. Luke’s attorneys accused Bundy of threatening process servers who delivered court documents to his house. Bundy threatened the delivery workers with trespassing charges, and made similar threats against sheriff’s deputies who tried serving him with papers. The Gem County Sheriff temporarily stopped trying to serve Bundy with papers, citing fears of violence from Bundy, who has previously participated in two armed standoffs against the federal government.
After a sheriff’s vehicle was spotted near Bundy’s home last week, the PRN sent followers an “emergency alert,” falsely claiming that “Ammon Bundys [sic] home in idaho is currently surrounded by law enforcement. He is calling for people to come to his aid.”
Some supporters have stayed on Bundy’s property for over a week, Piggott said. Although many departed the property a few days, “I think members are on red alert and are ready to mobilize whenever Bundy or PRN leaders put out the call,” he added.
Those unable to come to his house have been encouraged to call the Gem County Sheriff and ask him not to take action against Bundy.
“Ammon chose to live in Gem county and not Ada county with the reasonable expectation to be protected against the unconstitutional, liberal, leftist, WOKE agendas so prevalent in Ada county and other large urban areas across the country,” reads a PRN “sample letter” for supporters to send the sheriff.
Bundy and supporters have also intimidated witnesses in the St. Luke’s case, the hospital’s lawyers allege.
Bundy’s arrest warrant was based on evidence that he’d continued to harass plaintiffs, in violation of a court order to leave them alone, Idaho Statesman first reported Monday. Erik Stidham, an attorney for St. Luke’s, told the Statesman that at least three witnesses had backed away from testifying in the case, for fear of harassment from Bundy and his network.
Affidavits from plaintiffs revealed a pattern of intimidating behavior. Natasha Erickson, a St. Luke’s pediatrician who is suing Bundy, wrote that she’s been subjected to an ongoing harassment campaign, even after the court issued a protective order.
“The unrelenting and false rhetoric used by Bundy and PRN has disrupted my daily life for several months and shows no sign of ceasing,” she wrote. “The ongoing statements have caused me chronic stress and anxiety and have left me in a constant state of concern for my safety and the safety [of] my family, my colleagues, my patients, and my friends.”
Those statements include false allegations of kidnapping and abuse, alongside photos of Erickson on a PRN-aligned website.
Erickson pointed to recent statements in which Bundy hinted at violently resisting the St. Luke’s lawsuit. The threats and the smear campaign “made it more challenging for me to establish my claims in this case because it has the effect of deterring other people who might otherwise set up and be witnesses in this case,” she wrote.
