‘Part of a miracle’: Jubilation at Bundy ranch in Nevada over Oregon acquittals

Jubilation was in the air Friday at Cliven Bundy’s ranch, with family members of the imprisoned patriarch calling the acquittal of two of his sons for seizing a national wildlife refuge in Oregon a “vindication” of the family’s feud with the federal government. “Justice has been served and we were part of a miracle,” Bundy’s beaming wife, Carol, told the Review-Journal at the Bundy ranch, nine miles southwest of this unincorporated Clark County town, referring to the Oregon jury’s exoneration of the couple’s sons Ammon and Ryan and five other anti-government defendants Thursday in Portland. She had just finished speaking by phone to Ammon, who remains behind bars in Oregon. “Their thoughts were finally they’ve been vindicated,” she said. “And their thoughts went immediately to LaVoy Finicum, because his death now has been vindicated, too. With them being not guilty, he also is not guilty.” Carol Bundy, 62, her face no longer drained from stress, smiled as she sat on a wooden bench with peeling turquoise paint and spoke about assimilating the news of the acquittal. The conversation was punctuated by laughter from her barefoot grandchildren playing in the front yard and roosters crowing in the back. But she said her sons are weary of the legal ordeal and hopeful it is nearing an end. “They’re tired of being locked up. They’re tired of being unfairly held way from their families,” she said. She said the wait since the arrests of her sons and husband has “been a long hard ride,” but she was buoyed by the Oregon verdicts and is “hoping everything gets dismissed” before the trial in Nevada. “We’re moving forward with some other motions, a lot of discovery,” she said. “We have a lot of things that we can hit them with here in Nevada that they don’t even know.”...more