So the Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was apparently about wise use rather than some wacky Mormon land legacy and quasi-mad regional sovereignty secession deploying firearms and property destruction.
And the government informants were the real cause, turning the siege site into a Conspiracy-Theory Machine factory that manufactures an endless vendetta against those who stand their ground….because Constitution.
Darn them Federal outside agitators, discrediting and criminalizing the illegal actions of Nevada and Arizona’s outside agitators in… Oregon.
The six men and a woman charged with conspiracy in seizing a U.S. wildlife center in Oregon were staging a legitimate protest manipulated by the government through informants who infiltrated the group, a defense lawyer argued at their trial on Tuesday.In protesting what they saw as a form of tyranny, the defendants themselves became victims of a government campaign to discredit and criminalize a larger movement opposed to federal control over millions of acres of public land in the West, Marcus Mumford argued.
Mumford, whose client, Ammon Bundy, led the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon, summed up the defense case in federal court in Portland where Bundy and six others have stood trial since mid-September.
His closing argument followed the prosecution's summation and weeks of testimony by government and defense witnesses, some of whom took part in the 41-day occupation.
“You are the heart and lungs of liberty,” Mumford told jurors during an impassioned presentation lasting nearly four hours. “Only you can make clear that Mr. Bundy is not a conspirator and none of these men and women are conspirators.”Mumford’s closing argument painted Bundy as another victim in a long line of federal overreach. He said Bundy tried other methods before the occupation to raise concerns with government officials. Mumford pointed to the original protest in Burns, Bundy’s correspondence with Sheriff David Ward, and even the 2014 standoff in Bunkerville, Nevada, as means Bundy pursued to garner attention.
“Ammon Bundy was trying to get to these issues through all the proper channels,” Mumford said. “And after those channels failed, he decided with others it was time to make a hard stand.”