PUBLIC LANDS: Reid calls rancher Bundy's supporters domestic terrorists
Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Published: Friday, April 18, 2014
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yesterday called those who protested the Bureau of Land Management's roundup of hundreds of cattle owned by rancher Cliven Bundy in southern Nevada last week "domestic terrorists."
Reid slammed the hundreds of states' rights protesters and armed militiamen, who he said were brandishing sniper rifles and automatic weapons, who rallied to support the Bunkerville-area rancher.
He pointed to comments by one protester, former Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack, that women would be put on the front lines as human shields in case federal officials opened fire.
"Those people who hold themselves out to be patriots are not," Reid said at an event yesterday in Las Vegas hosted by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "What went on up there was domestic terrorism."
Reid also reiterated his position that Bundy is a lawbreaker who hasn't paid his grazing fees since 1993 and is flouting two federal court orders in 2013 to remove his several hundred cattle from the land.
"Bundy does not recognize the United States," Reid said. "He continues to thumb his nose at authority."
Reid said he had spoken this week with Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director James Comey and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
He said Bundy's violations are "an issue we cannot let go, just walk away from it."
Reid, whose former aide Neil Kornze leads BLM, is one of a small number of federal lawmakers who have offered opinions on Bundy's actions.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) did not say whether the senator believes Bundy is in the right or whether BLM's roundup was unjustified.
But Heller last week criticized BLM's closure of public lands to carry out the roundup, saying he was "extremely concerned" about lack of access to roads, water and electrical infrastructure.
The weeklong roundup, which BLM halted Saturday amid escalating threats of armed violence, has been a rallying cry for conservative media outlets and has galvanized tea party groups that argue the federal government should divest to the states the hundreds of millions of acres it owns in the West.
The roundup also triggered numerous death threats and hate mail to BLM employees and the environmental activists who defended them (Greenwire, April 17).
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in a radio interview this week said the dispute should be settled in court rather than by force, but he backed Bundy's calls for state supremacy.
"Can everybody decide what law is on their own? No, there has to be a legal process," he said. "But I think there definitely is a philosophical debate over who should own this land."
He said the federal government's protections of the threatened desert tortoise had come down like a "sledgehammer" on land users like Bundy, and he questioned whether the cows were causing harm.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) this week also came to Bundy's defense on Twitter, urging the conservative Patriot Journalist Network to retweet "if I can count on you to stand with me to protect #BundyRanch from government infringement."
While Bundy does not believe BLM owns the land, a federal district court in Nevada has ruled otherwise, and Nevada's Constitution explicitly acknowledges the federal government's jurisdiction. The court ruled in 2013 that Bundy was in "flagrant and continuing violations" of federal law.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association and Public Lands Council, which advocate for public lands ranchers, said federal environmental laws threaten to put ranchers like Bundy out of business, but they also did not advocate breaking them.
"We cannot advocate operating outside the law to solve problems," the groups said in a statement. "We also sympathize with Mr. Bundy's dilemma."
