After his arrest Jan. 26, Ammon Bundy was found with $8,031 in cash in his jacket, a receipt from a Jan. 1 purchase of nearly $200 in ammunition from a Bi-Mart in Idaho and a withdrawal slip in his wallet for $6,000 from a Chase Bank Fred Meyer in Idaho visited the day before, according to a prosecutor.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gabriel told the court the evidence indicates that Bundy planned to remain at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for a long time.
During transportation to jail by van after a cursory search of him, Harney County Sheriff’s Sgt. Lucas McLain heard Bundy talking on a cellphone.
Lt. Brian Needham flipped on the overhead light in the van, and they could see Bundy balancing a cellphone between his shoulder and ear, McLain testified Tuesday.
They stopped the van at the Bureau of Land Management office west of Burns along U.S. 20, and Bundy, along with co-defendant Ryan Payne and Victoria Sharp, were removed from the van to be searched.
McLain said he searched the van and found a cellphone shoved into the crook of the seat where Bundy had been.
Bundy’s lawyer Marcus Mumford on cross-examination asked what was wrong with his client talking on the phone.
“He was being transported, sir,” McLain said. “We wanted to make sure there weren’t any communications with any individuals who might intercept that transport.”
McLain said he hadn’t searched Ammon Bundy before he entered the van. It’s unclear who did.
Mumford, during his cross-examination, suggested that Bundy was calling his wife and informing her about his arrest.
Bundy and other leaders of the refuge occupation were arrested during a police stop on U.S. 395 as they were driving to a community meeting in John Day.
Bundy and six co-defendants are on trial, charged with conspiring to impede federal employees from conducting their work at the refuge through intimidation, threats or force.
According to McLain, Sharp and Shawna Cox were seated in the far back of the transport van, Brian Cavalier and Mark McConnell were in the middle seat, and Ryan Payne and Ammon Bundy were in the front seat of the van.
McLain mentioned on the witness stand that Sharp at some point moved from the back to the front seat.
“She actually urinated in the backseat of the van and was ordered to move,” attorney Tiffany Harris pointed out, during her cross-examination. “She had asked several times to relieve herself.”
“I did not order her,” McLain said, but he acknowledged that Sharp had urinated in the van.
Harris is Cox’s standby counsel.
McLain was the last witness before the lunch break Tuesday. Two refuge employees testified in the morning.
Ryan Curtis, a supervisory forestry technician, identified defendant David Fry on video, seated at Curtis’ desk at the refuge and using his computer.
“That’s my desk and a picture of my daughter,” as the video filmed by Fry scanning Curtis’ personal belongings.
Curtis testified that one of the fire trucks at the refuge “had everything stripped of it” when he returned from work in mid-February after the 41-day occupation of the refuge was over.
Refuge ecologist Jess Wenick, a 13-year refuge employee who manages the haying and grazing program and water management program, said occupiers drove out in his work-assigned white pickup truck to cut about 100 feet of fence on the northeast boundary of the federal property Jan. 11.
He identified the refuge Bobcat truck used to remove fence poles from the ground and his work-assigned all-terrain vehicle being used by occupiers without his permission.
Prosecutors played for jurors video of the fence-cutting, which showed occupation spokesman Robert “LaVoy” Finicum removing a pair of pliers from a truck, and Ammon Bundy, Jon Ritzheimer and Finicum taking turns cutting the barbed wire down.
“Taking down the fence. Liberating this area,” co-defendant Blaine Cooper could be heard saying in the video. Cooper already has pleaded guilty to the federal conspiracy charge.
Upon returning to work at the refuge, Wenick testified that he found his desk in the main office of the refuge “disorganized and messy,” and his personal paperwork had been rummaged through, including bank account information, Social Security numbers and the “complete family history” of him and his wife.
He noticed a stack of historical documents placed in his office that had been moved, including a number of papers about the controversial case of Harney County ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steve Hammond, who were ordered to return to federal prison in January to complete a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for arson on federal lands.
He described co-worker Faye Healy’s office next door to his as a “technological sweatshop,” with computer parts strewn about, tobacco spit on the wall and personal photos and a “disturbing odor” in the air.
