Harney County ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son Steven Hammond, fresh from federal prison following a pardon by President Donald Trump, are expected to step off a private jet at Burns Municipal Airport Thursday morning to a crush of well-wishers and their family.
Their return to Burns comes two and a half years after protesters marched through the city in the middle of southeastern Oregon’s high desert to denounce the father and son’s impending court-ordered return to prison in January 2016 to serve out a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for setting fires to public land.
Their case inflamed their supporters, drew support from right-wing militias and gave rise to the 41-day armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
The elder Hammond, 76, and son Steven Hammond, 49, were convicted in 2012 of arson on Harney County land where they had grazing rights for their cattle. Both were convicted of setting a fire in 2001, and the son was convicted of setting a second fire in 2006. The Hammonds accepted the Pendleton jury verdicts and agreed to waive their right to an appeal. A federal judge initially sentenced the father to three months in prison and the son to one year, ruling that the five-year mandatory minimum under a provision of an expansive federal law punishing terrorism was “grossly disproportionate to the severity of the offenses here.”
They served the time and were out of prison when federal prosecutors challenged the shorter terms before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and won. Another federal judge in 2015 sent the ranchers back to complete the full sentences.
The nonprofit group Protect the Harvest, founded by oil executive Forrest Lucas to defend the rights of American farmers, ranchers, outdoor enthusiasts and animal owners, worked behind the scenes with U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, to get the ear of the White House in considering the clemency petitions filed by each Hammond.
“We brought it to the attention of the vice president,” said David Duquette, a Hermiston resident who serves as national strategic planner for the advocacy group Protect the Harvest. “Mike Pence and Forrest Lucas are good friends.”
Lucas, the multimillionaire oil magnate and backer of the Indianapolis Colts, and Pence, an Indiana native, have known each other for a long time, Duquette said.
Duquette was so confident something was afoot that he got a hotel room Tuesday in Long Beach, California near the Terminal Island federal prison where the Hammonds have been held, and where they walked out about 2 p.m. Tuesday, about six 1/2 hours after Trump pardoned them.
“I’m sitting here waiting for Forrest, and then we’re going to fly the Hammonds home,” Duquette said from his hotel room Tuesday.
Lucas was set to fly into California early Wednesday to bring the Hammonds to Burns in his 8-seater Cessna Citation Bravo.
Local community members, as well as supporters of the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, planned to gather at the airport to welcome the two men home. Several convoys of supporters from central Oregon and elsewhere were planning to converge in Burns to greet the Hammonds.
Outside the Hammond home on Court Avenue in downtown Burns, an American flag was flying by the front door and a huge banner sat on the front lawn that read, “Thank you President Trump You Freed the Hammonds.” Another banner hung over the front window that read, “Thank You President Donald Trump! Thank You Greg Walden for all your hardwork for the people of Oregon! Thank you Forest (sic) Lucas For Protecting the Harvest! Patriots, March On!”
As of this month, Dwight Hammond has served two years and nine months in prison and 31 months of supervised release. His son has served three years and four months in prison and two years of supervised release.
While occupiers of the Malheur refuge, who seized on the Hammond case and demanded their release, celebrated the presidential pardon, public land advocates and federal land management officials have expressed concern that it will only embolden “lawless extremists” and put park rangers, public land managers and wildland firefighters at risk.
Convicted refuge occupier Jon Ritzheimer, serving a federal sentence of one year and a day for his role in the armed takeover of the federal wildlife refuge, wrote in a letter to his wife she posted on Facebook: “I have said from the very start of all this that if it got the Hammonds out even one day sooner then it was all worth it.”
Yet Steven Grasty, a former Harney County commissioner, credited Walden and organizations, such as the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, not the refuge occupiers led by Ammon Bundy, for achieving the Hammonds’ freedom.
“The Bundys complicated this. They made it worse,” Grasty said. “The Bundys didn’t know the Hammonds. They used them.”
