The recent FBI award to agents who helped with a surprise traffic stop and roadblock to arrest Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupiers drew criticism Monday from national conservative figure Cliven Bundy, whose sons led the 2016 takeover.
The elder Bundy, who himself famously led a standoff against government agents over grazing rights in Nevada, criticized new FBI Director Kash Patel.
“I’m a little stirred up by the award, Cliven Bundy told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “I can’t understand the reasoning why the award would be given nine years down the road. We sort of wanted to have faith in Kash Patel, but this throws his integrity away.”
At a ceremony last month in Washington, D.C., Patel presented the FBI’s Shield of Bravery to members of the bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team, including agent W. Joseph Astarita and three other agents, for their “courageous acts in the line of duty,” in Oregon in 2016.
Bundy, now 79, said he viewed the award as a warning signal to those who may challenge the government.
“I do actually think of this thing as sort of a threat to anybody that would want to oppose the FBI,” he said.
Jeanette Finicum, whose husband Robert “LaVoy” Finicum was the only person killed during the state police and FBI operation in January 2016, also decried the award after learning of it from The Oregonian/OregonLive’s weekend coverage.
“Beyond words!” Jeanette Finicum wrote in a Facebook post. “How are we supposed to trust law enforcement, FBI in particular, when they … refuse to take responsibility for their mistakes … Mr. President, I had such hope that you would clean things up! But the government corruption continues. Just new lipstick on the same old pig!”
The Finicum family also sent a letter to the FBI asking its leaders to correct erroneous information in a caption of a photo showing Patel with Astarita and other agents who were at the Malheur roadblock.
The caption said LaVoy Finicum drove his truck into an FBI vehicle and trapped one of the FBI agents under his truck. That didn’t happen, according to testimony at Astarita’s trial.
“Every medal given without the truth acknowledged or to those who do not deserve it is another wound for our family,” the letter said. “We want closure, not commendations based on falsehoods.”
Other outspoken supporters of LaVoy Finicum responded on social media that it had caused them to lose trust in Patel, who was sworn in as FBI director in February after he was nominated by President Donald Trump.
The FBI national press office has declined to comment, describing the medal honors as a “personnel matter.” On Monday, the press office said it had “nothing to add,” when informed of Cliven Bundy’s and Jeanette Finicum’s reactions.
Ammon Bundy was arrested without incident at the state police and FBI surprise traffic stop along U.S. 395 outside the Malheur refuge near Burns on Jan. 26, 2016, as a two-car convoy of occupation leaders traveled to a neighboring county for a meeting. Ammon Bundy had led armed demonstrators about a month earlier in taking over the refuge in a long-running federal land use dispute.
LaVoy Finicum sped off from the traffic stop with four passengers in his truck and raced towards a state police and FBI roadblock. Ryan Bundy was in the back seat of the truck driven by occupation spokesman LaVoy Finicum, when a state police lieutenant, Casey Codding, fired three shots at the pickup as it raced toward a roadblock outside the refuge near Burns in January 2016.
State police moments later shot and killed Finicum after he crashed into a snowbank to avoid the roadblock, got out of the truck and reached into his jacket, where investigators said he carried a loaded handgun, according to police.
An FBI agent at the roadblock that day, Astarita, was acquitted two years later on allegations that he lied when he denied taking two shots at LaVoy Finicum’s truck just before the fatal gunfire. Investigators have never proven who took those shots.
Ryan Bundy still has a bullet fragment lodged in his shoulder from the roadblock confrontation. He has said he was crouched down in the back seat of Finicum’s truck as it veered into the snowbank and felt the shot after the truck had stopped and as Finicum was stepping out.
Federal prosecutors said in court they were interested in recovering the object from Ryan Bundy’s shoulder so government experts could analyze it as potential evidence in their prosecution of Astarita. They had not found any casings or bullets tied to Astarita’s rifle, so the suspected bullet in Bundy’s shoulder could have proven crucial to identify who took the mystery two shots. But Ryan Bundy has declined to have it removed.
FBI agents at the roadblock also were caught on infrared video from an FBI plane scouring the shooting scene and roadblock, looking under and around vehicles later that night. They told investigators that they didn’t remove any bullet casings but instead picked up items in a security check for dropped gear or unexploded munitions
The Finicum family’s civil suit against the FBI and state police alleging negligence by state troopers and FBI agents was dismissed in federal court.
Finicum’s family and his supporters said they’re dismayed that investigators have failed to answer who fired the two bullets as Finicum stepped out of his truck.
“The Finicum family is both devastated and angry” by the award to Astarita and the other FBI agents involved in the stop, said Mark Herr, a family spokesperson. “This is like a scab being pulled off and a wound being reopened rather than being allowed to heal and close.”
Cliven Bundy, involved in his own dispute with the federal government over cattle grazing rights on public land, said he had hoped Patel would “clean up” the FBI.
“We thought Kash Patel was going to be the honest part of the FBI here,” he said. “But now, as ranchers out here in the West, we look at him as being our enemy now.”
He and sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy were accused in federal court in Las Vegas of organizing a massive armed assault in 2014 to thwart federal rangers from carrying out a court order to round up the Bundy family cattle that were trespassing on federal public land. Cliven Bundy had failed to pay grazing fees and fines for two decades.
On Jan. 8, 2018, U.S. District Judge Gloria M. Navarro threw out the charges after declaring a mistrial, citing “flagrant misconduct” by prosecutors and the FBI in not disclosing evidence before and during trial.
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