Indictment says protesters in OR occupation ‘threatened violence’

Authorities then blockaded the federal refuge in eastern OR and, as people fled OR were arrested, the occupation dwindled to just four people.

The suspects are all accused of impeding federal officers from discharging official duties, though use of force, intimidation and threats – facing a maximum sentence of six years in prison.

Federal authorities fear those tensions could pop up elsewhere and have increased security at national wildlife refuges in Southern Oregon, Northern California and Nevada and put the rest of the preserves nationwide on heightened alert.

He is the son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who has been involved in a high-profile dispute over grazing cattle on federal land in that state.

“Government officials chose to end our educational efforts with attacks of force and it appears they attempt to do it again”, Bundy said in the minute-and-a half statement.

The holdouts want assurances they won’t be arrested if they leave.

According to court documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of OR, the armed standoff began January 2, but on OR about October 5 of 2015, two of the conspirators traveled to OR to, “warn the Harney County sheriff of “extreme civil unrest” if certain demands were not met”.

“The Government’s claim that allowing Ms. Cox to associate with “like minded people” might cause problems (as yet, unidentified) is, at best, a generalized worry and nothing approaching the order of a compelling governmental interest”, Harris said in the motion.

Four members of the protest group are believed to remain inside the refuge. After his arrest during a traffic stop late last month, he repeatedly has called on the holdouts to go home to avoid bloodshed.

Bundy was arrested last week with a handful of other occupiers while en route to a community meeting miles away from the refuge.

The remaining occupiers are: David Fry, 27, of Blanchester, Ohio; Jeff Banta, 46, of Elko, Nev.; and Sean Anderson, 48, and Sandy Anderson, 47, a married couple from Riggins, Idaho. You have already killed enough.

The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Portland on Wednesday and unsealed on Thursday, supersedes an earlier criminal complaint in the case.