‘We’ve seen this before’: Domestic terrorism, white supremacy has long found a home in Idaho

My wife Tina and I watched on television as a pro-Trump mob rushed into the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday as lawmakers sought to certify the election of Joe Biden as president.

We watched as they ransacked offices, broke down doors and windows, destroyed federal property and sent fear into the hearts of legislators, their staff and even Vice President Mike Pence. They killed a police officer, and one of the insurrectionists, a woman and veteran, also was killed.

“We’ve seen this before,” Tina said.

In January 2016, we entered the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon after Ammon Bundy and his rabble of militia had taken it over. They were not protesters engaging in civil disobedience, despite that characterization by then Republican U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador.

They were domestic terrorists.

They were armed, with a guard and an assault rifle in a tower at the entrance. They had ransacked the offices of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, stealing papers and causing more than $6 million worth of damage.

They desecrated sacred tribal ground and rummaged through Native artifacts. We watched Ammon and his brother Ryan erect a sign next to the headquarters using federal materials for the upcoming evening press conference.

We talked with a pleasant elderly couple from Adams County, Idaho, as they were digging through a tool shed.

“They didn’t think they were doing anything wrong,” Tina said. “Ammon Bundy told them they had a right to be there.”

Ammon Bundy encouraged Idahoans to go to D.C.

Bundy, who lives in Emmett, told Rebecca Boone of the Associated Press in Boise on Thursday he didn’t go to Washington, D.C., but he had urged members of the group he formed, People’s Rights, to go. He was in the mountains he said when the Capitol takeover occurred Wednesday.

“I do feel like it was a great opportunity to unite people or make people aware of the tools that are available for them to unite,” he said. “I think it was John F. Kennedy who said the best: ‘Those who make peaceful revolutions impossible make violent revolutions inevitable.’”

Later in 2016, a jury found the Bundys and several other occupiers not guilty. But 11 others like Iraq War veteran Duane Ehmer, of Irrigon, Oregon, served prison sentences. Ehmer, best known for the picture of him carrying an American flag as he rode his horse Hellboy on the refuge, escorted Tina and I to ensure we did not go inside the headquarters where the big guns were kept hidden from the press.

The Bundys also got off scot-free in 2018 for their standoff with federal officers in 2014 in Nevada at their father’s ranch because of what the federal judge called “flagrant misconduct” by federal prosecutors who withheld evidence.

The message to Bundy was clear -- just as it was to the growing number of militia, anti-government and white supremacist groups that have emerged ever since Randy Weaver’s standoff with federal agents in 1992 at Ruby Ridge in North Idaho. You can push the limits of society through intimidation, occupation and even violence.

So in August, Bundy led his People’s Rights supporters, anti-vaccination groups and others into the Idaho Capitol, where they shoved through a door into the House Gallery, shattering its glass and disrupting the special legislative session responding to the coronavirus. Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke didn’t want violence, so he allowed them in.

A day later, when Bundy caused more disorder and refused to leave, he was wheeled out of the building in an office chair by Idaho State Police and charged with trespassing. He was not deterred.

Then on Oct. 14, members of a militia group calling themselves the Wolverine Watchmen were arrested for a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and overthrow the state government. Some of them had participated in an armed incursion into the Michigan Statehouse in May.

Also in October, former Marine Jordan Duncan, one of four men charged with plotting to illegally sell and manufacture guns, allegedly discussed, with former pornographic actor Paul Kryscuk, shooting Black Lives Matter protesters in Boise. The Nov. 18 indictment said Duncan, Kryscuk, Liam Collins and Justin Hermanson intended for their illegally manufactured guns to be unlawfully used “in furtherance of a civil disorder.”

White supremacy, domestic tolerance shouldn’t be tolerated

So where do we go from here?

I spoke with Speaker Bedke who shared with Bundy the view that it was a gross injustice for federal prosecutors to return to prison Dwight Hammond, the rancher whose case inspired the Malheur takeover. And Bedke publicly supported the Texas lawsuit that contested the 2020 election results in four battleground states.

The Supreme Court ruled against Texas, but Bedke still isn’t sure the other states conducted their elections legally.

“But what I’m sure of is what happened in the Capitol on Wednesday was wrong and will have deleterious effects into the future if not checked,” he said.

We can’t continue to tolerate intimidation of politicians involved in the democratic process.

We can’t tolerate white supremacy.

We must stand together against violence.

We also need to come together to resolve the great problems we face. We need to learn together the facts, honor our differences and find common ground.

This story was originally published January 11, 2021 at 4:00 AM with the headline "‘We’ve seen this before’: Domestic terrorism, white supremacy has long found a home in Idaho."