Ammon Bundy ordered to pay $50 million. However will the hospital ever see the cash? : NPR

Ammon Bundy, middle, who led a protest at a Boise hospital final 12 months, stands on the Idaho Statehouse steps in Boise, Idaho, on Monday, Aug. 24, 2020.

Keith Ridler/AP

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Keith Ridler/AP

Ammon Bundy, middle, who led a protest at a Boise hospital final 12 months, stands on the Idaho Statehouse steps in Boise, Idaho, on Monday, Aug. 24, 2020.

Keith Ridler/AP

A jury has ordered anti-government extremist Ammon Bundy and associates to pay greater than $50 million in damages to Idaho’s largest hospital in reference to armed protests final 12 months that led to a safety lockdown.

The choice handed down late Monday follows a ten day civil trial during which Bundy was a no present and the place attorneys with St. Luke’s Hospital outlined what they known as an in depth marketing campaign of bullying, intimidation and disinformation directed at docs and medical employees that they are saying continues right now.

“Standing as much as threats, bullying, intimidation, disruption and self serving actions was crucial. Inaction would have signaled that their menacing conduct was acceptable,” mentioned Chris Roth, CEO of St. Luke’s Well being System, in a press release.

The drama goes again to March of 2022 when Bundy led a collection of tense protests in opposition to the hospitalization of one in all his affiliate’s toddler grandkids who state social employees mentioned was malnourished. In keeping with court docket paperwork, protesters, some armed, tried to pressure their approach into the hospital’s locked exits. Some held “wished” indicators naming particular person docs and nurses and even blocked an ambulance entrance as automobile horns blared.

On the trial, the hospital’s safety director, Abbey Abbondandolo instructed the jury that he ordered a safety lockdown and diverted all incoming ambulances to different hospitals as a result of he feared Bundy and his militia followers had been near taking on the hospital and finishing up a “Pizzagate” fashion assault.

“This isn’t only a man going rogue. He is like a army chief who’s in a position to coordinate actions and mobilize folks on totally different fronts,” Abbondandolo mentioned.

The jury trial supplied a window into the darkish world of far-right extremism, with intimidation and threats being directed at high officers even in some of the conservative states within the nation.

Ammon Bundy, who ran for governor in Idaho in 2022, receiving some 90,000 votes, routinely assaults the state’s Republican leaders, together with its conservative governor, on social media. Bundy and his followers regularly unfold Q Anon conspiracy theories that St. Luke’s and its employees who cared for the toddler grandson had been a part of a world little one intercourse trafficking cabal.

In the meantime, it is unclear how a lot if any of the $50 million in damages, half of them punitive, will ever receives a commission. St Luke’s says it plans to donate the cash upon assortment to one in all its little one well being companies organizations.

Bundy, who has defied a civil arrest warrant, seems to stay holed up in his residence in a rural space exterior Boise the place he is been claiming erroneously that he has no belongings left to be taken.

“Individuals in a jury deciding how a lot St. Luke’s goes to take from those that uncovered the reality about them is a mockery to justice. When a child is born she or he doesn’t turn into property of the state or hospital executives,” Bundy mentioned in a tweet responding to the decision.

That is simply the most recent authorized drama for Bundy, who a jury really acquitted in 2016 for main a 41 day armed takeover of a federal chicken sanctuary in Oregon. Bundy has additionally been arrested for trespassing within the Boise space a number of occasions extra lately, even resulting in his being banned from the Idaho state capitol for one 12 months.

“They’re, to some extent, terrorists in the best way that they are appearing. After which he turns round and makes himself the martyr or the sufferer, which is simply ludicrous,” says Gary Raney, a retired sheriff in Ada County, Idaho’s most populous.

Main as much as the civil trial, Raney was advising native legislation enforcement to attend issues out and never instantly go in and serve the warrant. The native sheriff had warned to earlier this 12 months that Bundy was turning into more and more aggressive towards his deputies.

Raney instructed NPR he thinks Bundy will get served quickly however there is not any rush whereas tempers are flaring.

“The predicament is simply retaining the group secure over there with all these – I am going to use the technical time period – yahoos which might be over residing on Bundy’s property, attempting to guard him from who is aware of what,” Raney mentioned.