Charges dismissed against activist ranching family

A federal judge in Nevada dismissed all charges against Cliven Bundy, his sons Ryan and Ammon, and Montana militia leader Ryan Payne. U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro said Monday that government lawyers violated “the universal sense of justice” in their prosecution of the group for an armed confrontation with federal agents who tried to confiscate Bundy cattle in 2014. Navarro found “deliberate attempts to mislead and distort the truth” and blamed FBI agents for “reckless disregard” of requirements to turn over evidence. Last year, a jury in Portland, Ore., acquitted Ryan and Ammon Bundy of leading the early 2016 occupation of a U.S. wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon. Cliven Bundy left federal custody Monday and said he had been held as a political prisoner for 700 days. Navarro released him in November during the trial, but he chose to remain in prison on principle. “It was important for [Cliven] to go home to his family but it was important to him to go home as a free man, with no contingencies, no conditions,” his attorney, Bret Whipple, told CNN. Bundy promised that if U.S. Bureau of Land Management agents came again to seize his cattle over unpaid grazing fees, they would encounter “the very same thing as last time.”