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

Keith Ridler/AP

cover caption

toggle caption

Keith Ridler/AP

Ammon Bundy, heart, who led a protest at a Boise hospital final yr, 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 yr that led to a safety lockdown.

The determination 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 intensive marketing campaign of bullying, intimidation and disinformation directed at docs and medical employees that they are saying continues right this moment.

“Standing up to threats, bullying, intimidation, disruption and self serving actions was necessary. Inaction would have signaled that their menacing behavior was acceptable,” mentioned Chris Roth, CEO of St. Luke’s Health System, in a press release.

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

At the trial, the hospital’s safety director, Abbey Abbondandolo informed 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 have been near taking up the hospital and finishing up a “Pizzagate” style attack.

“This is not just a guy going rogue. He’s like a military leader who’s able to coordinate actions and mobilize people on 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 one of the vital 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 continuously unfold Q Anon conspiracy theories that St. Luke’s and its employees who cared for the toddler grandson have been a part of a world little one intercourse trafficking cabal.

Meanwhile, 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 certainly one of its little one well being providers organizations.

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

“People in a jury deciding how much St. Luke’s is going to take from those who exposed the truth about them is a mockery to justice. When a baby is born he or she does not become property of the state or hospital executives,” Bundy mentioned in a tweet responding to the decision.

This is simply the newest authorized drama for Bundy, who a jury actually acquitted in 2016 for main a 41 day armed takeover of a federal fowl sanctuary in Oregon. Bundy has additionally been arrested for trespassing within the Boise space a number of instances extra just lately, even resulting in his being banned from the Idaho state capitol for one yr.

“They are, to some degree, terrorists in the way that they’re acting. And then he turns around and makes himself the martyr or the victim, which is just ludicrous,” says Gary Raney, a retired sheriff in Ada County, Idaho’s most populous.

Leading 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 yr that Bundy was turning into increasingly aggressive towards his deputies.

Raney informed NPR he thinks Bundy will get served quickly however there is no rush whereas tempers are flaring.

“The predicament is just keeping the community safe over there with all these – I’ll use the technical term – yahoos that are over living on Bundy’s property, trying to protect him from who knows what,” Raney mentioned.