Extreme right-wing reinforcements for Ammon Bundy

Joey Gibson was trying to find a parking space for his flag-decked pickup truck. The Boise, Idaho neighborhood was already crowded with people and vehicles, including a large RV with a “MAGA MONSTA” sign. (“She parked right in front of my driveway,” called a resident over the mobile home. “That is not okay.”)

Many in the crowd on Saturday were not locals. Gibson, the leader of the far-right street fighting group Patriot Prayer, had traveled to the interstate from west Washington. He and others were there to protest outside the home of a judge implicated in the case of Ammon Bundy, the leader of another far-right group. The protest, for which Gibson helped by sharing the judge’s address on the Internet, was a melting pot of fringe activists deeply invested in Bundy’s already controversial court case.

“We need civil disobedience and we need people brave enough to go to jail while you drag them in there,” Gibson shouted through a megaphone to the police guarding Judge David Manweiler’s house during a crowd beckoned signs on the suburban street.

The protest outside Manweiler’s house, followed by a demonstration outside a Boise courthouse, was the latest development in Bundy’s escalating and unusual legal drama. The saga tests the power of an alleged nationwide network of far-right activists that Bundy calls popular rights, but also the ability of the legal system in a conservative state to hold even the most idolized far-right personalities accountable.

Bundy became known for two armed clashes against federal agents: first in Nevada in 2014 with his father Cliven and again in 2016 in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. (In the latter case, Bundy and staff occupied a federal building in Malheur and he was not found guilty on all stalemate-related charges.) When COVID-19 swept the country in Spring 2020, Bundy made headlines back and headed this time a new group called People’s Rights Network (web registration records suggest) had started work on the group before the pandemic.

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The People’s Rights Network campaigned for aggressive demonstrations, often by inserting itself into the private lives of elected officials. The group temporarily closed an Idaho health department meeting by flooding health officials’ homes in December, and members did, too Allegedly broken into in an August incident at Idaho’s State Capitol as an eerie warning of the January attack on the US Capitol.

The demonstrations have resulted in a number of arrests for Bundy, including one at a high school soccer game where he refused to wear a mask and another at the Idaho Capitol. This latter arrest, on charges of trespassing and resisting the arrest, sparked a cascade of legal spats that resulted in people like Gibson and the driver of the “MAGA MONSTA” protesting outside Manweiler’s house.

Bundy was due to appear in court in March for trespassing. But he and another defendant refused to wear masks in the courthouse, which was against the building’s rules. They did not enter the building and were eventually arrested for failing to show up for their trial.

Rather than subjecting the new case to a different criminal trial, Manweiler ordered last week that Bundy’s “no-show” case should be resolved through mediation with another judge. But Manweiler had previously tried to mediate Bundy’s cases, the Idaho statesman reported, and Bundy is said to have resigned prematurely during a mediation this summer.

“Mr. Bundy has apparently left the meeting,” announced Manweiler and ended the online event.

Manweiler does not monitor the last round of mediation. Even so, Bundy fans have put his address online to advertise the Saturday protest on his street. The event attracted a number of right-wing and anti-mask activists.

One participant told a live streamer that she looked into Bundy’s movement last year when she heard he was organizing a maskless Easter service for 1,000 people. After that, she continued to study human rights and lost her job for religious and anti-masking reasons. “I was fired in August because God told me not to wear a mask,” she said.

Gibson, who arrived with a truckload of protesters, represented a more militant front. Gibson, like Bundy, is the founder of a far-right organization with a shaky legal history. Gibson’s Patriot Prayer is active in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington, where its members have worked with groups like the Proud Boys in loud demonstrations and clashed with the left. (Gibson did not immediately return a request for comment.)

Gibson is currently facing its own legal troubles – even worse than Bundy‘In August 2019, he was charged with his alleged role in a Patriot Prayer attack on a left-wing Portland bar. According to the affidavit of a plainclothes police officer in this case, the members of the Patriot Prayer planned to quarrel with anti-fascists at the bar. They later descended on the left, reportedly knocking a woman unconscious and breaking one of her vertebrae with a baton.

According to the affidavit, Gibson helped verbally start the fight and was seen on a video of the woman being pushed before she was knocked unconscious. Gibson pleaded not guilty and tried to fight the case by filing a lawsuit against the prosecutor who brought charges against him.

A federal judge declined to take Gibson’s case in February. Nonetheless, an Oregon prosecutor announced in March that it would investigate the defendant’s claims against the prosecutor. Two of Gibson’s five co-defendants in the case pleaded guilty and were convicted in January.

On Saturday, Gibson focused on a conspiracy in Bundy’s case, falsely claiming that COVID-19 was a pretext for a “takeover,” possibly by China. “That’s what COVID is about,” he said. “That’s what they’re trying to do here in the United States of America.”