Trump pardoned the Hammond family and it's a big deal. The government has been torturing ranchers all over the U.S. for years and now they are getting a reprieve. It's about time!
Transcript
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00:00:41.000That's that Kid Rock song where he goes, I wanna be a cowboy.
00:04:08.000Lavoy Finnecum gets out of his car after being chased by the Feds because they didn't want them to get to, I don't know, to have a city meeting or something.
00:04:16.000Lavoie Finnecum should be a hero for all anarchists, all revolutionaries, but Antifa doesn't care about anyone who looks like a cowboy because it's not cool.
00:04:31.000So what we have on the show, I'm going to devote the entire show to this pardon because it's a big deal.
00:04:39.000It's not just about the ranchers who were arrested, thrown in prison, then released from prison, and then dragged back into prison by the government.
00:04:52.000It's about standing up to the government and winning.
00:04:56.000And this is why, like, I don't think the far left understands that I can be anti-establishment, anti-government, and pro-Trump, because Trump is anti-government.
00:05:06.000Inevitably, you have to have a president.
00:05:07.000Don't you want the most anti-politician president you can get?
00:06:29.000And it Documents the entire story I just told you, including the death of Lavoie.
00:06:35.000And it shows you with beautiful footage and drone shots and stuff, the whole progression from the Hammonds first burn to them being sentenced to prison.
00:06:44.000Now, it doesn't end with them being pardoned because this just happened yesterday.
00:06:48.000So we'll talk to Josh at the end of the show.
00:06:50.000But without further bleathering from this wannabe cowboy, let's talk to Ruthie and show you this incredible story, not just of two ranchers who were falsely accused of arson and eventually pardoned, but of real Americans, cheeseburger makers, who fought the law and eventually won.
00:07:19.000Now, you are sort of known as the lady the call when we're talking about the Hammond case, the ranchers over there in Oregon.
00:07:29.000And I feel like we could get the best sort of who, what, when, where, why basic story from you, even more than calling the Hammonds themselves.
00:08:17.000The original indictment that the Hammonds received in 2010 had 22 counts.
00:08:25.000It included fires that had occurred in the Steens Mountain area, in their ranching area, back 20 years, over 20 years.
00:08:38.000And so they were indicted on those counts.
00:08:42.000And then the superseding indictment, the one that they actually went to trial over, was dropped down to nine counts.
00:08:52.000The first count being a fire that had occurred in 2001 in October.
00:09:00.000That fire was a prescribed burn where Steve Hammond had actually called the BLM that day, that morning, and actually around noon to see if it was okay to burn some of their property in a prescribed burn.
00:09:22.000The BLM had a prescribed burn going on at the same time to the south, and he could see the smoke.
00:09:28.000It happened to also be the second day, I believe, of hunting season.
00:09:41.000all headed back, and they got the okay from the BLM to go ahead and do the prescribed burn, which they did.
00:09:49.000And just to start to interrupt you, but...
00:09:57.000You're lighting up the forest, but it's an integral part of the survival of the forest.
00:10:03.000It also helps prevent massive fires because they hit a dead end.
00:10:09.000Yeah, and there's two differences, major differences, between a lightning strike wildfire that occurs in August versus a prescribed burn that occurs in the fall or early in the spring.
00:10:29.000A prescribed burn, the reason that you do them is exactly as you stated.
00:10:34.000It's to actually make better range land.
00:10:42.000Each night, if you're starting a prescribed burn in the morning in October, you get, so you get, you have to actually start it not early in the morning.
00:11:01.000We're talking 6,000 elevation in the mountains.
00:11:05.000So you start the fire in mid-morning once you can get ignition.
00:11:11.000And it burns gently, not massively, and it burns the grasses and gets rid of the invasive species and doesn't kill everything in its path, doesn't kill the seeds that happen in a normal wildfire.
00:11:31.000So the natural grasses have a hard time coming back, and it's only the weeds, the ones that really can survive all conditions that come back.
00:11:41.000So that's why you do it at a certain time during the year.
00:11:54.000This one went beyond their land onto 138 acres of their BLM allotment land.
00:12:04.000I'm sorry to interrupt again, but 138 acres sounds a lot to a city folk.
00:12:08.000This is out of thousands and thousands of acres.
00:12:12.000And many times the BLM will do burns, and they're amateurs, and they'll end up burning hundreds and hundreds of acres of ranchers' land with no repercussions whatsoever.
00:12:25.000Yeah, actually, it's thousands and thousands of acres of ranchers' land.
00:12:31.000And it's not uncommon for these ranchers to have tens of thousands of acres.
00:13:18.000I think it's incredible that anyone can come along and make that arable land, that anyone can take that desert land and turn it into cheeseburgers.
00:13:27.000I mean, we should be revering these people.
00:13:31.000Yeah, actually, the desire to have grass-fed beef, beef that is raised on the land, is a good thing.
00:13:49.000And that's exactly what they were doing, was keeping their own private property grazable.
00:13:57.000And actually, not just grazable for the cows, but for elk and deer and all the other species that live there.
00:14:28.000It went out by itself that next morning.
00:14:30.000Unfortunately, through the night, it had run up a draw, what's called, and burned the 138 acres, again, of their allotment land.
00:14:41.000So it's public land, but they are, it's connected with the deed to their property that they're allowed to, at that time, graze their cattle on this adjacent land.
00:15:50.000And it had started fires all over the mountain.
00:15:53.000Again, conditions are not moist, very dry, very bad for a fire to continue to run and just burn extremely hot.
00:16:05.000and that's what happened in two thousand six well and and i think i had gotten it that was god The ranch had gotten a phone call from a man, Charlie Otley, one of the other ranchers that lives down in Diamond Valley.
00:16:25.000And he had called up and saw smoke behind the Hammonds ranch house where they're at, which is about three miles off the main road, 205, at the base of the mountain.
00:16:36.000And he told them, hey, do you see this smoke up on Moonhill Road up near, or no, I guess it was Crumbo Ridge?
00:16:49.000And he said, well, I think you got a fire going there.
00:16:52.000So Steve called into the BLM to see if they were aware if there was a fire in that area.
00:16:59.000And Carla Bird said no, that she was unaware of that fire.
00:17:06.000And so Steve went up to investigate and realized, oh my gosh, there was a fire that had started from a strike that they didn't know about yet.
00:17:14.000And it was running down towards their winter feed and their home.
00:17:19.000So he started what's called a backburn.
00:17:23.000Again, it's what firefighters do all the time.
00:17:27.000Yeah, that's the dead end I was talking about.
00:17:29.000The fire reaches carbon and it can't go farther.
00:17:34.000So he started, again, a fire on his land and it, in three different spots, it burned up and burned one acre, one acre of allotment land, of what is considered, you know, public land, BLM.
00:17:59.000And then during the indictments and during the trial, the prosecution charged them of, one, Steve burning, and then he had called the BLM after the fact the next day and let him know that he had started that.
00:18:17.000They charged him with that fire of starting it maliciously, as well as a number of other fires on the mountain.
00:18:27.000I mean, that had occurred from the lightning strikes.
00:18:30.000In court testimony, yeah, in court testimony, the prosecution was trying to say that Dwight and Steve during those fires was going, you know, walking up through the area because they'd seen him numerous times lighting all of these fires, additional fires, to burn the mountain.
00:18:53.000And the reason that they were on the mountain was to move their cows so their cows wouldn't be killed because they had, you know, hundreds of heads of cattle on the grazing allotments up there.
00:19:05.000I'm sorry to interrupt again, but we're running out of time here.
00:19:09.000I understand the government's motive here.
00:19:40.000That they were, The motive was that they were frustrated with the slow rate of which you would work with the BLM to do prescribed burns on the allotment land.
00:19:54.000And so Dwight and Steve took it upon themselves to burn the mountain at the worst most possible time and all about their cattle and grazing.
00:20:06.000So they tried to say that it was a personal motive for them to get better grazing.
00:20:12.000But any rancher would know if you did that during that time of year, you're doing in August, you're actually killing the land.
00:20:20.000You're doing way more damage to the land.
00:20:22.000You're ruining your own career, you're ruining your own subsistence.
00:20:30.000But, you know, for people that don't understand those details, you know, it's a reasonable argument if you don't understand, if you don't know the details.
00:20:39.000And there's no rancher, no rancher that would put one, their cattle in harm's way, you know, burn up their, you know, completely burn up their livelihood and or damage their own rangeland.
00:20:54.000I mean, you know, that might have happened in the 40s and 30s and stuff before people understood the science, but that doesn't happen now.
00:21:03.000I mean, it's, you know, that's the stories of the past.
00:21:06.000Yeah, we've done lots of horrible things in the past, but that doesn't happen anymore.
00:21:36.000Well, the original trial judge, unfortunately, well, they were charged with an anti-terrorism statute.
00:21:45.000After Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City building, they had added fire as a part of the statute in the anti-terrorism law so that you could not only be charged with blowing buildings up and killing people, but also arson, that arson connected with it.
00:22:05.000So the feds used that law to charge the Hammonds.
00:22:13.000Not 1855 Timber Set of Fire, not the other federal statutes that they have that they could have charged them that carries a maximum of five years, but they used the one that carries, like the conspiracy charge they charged them with, carries a minimum of 10 years.
00:22:29.000So they were trying to inflict the absolute most pain to this family.
00:22:37.000And so the first trial judge just sentenced, had heard all of the details of the case, had heard all of the details of what the Hammonds lawyers had shown, right?
00:22:53.000All you read in the paper is what the prosecution said, not what the defense information was.
00:23:00.000So he didn't believe that they had done this, but the jury found them guilty on the two counts that they admitted to starting, right?
00:23:11.000And so, and the jury didn't know that this was an anti-terrorism statute because they're not allowed to know that.
00:23:19.000And so they convicted them, and the judge sentenced them to three months for Dwight and one year for Steve.
00:24:29.000I could talk to you for, I feel like we could really get a handle on this if we sat in a hotel conference room for 13 hours with a laser pointer and some maps.
00:24:40.000Yeah, it actually is pretty complicated, and it probably would take at least that amount of time.
00:24:46.000It's a really complicated story, and there's a lot of science to it, and there's a lot of motivation to understand why it doesn't make any reasonable sense to reasonable humans why the Hammonds would have done it the way that the prosecution stated.
00:25:05.000Well, the big picture I get from it is don't have faith in the government.
00:25:11.000Don't assume the authorities know what they're doing and don't be a victim.
00:25:18.000Yeah, a lot of the people that don't be a victim, unfortunately, the laws still don't exist to protect you, and that needs to be changed.
00:25:28.000I mean, there was Walden had the representative in Oregon, he introduced a bill a couple years ago to make it so that the anti-terrorism statute couldn't be used against ranchers anymore, and that died in committee.
00:26:25.000Go in and understand what you're being charged with.
00:26:28.000That was some of the stuff where you have faith in people, but in reality, you really need to understand the statutes and how they apply and what your course might be to help protect yourselves.
00:26:48.000And then, again, the local, you know, was it the local prosecutor, was it the local BLM?
00:27:33.000And that's some of the things that you never really know.
00:27:38.000I know that there had been an ongoing struggle with a man named Forrest Cameron, and he was a part of between him and the BLM, between him and the Hammonds.
00:27:50.000Yeah, and this goes back into the 90s.
00:27:52.000So this wasn't the first time they had locked horns with the BLM.
00:28:18.000Yeah, we had filed the commutation paperwork because you can't file a pardon when the people are still in prison, for folks that don't know.
00:28:28.000You've got executive clemency is the overarching term.
00:28:32.000And then under executive clemency, you have pardon or commutation.
00:28:37.000A pardon, which is what the president granted, actually cannot be applied for while the people are in prison.
00:28:45.000The only thing you can apply for is a commutation, a reduction of sentence.
00:28:54.000And the reason why is that they want to know that people after they get out of prison, you know, don't do anything to harm anybody and have lived good for three years, and then you can file.
00:29:08.000So we filed a commutation with the Obama administration.
00:29:13.000We had completed it in 2012 in August of 2012, and the Bundy trial was going on, and the lawyers advised us not to file it while that was politically charged.
00:29:33.000So we waited and filed in October after the initial trials were over on the Bundy case.
00:29:42.000Then it sat in the queue of with over 8,000 requests for commutation or pardon.
00:29:52.000That's with the U.S. Pardon Attorney's Office.
00:29:56.000So we had talked with different lawyers in D.C. on how if there's any way we could get it to the president's desk back door just so that he could see it.
00:30:12.000And that was when we changed presidents, going from Obama to Trump.
00:30:19.000So they had said, yeah, you possibly can through your congressmen and different people that you might know.
00:30:27.000Well, we know Walden, but there isn't a whole lot of other folks that we know that have private jets and might run in those circles.
00:30:36.000So fortunately, Protect the Harvest, Lucas, Forrest Lucas from Lucas Oil, had been following what was going on with Dwight and Steve and thought that what was happening with them was horrible, had sent notes to the family and called.
00:30:58.000And he has an organization called Protect the Harvest.
00:31:03.000And so through a course of many different iterations, we got connected with Dave Duquette from Protect the Harvest.
00:31:35.000The human ones are sometimes scarier than the other ones.
00:31:41.000So we got it to Dave Duquette, the paperwork, additional background stuff that you can only find if you get onto this thing called PACER, Public Access to Court Records.
00:31:56.000And so we got all of that information to him.
00:32:00.000And he was able instrumental with Walden to get the information, I think, through Zinke and to the vice president's desk.
00:32:12.000And from there, I believe the story I have, and this is just what I think I know, is that Forrest Lucas had called the Vice President's office and got it to the President's desk.
00:32:31.000Well, I don't know him, but I'd like to say thank you.
00:32:37.000That's wonderful and everything, and I'm excited.
00:32:39.000But it also scares me'cause I think, well, not a lot of people know rich guys.
00:32:43.000So, how many ranchers and how many innocent businessmen, innocent farmers are persecuted by the government where someone doesn't know a rich guy and can't get the message to Trump?
00:34:07.000We got to go, but I can't thank you enough for giving us this big picture of the whole thing.
00:34:12.000I don't think this is just about the Hammonds.
00:34:14.000I think this is a really important story that represents all Americans and how dangerous it can be to be under the thumb of big government.
00:34:59.000Now, you are the man behind a wonderful film, American Standoff, that discusses the Hammonds and the standoff they had there with the Bundies.
00:35:10.000I've been talking to a lot of people involved on the Hammonds side, and maybe it's being a New Yorker, but my attitude when I first heard of the Hammonds is, let's do it.
00:35:38.000But that has a lot to do with the history of they had already been dealing with almost 20 years of fighting back and forth with the land management groups that they have to literally live with as their property kind of crosses over into federal land.
00:35:56.000It's kind of like looking at their property is kind of like a puzzle with missing pieces.
00:36:04.000They couldn't buy land that was directly adjacent to theirs, so they bought the patch that was on the other side of federal land.
00:36:12.000The way that federal land is dispersed and then sold is very strange.
00:36:17.000Well, it seems to purposely be made to antagonize the ranchers.
00:36:20.000I remember with the Bundies, they had a certain little peninsula of land that the government owned, and they had to cross that to get to their grazing area, and the government would torture them with taxes and other, and make it difficult for them to get to their cows.
00:36:36.000Sometimes their cows would be stranded on a piece of land that they couldn't even get to.
00:36:40.000That was the Bundies I'm talking about.
00:36:42.000Yeah, no, that's a common experience for the ranchers that have land next to federal grazing land or have permits.
00:36:51.000One example that the Hammonds had, this happened to them many times, is they would have to send a request for just a gate to be opened.
00:37:01.000I mean, and this is just an aluminum gate, and it had to have a specific date, and then there would be a bunch of confusion when they bring like 3,000 cows to that gate, and no one was there to open it.
00:37:16.000And they would open it themselves after standing there for a while.
00:37:19.000And then they would receive harsh criticism from the BLM land managers there.
00:37:31.000And they would just say, well, where was the ranger to open the gate?
00:37:35.000And they would, you know, it was, it's the kind of bureaucracy that like we as normal people don't encounter.
00:37:42.000It would be like every time you leave your driveway to drive to work, you'd be stopped by the officer on the corner and he'd say, like, what are you doing?
00:37:51.000After years of that, you would be antagonized.
00:37:55.000And I actually feel that's what happened with the Hammonds.
00:38:00.000You know, not to be hyperbolic, but it kind of reminds me of South Africa in the sense that the government, and this is obviously a very exaggerated example, but the government is tormenting the citizens.
00:38:12.000And what I get from the citizens sometimes is kind of, I don't know what the word is, but this sort of beaten down acquiescence where they say, all right, no, no, no, we'll do our time.
00:38:24.000I sound like I'm criticizing the Hammonds and calling them wimps.
00:38:28.000But there's the Bundy attitude where you go, it's on, government.
00:38:31.000And then there's the Hammond attitude, which is more like the Boer farmer, the South African farmer that's just like, well, we'll do our best.
00:38:38.000We'll file a grievance and we'll try to make this work.
00:38:44.000Well, like, a stable person will try to work through the avenues of against the authority, right?
00:38:53.000And that's kind of what this, when I look back at what this is, this is like a clash of cultures.
00:38:59.000That's The idea behind the film, right?
00:39:01.000American standoff does not specifically mean the standoff at the Malher Refuge.
00:39:08.000It means there's an American standoff of cultures.
00:39:11.000Well, now, you know, two years out since we've done the film, that contrast of cultures and its standoff is everywhere.
00:39:21.000But in this case of the film, it was the authoritative or the authoritarian, that's really kind of what it is, the authorities that control the land versus this other culture of ranchers, right?
00:44:07.000Sorry to interrupt, but it's quite possible that this standoff helped the publicity, helped it get it to that rich guy, helped it get it to Trump's desk, helped them get pardoned.
00:44:17.000I'm a big believer in getting the word out.
00:44:24.000I think they somehow, I mean, think how incredible this is.
00:44:29.000They broke through the traditional media, which had kind of already made up its mind mostly on that they were all just crazy and probably crazy Mormons.
00:44:44.000That same media that's so fair with other groups that maybe don't even deserve it, we're so excited to go to find the worst thing about people that just live in the middle of nowhere and ranch.
00:45:00.000Well, I think it's like some sort of anti-white, anti-American, anti-cowboy culture that goes back to some bullshit from the 1940s or something.
00:45:13.000It's a problem with the left and the American psyche in general, where we don't respect the flyover countries.
00:45:30.000You have this biggest Antifa community in the country, and they have two people who were falsely accused of terrorism and thrown in jail for fighting the government.
00:45:40.000But Antifa doesn't care because they don't look right.
00:45:42.000They have cowboy hats, and that doesn't fit the part.
00:45:45.000And you realize this is just fashion to most people, and they don't really care about justice.
00:45:52.000Yeah, I mean, how do you know where to start?
00:45:59.000I want to thank you for doing that movie because it's really important that people recognize that there are victims out there that are not on the front page of the newspaper, and the government is tormenting its own citizens with reckless abandon, and for the most part, getting away with it.
00:46:19.000Yeah, I mean, I think if people want to watch the film, can I say where they can find it?