Get Off My Lawn - Gavin McInnes - July 12, 2018


Ep 155 | Jolly Ranchers | Get Off My Lawn


Episode Stats


Length

47 minutes

Words per minute

142.7244

Word count

6,758

Sentence count

494

Harmful content

Misogyny

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

13

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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

Transcripts from "Get Off My Lawn - Gavin McInnes" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:41.000 That's that Kid Rock song where he goes, I wanna be a cowboy.
00:00:45.000 I was into Kid Rock before anybody.
00:00:47.000 I was into Kid Rock in the early 90s when he was a rapper with a huge kid and play hairdo.
00:00:54.000 And he was in the Beastie Boys magazine Grand Player.
00:00:58.000 What the hell was that called?
00:00:59.000 Casino Royale, Grand Royal?
00:01:01.000 Yeah, that was it.
00:01:04.000 We got a special show for you today.
00:01:06.000 So the Hammond family was just pardoned.
00:01:09.000 That was Dwight and Steve Hammond.
00:01:10.000 They were ranchers who were accused of arson, what?
00:01:15.000 By the Bureau of Land Management.
00:01:17.000 The government terrorized these men, called them terrorists, ironically.
00:01:22.000 And I personally think Obama said when these guys were arrested and the Bundies showed up to have a standoff. 0.89
00:01:30.000 Sorry, I'm jumping ahead.
00:01:31.000 So a long time ago, the Hammond family, these are some ranchers in Oregon, they light brush fires.
00:01:38.000 That's what ranchers do. 1.00
00:01:40.000 This goes on and on, and the government hates them because the government wants that land, because the government says it's valuable.
00:01:47.000 It has water, and it's in a desert.
00:01:49.000 It's valuable land.
00:01:50.000 And the government has been torturing ranchers all over the country.
00:01:54.000 We remember the Bundy standoff, right?
00:01:56.000 The Bundy was the last family in that area.
00:01:58.000 They had squeezed dozens of rancher families to death out of that area and just taken it for themselves.
00:02:05.000 And they do a worse job than the ranchers do of preserving the land.
00:02:10.000 Everyone, the city folk are so apathetic about this.
00:02:15.000 And we're all ingrates.
00:02:17.000 These people make our cheeseburgers.
00:02:18.000 Cheeseburger is the best thing in the world.
00:02:21.000 I didn't say a cheeseburger.
00:02:22.000 Cheeseburgers, the whole cheeseburger as a concept is the greatest American thing ever outside of freedom and liberty.
00:02:30.000 And we let the government bully these people and arrest them and throw them in jail.
00:02:34.000 Anyway, there was the Bundy standoff, then there was the Hammonds.
00:02:36.000 Hammonds thrown in jail for lighting fires, which were mandatory fires you have to do as a rancher.
00:02:42.000 They were sentenced.
00:02:43.000 They went to prison.
00:02:45.000 And the Bundies went over from Nevada to Oregon and said, let's have a standoff. 0.96
00:02:51.000 I believe, now this is just my theory, that Obama said to the higher-ups at the feds, I don't want this standoff to be a thing.
00:02:59.000 I didn't like the way it went with the Bundies because they won. 0.98
00:03:01.000 You'll notice Occupy Wall Street and all these kids, they go somewhere and they stand and they say, I hate cops.
00:03:07.000 And they get pepper sprayed and they get beat up and they get sent home.
00:03:10.000 When the Bundies have a standoff, they have guns and they say, we don't approve of this tyranny.
00:03:18.000 And Obama goes, all right, well, we'll get out of here then.
00:03:22.000 So Obama had egg on his face after the Bundy Ranch thing.
00:03:27.000 So when the Oregon thing happened, he said, make sure that I don't get egg on my face and I don't care.
00:03:32.000 Well, I'm not going to say anything.
00:03:33.000 But if a-huh-huh was to phnie phnie in the and maybe huh, then I'm not going to be up all night worrying about it if you follow me, feds.
00:03:44.000 And so we had Lavoy Finnecum, who was part of the Hammond standoff, which was a very reluctant standoff.
00:03:51.000 The Hammonds are not standoff-y people.
00:03:53.000 They are very quiet Christian ranchers, not like the Bundies. 1.00
00:03:58.000 And so I don't think they were that enthusiastic about the whole standoff.
00:04:02.000 But anyway, they had the standoff.
00:04:07.000 The feds were there.
00:04:08.000 It looked like it was over.
00:04:08.000 Lavoy 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.
00:04:15.000 Feds shot him dead.
00:04:16.000 Lavoie 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. 0.99
00:04:26.000 They want it to be a black kid. 0.67
00:04:28.000 They want Trayvon, not Lavoie.
00:04:31.000 So what we have on the show, I'm going to devote the entire show to this pardon because it's a big deal.
00:04:39.000 It'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.
00:04:47.000 And Trump just pardoned them.
00:04:50.000 It's not just about that.
00:04:52.000 It's about standing up to the government and winning.
00:04:56.000 And 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.
00:05:06.000 Inevitably, you have to have a president.
00:05:07.000 Don't you want the most anti-politician president you can get?
00:05:11.000 Where are the anarchists?
00:05:13.000 Where are the rebels?
00:05:15.000 Where are the kids who think they're tough and they want to break the rules when it comes to stuff like this?
00:05:21.000 This is fighting the man.
00:05:24.000 Anyway, I have Ruth Danielson coming on the show, right?
00:05:28.000 That's her name.
00:05:29.000 I know her as Ruthie.
00:05:30.000 I got Ruth Danielson on the show, and she is an incredible human being who, yeah, Ruth Danielson.
00:05:40.000 And then I have Josh Turnbau.
00:05:41.000 Now, Ruth Danielson, Ruthie, she always talks about humans all the time.
00:05:45.000 She's like obsessed with animals. 0.99
00:05:46.000 I don't think she's a big fan of humans in general.
00:05:48.000 Or I think she just sees them as yet another animal.
00:05:51.000 And she bought land from the Hammonds and has been deeply, deeply involved in this from the beginning.
00:05:58.000 I personally believe that she is responsible for this pardon.
00:06:02.000 I think that it was her enthusiasm and her passion that kept this in the limelight and got it to Trump.
00:06:10.000 It's a phone call we have with her.
00:06:11.000 And usually for phone calls, because this is TV, I like to keep it to five minutes.
00:06:15.000 I let her take over the entire show. 1.00
00:06:18.000 We'll just show footage of other stuff while she talks and we'll have me nodding.
00:06:22.000 And then I have Josh Turnbow, who did a brilliant film that you can find.
00:06:25.000 It's been stolen a million times all over YouTube.
00:06:27.000 It's called American Standoff.
00:06:29.000 And it Documents the entire story I just told you, including the death of Lavoie.
00:06:35.000 And 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.
00:06:44.000 Now, it doesn't end with them being pardoned because this just happened yesterday.
00:06:48.000 So we'll talk to Josh at the end of the show.
00:06:50.000 But 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.
00:07:14.000 Ruthie, are you there?
00:07:17.000 Yes, I am.
00:07:17.000 Good morning.
00:07:18.000 Good morning to you.
00:07:19.000 Now, you are sort of known as the lady the call when we're talking about the Hammond case, the ranchers over there in Oregon.
00:07:29.000 And 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.
00:07:42.000 I don't know about that, but okay.
00:07:45.000 What happened?
00:07:45.000 Yeah, I've done quite a bit of research.
00:07:49.000 What happened, starting with the incarceration?
00:08:13.000 Yeah, that's correct.
00:08:17.000 The original indictment that the Hammonds received in 2010 had 22 counts.
00:08:25.000 It included fires that had occurred in the Steens Mountain area, in their ranching area, back 20 years, over 20 years.
00:08:38.000 And so they were indicted on those counts.
00:08:42.000 And then the superseding indictment, the one that they actually went to trial over, was dropped down to nine counts.
00:08:52.000 The first count being a fire that had occurred in 2001 in October.
00:09:00.000 That 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.
00:09:22.000 The BLM had a prescribed burn going on at the same time to the south, and he could see the smoke.
00:09:28.000 It happened to also be the second day, I believe, of hunting season.
00:09:35.000 And so they had hunted that morning.
00:09:38.000 They were done with the hunts.
00:09:41.000 all headed back, and they got the okay from the BLM to go ahead and do the prescribed burn, which they did.
00:09:49.000 And just to start to interrupt you, but...
00:09:57.000 You're lighting up the forest, but it's an integral part of the survival of the forest.
00:10:03.000 It also helps prevent massive fires because they hit a dead end.
00:10:09.000 Yeah, 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.
00:10:29.000 A prescribed burn, the reason that you do them is exactly as you stated.
00:10:34.000 It's to actually make better range land.
00:10:39.000 It doesn't burn as hot.
00:10:42.000 Each 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.
00:10:53.000 The grass won't burn.
00:10:54.000 It's too wet.
00:10:55.000 There's too much moisture in the air that time of year, especially at these elevations.
00:10:59.000 We're not talking sea level.
00:11:01.000 We're talking 6,000 elevation in the mountains.
00:11:05.000 So you start the fire in mid-morning once you can get ignition.
00:11:11.000 And 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.
00:11:28.000 It kills everything.
00:11:29.000 It kills the soil.
00:11:31.000 So 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.
00:11:41.000 So that's why you do it at a certain time during the year.
00:11:43.000 So that's exactly what they did.
00:11:45.000 It burned their property that day.
00:11:48.000 And unfortunately, that night, usually fires will lay down.
00:11:53.000 They'll actually go out.
00:11:54.000 This one went beyond their land onto 138 acres of their BLM allotment land.
00:12:04.000 I'm sorry to interrupt again, but 138 acres sounds a lot to a city folk.
00:12:08.000 This is out of thousands and thousands of acres.
00:12:12.000 And 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.
00:12:25.000 Yeah, actually, it's thousands and thousands of acres of ranchers' land.
00:12:31.000 And it's not uncommon for these ranchers to have tens of thousands of acres.
00:12:39.000 So yeah, it does seem like a lot.
00:12:42.000 For example, I own a property up there on the mountain right adjacent to where all this took place, and I have 172 acres.
00:12:51.000 Again, that's just a little eety, teeny tiny speck compared to the area.
00:12:58.000 And there's no Other humans, there's no other structures.
00:13:03.000 It's not forest, it's high desert.
00:13:06.000 So you have a combination of sagebrush, juniper, and mountain mahogany that is in the area.
00:13:14.000 It's wide open spaces like you see in the movies.
00:13:16.000 I mean, it's just wide open spaces.
00:13:18.000 I 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.
00:13:27.000 I mean, we should be revering these people.
00:13:31.000 Yeah, actually, the desire to have grass-fed beef, beef that is raised on the land, is a good thing.
00:13:49.000 And that's exactly what they were doing, was keeping their own private property grazable.
00:13:57.000 And actually, not just grazable for the cows, but for elk and deer and all the other species that live there.
00:14:06.000 Yeah, it just makes the land better.
00:14:08.000 And so it's been a process that's been used by the ranchers for many, many, many, many, many years.
00:14:17.000 And it works.
00:14:18.000 So it burned onto the BLM land, and the fire went out by itself.
00:14:23.000 There was no firefighting.
00:14:25.000 There was no anything that happened.
00:14:28.000 It went out by itself that next morning.
00:14:30.000 Unfortunately, through the night, it had run up a draw, what's called, and burned the 138 acres, again, of their allotment land.
00:14:41.000 So 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.
00:14:54.000 I see.
00:14:54.000 Anyway.
00:14:55.000 So they get arrested for that, thrown in jail.
00:15:00.000 Well, they, yeah, so that happened in 2001.
00:15:04.000 Then there was, so the indictment included the fire back over 10 years before, right?
00:15:11.000 So the indictment came in 2010.
00:15:13.000 So it was just after 10 years, they can't file against them.
00:15:18.000 So they actually filed before the 10-year was up on this 2001 fire.
00:15:25.000 Then there were fires that occurred in 2006.
00:15:31.000 And the 2006 fires happened in the summertime, and it was really, really hot, not when you want fires.
00:15:42.000 And there had been a massive lightning storm.
00:15:44.000 It was absolutely terrifying on the mountain.
00:15:46.000 I mean, there was, you know, over a thousand lightning strikes.
00:15:49.000 It was really, really scary.
00:15:50.000 And it had started fires all over the mountain.
00:15:53.000 Again, conditions are not moist, very dry, very bad for a fire to continue to run and just burn extremely hot.
00:16:05.000 and 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.
00:16:25.000 And 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.
00:16:36.000 And he told them, hey, do you see this smoke up on Moonhill Road up near, or no, I guess it was Crumbo Ridge?
00:16:45.000 And they said, no.
00:16:47.000 And so we hadn't.
00:16:49.000 And he said, well, I think you got a fire going there.
00:16:52.000 So Steve called into the BLM to see if they were aware if there was a fire in that area.
00:16:59.000 And Carla Bird said no, that she was unaware of that fire. 0.68
00:17:06.000 And 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.
00:17:14.000 And it was running down towards their winter feed and their home.
00:17:19.000 So he started what's called a backburn.
00:17:23.000 Again, it's what firefighters do all the time.
00:17:27.000 Yeah, that's the dead end I was talking about.
00:17:29.000 The fire reaches carbon and it can't go farther.
00:17:33.000 That's correct.
00:17:34.000 So 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.
00:17:54.000 But again, their allotment land.
00:17:57.000 And that's it.
00:17:58.000 It went out.
00:17:59.000 And 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.
00:18:17.000 They charged him with that fire of starting it maliciously, as well as a number of other fires on the mountain.
00:18:27.000 I mean, that had occurred from the lightning strikes.
00:18:30.000 In 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.
00:18:53.000 And 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.
00:19:05.000 I'm sorry to interrupt again, but we're running out of time here.
00:19:09.000 I understand the government's motive here.
00:19:11.000 The ranchers have valuable land.
00:19:15.000 The Bundies have their case. 0.79
00:19:17.000 In this case, I think we were talking earlier, it's about water in a place that's a desert.
00:19:24.000 But what I don't understand is what's the government's argument for the ranchers' motive?
00:19:31.000 They're just vandals?
00:19:32.000 They just love seeing stuff burn?
00:19:34.000 It's a father-son arson team?
00:19:37.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:19:40.000 That 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.
00:19:54.000 And 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.
00:20:06.000 So they tried to say that it was a personal motive for them to get better grazing.
00:20:12.000 But any rancher would know if you did that during that time of year, you're doing in August, you're actually killing the land.
00:20:20.000 You're doing way more damage to the land.
00:20:22.000 You're ruining your own career, you're ruining your own subsistence.
00:20:27.000 That's correct.
00:20:28.000 That's correct.
00:20:28.000 So that was ludicrous.
00:20:30.000 But, 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.
00:20:39.000 And 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.
00:20:54.000 I 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.
00:21:03.000 I mean, it's, you know, that's the stories of the past.
00:21:06.000 Yeah, we've done lots of horrible things in the past, but that doesn't happen anymore.
00:21:11.000 No, it's just so illogical.
00:21:13.000 And that's why I'm so frustrated by the general apathy you get from people who aren't directly involved.
00:21:18.000 They have this sort of like, well, shouldn't break the law.
00:21:21.000 If you don't like going to jail, then's the break.
00:21:23.000 Sorry, Hammonds.
00:21:25.000 And then you say, okay, okay.
00:21:26.000 What about the part where they serve their time, they're released, and then the government went, actually, I changed my mind.
00:21:31.000 You didn't finish your sentence.
00:21:33.000 And dragged them back into prison.
00:21:35.000 And they go, right.
00:21:36.000 Well, the original trial judge, unfortunately, well, they were charged with an anti-terrorism statute.
00:21:45.000 After 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.
00:22:05.000 So the feds used that law to charge the Hammonds. 0.72
00:22:13.000 Not 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.
00:22:29.000 So they were trying to inflict the absolute most pain to this family.
00:22:37.000 And 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?
00:22:53.000 All you read in the paper is what the prosecution said, not what the defense information was.
00:23:00.000 So 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?
00:23:11.000 And so, and the jury didn't know that this was an anti-terrorism statute because they're not allowed to know that.
00:23:19.000 And so they convicted them, and the judge sentenced them to three months for Dwight and one year for Steve.
00:23:27.000 And they served their sentence.
00:23:29.000 And the federal prosecutors came back and said the judge does not have the, can't do that.
00:23:35.000 He has to apply the mandatory minimum in this case.
00:23:39.000 And the judge.
00:23:41.000 Wasn't the judge.
00:23:42.000 Yes.
00:23:43.000 Yeah, he hated having to do this.
00:23:46.000 Right.
00:23:46.000 It would shock the conscience.
00:23:48.000 Yeah, that was.
00:23:49.000 Some of his.
00:23:50.000 Shocks the conscience was his quote during sentencing.
00:23:54.000 And so he used cruel and the Eighth Amendment, cruel and unusual punishment as his justification for not applying the mandatory minimum.
00:24:05.000 He just, you know, there was no harm done.
00:24:08.000 The BLM witnesses that were cross-examined said there was absolutely no damage done to the land at all.
00:24:20.000 It actually made it better.
00:24:22.000 So, yeah, so it is unbelievable.
00:24:26.000 Thank God that they were released.
00:24:28.000 We're out of time.
00:24:29.000 I 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.
00:24:40.000 Yeah, it actually is pretty complicated, and it probably would take at least that amount of time.
00:24:46.000 It'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.
00:25:05.000 Well, the big picture I get from it is don't have faith in the government.
00:25:11.000 Don't assume the authorities know what they're doing and don't be a victim.
00:25:18.000 Yeah, 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.
00:25:28.000 I 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.
00:25:47.000 So this could happen again.
00:25:50.000 It isn't that, at least my personal opinion is, it isn't that the, you've got to look at the individuals in the individual area.
00:25:59.000 When I said don't be a victim, I kind of regretted that as it came out of my mouth.
00:26:03.000 I'm making Dwight and Steve look like wimps.
00:26:07.000 I meant, generally overall, we have to fight these kind of cases, but I'm not saying that they could have done better.
00:26:16.000 Yeah, that's correct.
00:26:17.000 And not only fight, but you need to do your own research.
00:26:20.000 You have to be suspect of stuff that you read.
00:26:24.000 You know, understand the law.
00:26:25.000 Go in and understand what you're being charged with.
00:26:28.000 That 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.
00:26:48.000 And then, again, the local, you know, was it the local prosecutor, was it the local BLM?
00:26:54.000 Was it the BLM out of Portland?
00:26:56.000 I mean, why, who wanted to push this so hard and continue to push it?
00:27:04.000 Because remember, not only was there a criminal case, there was a civil one.
00:27:09.000 Yeah, they wanted to name it.
00:27:10.000 What particular bureaucrat can I name?
00:27:14.000 Well, unfortunately, I don't personally know who within the BLM was pushing this so hard.
00:27:24.000 I know Papagne was the lead prosecutor.
00:27:30.000 I just don't know.
00:27:32.000 Was it the Portland office?
00:27:33.000 And that's some of the things that you never really know.
00:27:38.000 I 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.
00:27:50.000 Yeah, and this goes back into the 90s.
00:27:52.000 So this wasn't the first time they had locked horns with the BLM.
00:27:57.000 This just was the last time so far.
00:28:01.000 I was so excited yesterday when we heard that they were pardoned.
00:28:04.000 I was shocked.
00:28:04.000 I'd almost forgotten about the case, out of sight, out of mind.
00:28:08.000 But the way it got to Trump was incredibly complicated and lucky, right?
00:28:16.000 Oh, yeah.
00:28:17.000 Oh, baby.
00:28:18.000 Yeah, 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.
00:28:28.000 You've got executive clemency is the overarching term.
00:28:32.000 And then under executive clemency, you have pardon or commutation.
00:28:37.000 A pardon, which is what the president granted, actually cannot be applied for while the people are in prison.
00:28:45.000 The only thing you can apply for is a commutation, a reduction of sentence.
00:28:51.000 So we filed the commutation.
00:28:54.000 And 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.
00:29:08.000 So we filed a commutation with the Obama administration.
00:29:13.000 We 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.
00:29:33.000 So we waited and filed in October after the initial trials were over on the Bundy case.
00:29:42.000 Then it sat in the queue of with over 8,000 requests for commutation or pardon.
00:29:52.000 That's with the U.S. Pardon Attorney's Office.
00:29:56.000 So 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.
00:30:12.000 And that was when we changed presidents, going from Obama to Trump.
00:30:19.000 So they had said, yeah, you possibly can through your congressmen and different people that you might know.
00:30:27.000 Well, 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.
00:30:36.000 So 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.
00:30:58.000 And he has an organization called Protect the Harvest.
00:31:03.000 And so through a course of many different iterations, we got connected with Dave Duquette from Protect the Harvest.
00:31:13.000 And they're politically connected.
00:31:16.000 They know the humans that you need to talk to.
00:31:19.000 And they were.
00:31:21.000 You sound like an alien when you say humans.
00:31:25.000 Well, I don't know.
00:31:28.000 Just a term I've used for years and years.
00:31:30.000 We're just another animal on the range.
00:31:33.000 That's correct.
00:31:35.000 The human ones are sometimes scarier than the other ones. 0.98
00:31:41.000 So 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.
00:31:56.000 And so we got all of that information to him.
00:32:00.000 And he was able instrumental with Walden to get the information, I think, through Zinke and to the vice president's desk.
00:32:12.000 And 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.
00:32:28.000 So you knew a rich guy.
00:32:29.000 You met a rich guy.
00:32:31.000 Well, I don't know him, but I'd like to say thank you.
00:32:37.000 That's wonderful and everything, and I'm excited.
00:32:39.000 But it also scares me'cause I think, well, not a lot of people know rich guys.
00:32:43.000 So, 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?
00:32:55.000 That's correct.
00:32:56.000 And that's a horrible, you know, that's a horrible reality of our system and of how things work.
00:33:10.000 So we just don't give up, I guess.
00:33:13.000 I mean, people got really dejected and you're in a queue of 8,000 and you've got a 76-year-old man who's in a federal prison.
00:33:24.000 You know, it's for something that he does not deserve to be, absolutely.
00:33:32.000 And what is your recourse?
00:33:34.000 So, you know, just don't give up.
00:33:38.000 And yeah, I don't know what the answer to that is.
00:33:41.000 It's unfortunate part of our reality.
00:33:44.000 Well, Ruthie, I think you should be under arrest for being too interesting.
00:33:49.000 This interview was only supposed to be five minutes long, and we've gone 25 minutes over.
00:33:56.000 Oh, you might go ahead and whack me off on the chopping board.
00:34:00.000 You know, it's all gold.
00:34:02.000 That's the problem.
00:34:04.000 There's no edits to be made.
00:34:05.000 It's all crucial information.
00:34:07.000 We got to go, but I can't thank you enough for giving us this big picture of the whole thing.
00:34:12.000 I don't think this is just about the Hammonds.
00:34:14.000 I 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.
00:34:24.000 Yes.
00:34:24.000 Well, yeah, and local bureaucrats that aren't voted in position that hold positions of power and how they wield that power.
00:34:34.000 It's amazing what they can do to our lives.
00:34:40.000 Yeah, some of the bad humans.
00:34:41.000 Bad humans versus good humans.
00:34:43.000 That's the new name of my show.
00:34:44.000 There you go.
00:34:46.000 Okay.
00:34:47.000 All right, Ruthie, thank you so much for coming on.
00:34:50.000 Oh, you're more than welcome.
00:34:52.000 Bye.
00:34:56.000 Josh, are you there, sir?
00:34:58.000 I'm here.
00:34:59.000 Now, you are the man behind a wonderful film, American Standoff, that discusses the Hammonds and the standoff they had there with the Bundies.
00:35:10.000 I'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.
00:35:19.000 Let's have a brawl. 0.99
00:35:20.000 Let's fight.
00:35:21.000 I don't know why I'm doing a southern accent for a New Yorker, but I immediately wanted to fight.
00:35:28.000 But I got the impression that the Hammonds weren't that excited about having the Bundies come by and turn this into a standoff.
00:35:36.000 No, they weren't.
00:35:38.000 But 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.
00:35:56.000 It's kind of like looking at their property is kind of like a puzzle with missing pieces.
00:36:04.000 They couldn't buy land that was directly adjacent to theirs, so they bought the patch that was on the other side of federal land.
00:36:12.000 The way that federal land is dispersed and then sold is very strange.
00:36:17.000 Well, it seems to purposely be made to antagonize the ranchers.
00:36:20.000 I 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.
00:36:36.000 Sometimes their cows would be stranded on a piece of land that they couldn't even get to.
00:36:40.000 That was the Bundies I'm talking about. 0.99
00:36:42.000 Yeah, no, that's a common experience for the ranchers that have land next to federal grazing land or have permits.
00:36:51.000 One 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.
00:37:01.000 I 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.
00:37:16.000 And they would open it themselves after standing there for a while.
00:37:19.000 And then they would receive harsh criticism from the BLM land managers there.
00:37:31.000 And they would just say, well, where was the ranger to open the gate?
00:37:35.000 And they would, you know, it was, it's the kind of bureaucracy that like we as normal people don't encounter.
00:37:42.000 It 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?
00:37:51.000 After years of that, you would be antagonized.
00:37:55.000 And I actually feel that's what happened with the Hammonds.
00:37:58.000 I think they were antagonized.
00:37:59.000 Yeah, I agree.
00:38:00.000 You 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.
00:38:12.000 And 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.
00:38:24.000 I sound like I'm criticizing the Hammonds and calling them wimps.
00:38:27.000 I don't want to do that.
00:38:28.000 But there's the Bundy attitude where you go, it's on, government.
00:38:31.000 And 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. 0.52
00:38:38.000 We'll file a grievance and we'll try to make this work.
00:38:40.000 And I'm not sure which one is right.
00:38:43.000 Sure.
00:38:44.000 Well, like, a stable person will try to work through the avenues of against the authority, right?
00:38:53.000 And that's kind of what this, when I look back at what this is, this is like a clash of cultures.
00:38:59.000 That's The idea behind the film, right?
00:39:01.000 American standoff does not specifically mean the standoff at the Malher Refuge.
00:39:08.000 It means there's an American standoff of cultures. 0.57
00:39:11.000 Well, now, you know, two years out since we've done the film, that contrast of cultures and its standoff is everywhere.
00:39:21.000 But 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?
00:39:36.000 They're naturally in conflict.
00:39:38.000 It's just, I would say by design, but I don't think it's that.
00:39:44.000 It's just the basics of when you have the control and someone else is always naturally in your way.
00:39:54.000 I think even the BLM people, not all of them can be horrible people. 0.95
00:39:58.000 That's not possible.
00:39:59.000 They were always frustrated because their job was to do something that was almost counter to what the ranchers are doing.
00:40:08.000 The difference is, is that they're supported by a government that literally has endless funds.
00:40:16.000 And ranchers don't have that, right?
00:40:18.000 They have their own reliance and their own back.
00:40:22.000 And if they don't have that, they go out of business.
00:40:25.000 The Bundies are the last family left in that area. 0.57
00:40:28.000 The government just squeezed and squeezed all the other ranchers until they went bankrupt or were bought out.
00:40:36.000 Yeah, and there's an attitude of a lot of people.
00:40:41.000 They'll tell you, these land conservation folks, they'll say, it would be better if there were not ranchers.
00:40:51.000 Well, some will admit that.
00:40:52.000 They'd say, no, that's like, we don't need it.
00:40:56.000 Cattle grown in the United States is a waste of money.
00:41:00.000 We can just import it.
00:41:02.000 I actually was told this by a professor, in fact, of land management.
00:41:08.000 And we don't need it.
00:41:10.000 And let's get our public lands back to the people.
00:41:16.000 The irony of that is like you go to a place like Harney County, and it's so massive.
00:41:21.000 You can drive for hours and there's nothing out there.
00:41:25.000 And like that's peaceful and serene, but you can't fault people for saying, hey, can I do something with this land?
00:41:33.000 And you're limited.
00:41:35.000 And they vastly improve the land.
00:41:37.000 It's not like the ranchers are parasites.
00:41:40.000 If you look at ranchers land and BLM land, the ranching land is always vastly superior.
00:41:45.000 It's more diverse.
00:41:47.000 It thrives.
00:41:48.000 Whereas the government land is desolate.
00:41:52.000 Okay, this is like a philosophical development question, right, for humans existing, too, on the earth.
00:42:00.000 What are you supposed to do as a person?
00:42:02.000 You tame the land.
00:42:03.000 We've always done it.
00:42:05.000 People that live in cities love to criticize a rancher, but they're literally standing on the most tamed land on the planet, right?
00:42:15.000 New York is concrete.
00:42:17.000 It's even underground.
00:42:19.000 It's tunnels.
00:42:20.000 Sure, there's a park, but that's the epitome of tamed land, you know, civilization.
00:42:28.000 Well, Ruthie likes to call us humans all the time.
00:42:31.000 And she's got a point in that we are part of nature.
00:42:37.000 And I do think we improve nature.
00:42:38.000 And I think that's part of God's plan.
00:42:41.000 And to just pull us out and play God.
00:42:43.000 That's what these bureaucrats are doing. 1.00
00:42:45.000 They're playing God.
00:42:46.000 And it's much more unnatural than letting these guys make us cheeseburgers.
00:42:53.000 And by the way, I don't want to import my cheeseburgers.
00:42:55.000 I want my cheeseburgers made in America.
00:42:59.000 Yeah, playing God is, that's an academic's favorite thing to do, right?
00:43:04.000 Yes.
00:43:06.000 They do it a lot.
00:43:08.000 How do you feel about the Bundies?
00:43:09.000 Do you think they should have gotten involved?
00:43:11.000 Do you think it was good or bad?
00:43:16.000 I think where they live, their people of action, and clearly Cliven, Clivin is, he's like an old soul in America, right?
00:43:28.000 He's just a hard-headed guy.
00:43:30.000 He's like, I'm going to do what I know is right, and I'll even go to jail for it.
00:43:36.000 Very few people have that kind of conviction for anything nowadays.
00:43:40.000 You know what I mean?
00:43:41.000 We just all like, oh, let's just find the middle ground.
00:43:44.000 Let's just all work together.
00:43:46.000 And that's always a formula for inaction and nothing ever changing.
00:43:52.000 So I think that they made some crazy moves, but I think they believe it.
00:43:58.000 I don't think their motivation is, you know, their motivation is not to control other people.
00:44:03.000 They just want to live.
00:44:06.000 Well, it's quite possible.
00:44:07.000 Sorry 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.
00:44:17.000 I'm a big believer in getting the word out.
00:44:20.000 Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
00:44:22.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:44:22.000 No, absolutely.
00:44:24.000 I think they somehow, I mean, think how incredible this is.
00:44:29.000 They 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. 0.94
00:44:41.000 There was all these added things.
00:44:44.000 That 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.
00:45:00.000 Well, 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.
00:45:13.000 It's a problem with the left and the American psyche in general, where we don't respect the flyover countries.
00:45:19.000 We don't respect farmers.
00:45:21.000 We don't respect the people that bust their asses to provide us with food.
00:45:25.000 And it's just a really bad ingrate mentality.
00:45:28.000 And you've got Portland, Oregon.
00:45:30.000 You 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.
00:45:40.000 But Antifa doesn't care because they don't look right.
00:45:42.000 They have cowboy hats, and that doesn't fit the part.
00:45:45.000 And you realize this is just fashion to most people, and they don't really care about justice.
00:45:52.000 Yeah, I mean, how do you know where to start?
00:45:53.000 Portland is an interesting place.
00:45:56.000 Yeah.
00:45:56.000 It's a loony bin.
00:45:58.000 Well, Josh, we're out of time.
00:45:59.000 I 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.
00:46:19.000 Yeah, I mean, I think if people want to watch the film, can I say where they can find it?
00:46:24.000 Yes, please, please.
00:46:25.000 Yes, so it's still on.
00:46:26.000 It's on DirecTV.
00:46:28.000 It's on DirecTV now.
00:46:29.000 You can always get a free trial of DirecTV now.
00:46:33.000 It's called American Standoff.
00:46:34.000 And we may be working to change the ending or just add the new story elements.
00:46:43.000 I think the Hammonds are genuinely normal and good people.
00:46:47.000 I don't think they're bad folks.
00:46:48.000 So I'm really, really thrilled that the best scenarios happened for them.
00:46:53.000 Yeah, they're good humans.
00:46:56.000 As Ruthie would say.
00:46:57.000 Thanks, Josh.
00:46:58.000 Thanks, Gavin.
00:47:03.000 So what's the moral of the story?
00:47:05.000 The moral of the story here is don't let people tread on you.
00:47:11.000 Don't let anyone tread on you.
00:47:13.000 Not the system, not the government, not the feds.
00:47:17.000 No one.
00:47:18.000 America was built on people standing up for themselves.