Exclusive: Back in good LDS standing, Ammon Bundy talks about his life in Utah as a wanted man

Note to readers • This is the first of a two-part series from an interview with Ammon Bundy, who is wanted in Idaho and living in Utah.

Cedar City • For a wanted man, supposedly hiding from police, Ammon Bundy isn’t all that difficult to find these days.

On a snowy March morning in southern Utah, the 49-year-old fugitive emerged from behind his pickup truck sporting his trademark beard and cowboy hat. Despite being on the run from Idaho police after fleeing trial on a contempt of court charge and on the hook for part of a $52.5 million judgment, he is surprisingly relaxed and blithely unconcerned about the ever-looming threat of arrest.

“I’ve been doing [this] for a long, long time,” Bundy said matter-of-factly. “I’m not running at all. I don’t even have the location-share off on my phone. They can find me any time they want.”

A longtime figurehead of the militia, anti-federal government movement in the West, Bundy rose to prominence when he joined his father, rancher Cliven Bundy, and hundreds of supporters in an armed standoff with agents from the Bureau of Land Management in 2014. For decades, the elder Bundy refused to pay fees to graze his cows on public lands and, in 2014, the agency moved to corral the cattle. Eventually, the government relented and released the Bundy family’s cows.

Two years later, Bundy led a monthlong occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural Oregon in an attempt to force the government to hand over the land to area ranchers. Weeks into the standoff, one of the occupiers was shot dead by police, while Bundy and several others were arrested for their role in the takeover.

Now, after decades of fighting the government, the crusader who ran as an independent for Idaho governor in 2022 is fleeing from that government — sort of. Since bolting across the border before his trial in November 2023, Bundy has been lying low in the Beehive State.

Even with an Idaho warrant out for his arrest, Bundy said he is cautious but not overly concerned about being collared by police. He said he and his wife, Lisa, live simply, holed up with some of their six children and a grandchild in a friend’s attic apartment in southern Utah, not far from family and his boyhood home in Bunkerville, Nevada.

Moreover, after abandoning his Idaho truck repair company when he fled to Utah, Bundy is back in business, manufacturing and selling truck parts online from the cramped confines of his workshop in Cedar City. He said he is back as a member in good standing of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, holds a temple recommend and enjoys attending the temple and Sunday services at his ward, or congregation.

Still, Bundy argues, he has paid a heavy price for absconding to Utah. Besides losing his business, he said, courts stripped him and his family of their $1.5 million home in Emmett, Idaho, and seized his commercial properties and bank accounts to help satisfy the judgment against him.

Bundy said he also is constantly contacted by Idaho attorneys trying to collect on the debt from a defamation lawsuit an Idaho hospital won against him. And leery of drawing too much attention to himself, he no longer feels comfortable voicing his views to large crowds at speaking engagements.

Hoping to find a fresh start and peace in Utah, Bundy said he stays busy and does not spend much time looking over his shoulder.

“I was [thinking],” he said, “if I leave the state [of Idaho], maybe [police] would leave me alone.”

They have — so far.

His ‘band of merry men’

Evidently, Bundy may have little to worry about in Utah.

Lauren Montague, sheriff’s spokesperson for Idaho’s Ada County, confirmed that the warrant for Bundy’s arrest allows for extradition but said the office lacks jurisdiction.

“I am not aware,” she said, “of any attempt made by our agency to request the appropriate Utah agency to serve the warrant.”

Gary Raney, ​​former Ada County sheriff, where the arrest warrant was issued, believes police are not pursuing Bundy because the risk of provoking an armed standoff or similar confrontation in Utah outweighs the justice that would be served by arresting and extraditing him.

“I can tell you that 99 out of 100 people in Idaho are just happy he is in Utah,” Raney said. “There’s a sense of at least he’s not here in Idaho pulling stunts…with his little band of merry men.”

For his part, Bundy has no plans to return to his former haunts.

“If I was to go into Idaho … they probably would [arrest me], “ he said. “But I’m outside their jurisdiction … [and] extradition is very rare unless it’s [for] a violent crime or a felony.”

As for police in Utah, Bundy suspects they show little interest in arresting him because, in his view, he is not worth the trouble.

“They understand [that the government] did that once before [to me and family members for the standoffs in Nevada and Oregon],” he said. The feds “arrested us and put us in prison for two years. We went through two major federal trials, and they lost both times. It made them look bad. So why would they want to do that over this deal?”

Sheriff Kenneth Carpenter, in Utah’s Iron County, said he has not heard from Idaho authorities but added that he reached out to them after learning that Bundy was in southern Utah.

“It’s a civil rather than a criminal warrant,” he said, “so they really are not interested in getting him back. If a deputy comes across him, [he or she] would arrest him as long as Idaho is willing to extradite. But if Idaho isn’t willing to extradite him, we can’t arrest him.”

Upon learning that Bundy was living in Washington County several months ago, Carpenter said he sent the fugitive’s address to Washington County sheriff’s officials but never heard back.

Washington County Sheriff Nate Brooksby did not respond to multiple Salt Lake Tribune requests for comment.

As for Bundy’s current line of work — which he said he operates through Bundy Motors, his brother’s business — Carpenter said it falls within Cedar City’s jurisdiction, not his. Cedar City Police Chief Darin Adams said he is unaware of Bundy’s business or whereabouts.

“Like most agencies,” Adams said, “we are incredibly busy and understaffed, and we are focused on criminal investigations and things of that nature. That’s not to say if we encountered him, and we had an active warrant, we wouldn’t take action. But it certainly would not be at the top of our priority list.”

Turns out, according to Bundy, he has already had encounters with police in the Cedar City area. He said he was pulled over by the Utah Highway Patrol recently and cited for not wearing a seat belt.

“They ran my license, and they didn’t do anything,” he said. “They gave me a ticket … and then they left.”

The Utah Department of Public Safety did not respond to requests to confirm that citation.

That followed an incident last summer when Bundy said he witnessed an accident on Cedar City’s Main Street and came to the aid of an injured driver, putting her in his truck and helping direct traffic around the crash until police arrived. At the police officer’s request, he filed a report and “went on my merry way.”

Bundy is not surprised he was not arrested either time.

“It’s a political nuclear bomb if they want to make something of it,” he said, noting there is no warrant for his arrest in Utah. “I hope that they would look at really what happened [in Idaho] … and determine for themselves that it was wrong.”

Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke believes the reason Bundy was not arrested for the Utah traffic stop is that the Idaho civil warrant was probably not entered in the National Crime Information Center. So when officers ran his license plate, the warrant did not come up.

Moreover, he added, Bundy’s odds of being extradited are low.

“I’ve never heard of an instance,” Clarke said, “where someone was extradited for a civil warrant.”

On the lam, off church discipline

Bundy is seemingly as adept at dodging discipline from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as he is from the law — at least in connection with the Idaho case. Asked how he can square being a fugitive with the faith’s teachings that instruct members to be “subject to kings, presidents, rulers and magistrates, in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law,” he has a ready answer.

“We believe in being subject to them and in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law,” he explained. “We don’t believe in being obedient to them when they are not obeying, honoring and sustaining the law…So when they are [acting] way outside the Constitution, I have no obligation to honor, obey or be subject to them.”

Familiar, as he said he is, with Latter-day Saint doctrine, Bundy is not a stranger to church discipline. He logged nearly two years in federal prison after the armed standoff at the family ranch in Nevada and the takeover of the wildlife refuge in Oregon.

Even though he was acquitted of all charges in the Oregon case and the charges for the Nevada skirmish were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct, Bundy said a regional Latter-day Saint leader put him under church discipline when he was released from prison and moved with his family to Idaho in 2018.

That prevented him from attending the temple, baptizing some of his children and ordaining his sons to the all-male priesthood.

When those religious limits were lifted about 18 months later, Bundy said he asked his stake president “why he put me on church discipline. The only answer he gave me was that he wanted to know which side [I] was on.”

A few years later, Bundy again fell out of the church’s good graces.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he organized the People’s Rights Network, a coalition of about 20,000 followers spread over 16 states that the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights and the Montana Human Rights Network characterized as a “dangerous new network of militia members, anti-maskers, conspiracists, preppers [and] anti-vaxxers.”

He soon ran afoul of the law when he and his followers protested mask mandates at the Idaho Capitol and disrupted the Gem State’s special three-day legislative session. When he refused police orders to leave, Bundy was arrested twice for trespassing, resisting arrest, and forcibly removed from the Capitol, the second time handcuffed to a wheelchair.

Bundy said that prompted his regional leader to put him on church restrictions again. He was restored to full fellowship, Bundy said, three years later by a new stake president.

“I reached out to him and said, ‘I would like to take the sacrament [or Communion] again…and I also would like to baptize my son,” Bundy recalled. “...So when I talked to him, he gave me my temple recommend and lifted all of the church [restrictions].

The faith leader “said he had called church headquarters and asked what standing [I] was in,” Bundy continued. “And the lady there asked, ‘Are you asking ecclesiastically or politically?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m a stake president so I am asking ecclesiastically.’ She said, ‘According to our records, Ammon Bundy has always been in good standing in the church.’”

With rare exceptions, the church does not comment on membership discipline.

Change in fortunes

In his numerous scraps with the law, Bundy ultimately has beaten most legal raps. But his fortunes took a turn during his failed run for Idaho governor.

In March 2022, a grandson of his friend, Diego Rodriguez, was put into protective care after staff at Boise’s St. Luke’s Medical Center found the child to be suffering from severe malnutrition.

An emergency room physician later testified that the 10-month-old’s stomach was distended, his eyes were hollow, and he was unable to sit up. Three other doctors concurred with that diagnosis, testifying that the infant was so malnourished and dehydrated that the baby would have died within days without protective care.

“The medical professionals at St. Luke’s saved the infant,” said attorney Erik Stidham, who represented St. Luke’s in the defamation case the hospital later brought against Bundy and Rodriguez. “And the Idaho court system was working as it should to reunite the infant with his parents when stabilized and under proper conditions for care.”

Bundy disputes that assessment and calls the removal of his friend’s grandson another egregious example of government overreach.

“How could I see my friend’s baby kidnapped … when I know they are just this wonderful, beautiful family who loves the baby and has never neglected it?” he asked. “...When I see somebody take that baby away from them wrongfully by force and I have a voice … I have to respond.”

That response, according to court documents, was to orchestrate a smear campaign against the hospital, doctors, nurses and protective care workers to intimidate them into returning the baby to the parents. To that end, Bundy and hundreds of his supporters — many of them armed — surrounded St. Luke’s campuses in Boise and Meridian.

As a result, ambulances carrying emergency patients had to be diverted to other medical facilities, hundreds of appointments were canceled, doctors and nurses were hindered from entering or exiting the buildings, and the Boise hospital was locked down at one point. Protesters also jammed phone lines with menacing messages, including death threats, according to court documents, and overwhelmed hospital servers with spam emails.

Court papers also allege Bundy, Rodriguez and their supporters spread false narratives on social media and extremist websites, accusing hospital doctors and nurses of mistreating the infant, being pedophiles who were involved in sex trafficking, and conspiring with health authorities to kidnap children from “godly Christian families” to traffic them to “homos” who were likely to abuse and kill them.

Far from helping a friend, Stidham said, Bundy’s true aim was to raise his media profile, recruit more members to his People’s Rights Network, enrich himself and raise money for his gubernatorial campaign.

St. Luke’s sued Bundy, his gubernatorial campaign, the People’s Rights Network and Rodriguez for defamation in May 2022, resulting in an Ada County court awarding the hospital $52.5 million in damages against Bundy and others in July 2023.

Bundy, who did not attend the trial, was arrested a month after the verdict for contempt of court after he refused to appear for the defamation lawsuit proceedings.

He was released on $10,000 bail.

Just before his contempt trial was to begin in November 2023, Bundy skipped town. In lieu of a personal appearance, Bundy sent the court an email explaining why he was a no-show.

“My entire life has been consumed by political prosecutions,” Bundy wrote. “I must now do what is necessary to sustain my family.”

A state judge then issued a warrant for his arrest and set bond at $250,000.

Bundy maintains the “harassment” he and his family endured from the courts and law enforcement left him little choice. At one point, he said, the court directed the sheriff to escort St. Luke’s attorneys as they rifled through his home. Eventually, Bundy said, the legal tangles got so bad that he had to decide whether to stay there and “stand on the front porch” armed with a shotgun or flee.

Raney, the former Ada County sheriff, scoffs at Bundy’s assertion that he is a victim whose chief desire is to be left alone to pursue a life of peace.

“That’s the most hypocritical statement I could imagine,” Raney said, “coming from a person like him.”

Stidham characterizes Bundy’s exodus as an act of cowardice.

“Mr. Bundy had a full and fair opportunity to defend himself in the lawsuit and any subsequent trial for contempt,” Stidham said. “Circumstances make clear that Mr. Bundy ran from the litigation not because he lacked funds for an attorney but because he knew that, when the evidence was presented at trial, an Idaho jury would reach a just verdict against him.”

Thus far, St. Luke’s attorneys have been able to acquire some of Bundy’s properties worth a combined value of about $2.5 million but say they have been hampered in collecting more because Bundy is concealing his assets. Last July, Bundy filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Utah, asking the court to discharge the $52.5 million judgment.

St. Luke’s attorneys oppose the move.

Little remorse, few regrets

Bundy shows little remorse over the hospital protests, although he concedes some may have been hurt. He pushes back, however, against arguments that he defamed doctors and hospital staff.

“I don’t believe those people are innocent because of what they did,” he said, “but I never intentionally tried to hurt anybody.”

Bundy said he does, however, have one regret: not communicating better to help people understand that his anti-federal government activism is about fighting to uphold freedom for everyone, including his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“If you lose freedom, history proves that it takes hundreds of years and bloodshed to return if it returns at all,” he said. “And if you lose the ability to control the land and resources, you can’t survive as a people. I wish I could communicate that better.”

Asked if he would do anything differently, Bundy said he grappled with that question when he was imprisoned in Nevada. Would he still square off against federal officers over public lands or involve himself in other disputes?

Bundy said he didn’t have an answer until he rushed to the aid of a young man who was being brutally beaten by several other inmates. It was then, he added, that he realized that he was still willing to put himself at risk to help others.

For now, Bundy strives to minimize those risks. He insists he has not had any contact with Oath Keepers USA, a far-right group that now claims to be headquartered near Cedar City and has ties to protesters who took part in the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol in 2021. However, Bundy added, he is considering a speaking invitation he received from the People’s Rights Network.

When he fled to southern Utah, Bundy said he prayed for guidance and received a revelation from God telling him to live as normal a life as possible. If he lands in a legal tussle once again, Bundy insists he and his family are prepared.

“I guess it’s been said before,” Bundy stated, “but we’ve learned how to swim in deep waters.”

Part two • Ammon Bundy shares his views on a range of topics — from Donald Trump to Elon Musk, militias to MAGA, and the Book of Mormon to the so-called White Horse Prophecy.

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