Idaho State Police officers place Ammon Bundy of Emmett in a patrol car outside the state Capitol on Thursday, April 8, 2021, after his second arrest in just over two hours. Bundy was issued a trespass order on Aug. 26 barring him from the Capitol or its exterior for a year.
Idaho State Police officers place Ammon Bundy of Emmett in a patrol car outside the state Capitol on Thursday, April 8, 2021, after his second arrest in just over two hours. Bundy was issued a trespass order on Aug. 26 barring him from the Capitol or its exterior for a year.
An "uncooperative" Ammon Bundy, shouting loudly, was just wheeled out of the state Capitol building and taken to the Ada County jail for the second time today, and his fifth arrest this year. According to the Idaho State Police, Bundy, who was issued a notice Aug. 26 barring him from the Capitol for a year after disruptive protests during a legislative special session, was arrested at the state Capitol today at 12:10, in a public area near a restroom on the 2nd floor; and after being handcuffed, wheeled out on a cart and taken to the Ada County Jail in a patrol car, returned and was arrested again at 2:20 p.m. in a 3rd-floor public area.
"He was not cooperative," said ISP spokeswoman Lynn Hightower. "He was handcuffed and wheeled out to a waiting patrol car."
As Bundy was placed in the back seat of the ISP patrol car, he was shouting repeatedly, questioning whether the Speaker of the House had authority to arrest him in a Senate-controlled area. His trespass order, issued by the state Department of Administration after consultation with the House speaker, the Senate president pro-tem and the governor, prohibits Bundy from being in any public areas of the Capitol or its exterior.
Several of his supporters filmed the arrest, some calling out to police officers that they were "acting illegally."
Hightower said Bundy is again headed to the Ada County Jail, where just two hours earlier, he was booked on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. "It was pretty quick," she said.
Bundy and followers of his “People’s Rights” organization have frequently protested coronavirus-related measures in southwestern Idaho since the pandemic began, the AP reports, including the protests at the Statehouse last August that originally led to Bundy’s arrest on trespassing charges.
In one of the August protests, angry unmasked protesters forced their way into a House gallery with limited seating, shattering a glass door in the process. The next day, more than 100 protesters shouted down and forced from the room lawmakers on a committee considering a bill to shield businesses and government agencies from coronavirus-related liability. Bundy was arrested for trespassing when he wouldn’t leave the room, and again the next day when he returned to the Statehouse despite a one-year ban, the AP reported.
On March 15, he was arrested at the Ada County Courthouse for missing the trial on his original trespassing charge; he and supporters refused to wear face masks, which are required to enter the courthouse.
Betsy Z. Russell is the Boise bureau chief and state capitol reporter for the Idaho Press and Adams Publishing Group. Follow her on Twitter at @BetsyZRussell.
