All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
You can also sign up for the podcast feed.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys, introducing Eamon Bundy.
Of course, he is the son of rancher Cliven Bundy of the Bundy standoff and of the situation in Oregon there a couple years after that, and is a political activist, of course, and welcome to the show, first of all.
How you doing, Eamon?
Good to talk to you.
Good.
Thanks for having me on, Scott.
So you made some pretty big splash in recent news here, somewhat controversial, but to me heroic.
You put out this video talking about agreement with Black Lives Matter.
You said you were considering going to one of the rallies.
I don't know if that ever happened or not, but in spirit, you're with them and their demands to defund the police, and so I'm sure this caught you a lot of flack and a lot of admiration as well.
But so tell us about your thinking here, please, if you could.
Well, yeah, it's kind of been an interesting experience because I do see us, you know, where we have tyranny on one end and we have, you know, if you will, I don't know, some people don't like the word anarchy because it means something different to them.
But you've got kind of the chaos and the, you know, unrest and, you know, if you want to call it the, you know, rioting and looting stuff on the other end.
And I believe that there's a whole bunch of people that are, if you will, in the middle that aren't being represented or at least that their voice isn't really being impacted.
And I believe that you have, you know, a whole bunch of people that, you know, want to say that they support the blue line, if you will, that are, you know, should be in the middle.
I also believe that people that, you know, are with Black Lives Matter and kind of are also thinking that, hey, you know, I don't want to be part of this looting and destroying and rioting, but I don't, but I truly believe that, you know, government needs to be minimized, that police abuse and power needs to be stripped from them so they don't abuse so much.
And then I believe on the other side, the same thing.
So, you know, I guess I was trying to voice and I'm still trying to voice this, the good people in the middle, if you will.
Yeah.
Well, it's so important just to take the point of view that it's about the power.
It's about, you know, who is getting away with what, against who, and not so much just about picking a team.
And I could see, I'm not sure which app you're using on that video, but I was watching it and half the comments are saying, all right, good for you.
And half the comments are saying, but they're leftists, they're bad.
And they did bad things.
They set a thing on fire.
And so this is, they're the enemy.
They're the Bolsheviks trying to wage a revolution.
How could you possibly side with them, Eamon?
Yeah.
Well, and to answer that is, yeah, there certainly may be those people among them.
I don't believe the majority by any measure are those type.
But then you have to ask the question, well, who is the greater danger?
Who is going to be the one who takes your liberties and freedoms away?
It's not going to be Black Lives Matter, even the extreme members of that.
It's going to be, and is, not going to be, is our law enforcement agencies, departments.
They're the ones that have been doing, and then let's balance this.
Okay, who is the greater taker of property?
I mean, let's just look at asset fortune alone.
When a person can get pulled over, and because they have a couple thousand dollars in cash, you know, that agency can confiscate and basically not steal that cash without due process.
And they could use it to buy, you know, equipment for the agency.
Let's go on and say, you know, what group, if you will, is kicking in people's doors, terrorizing people in their homes, dragging people out of their homes in handcuffs, and then putting them through an unjust system of what they call due process that has nothing to do with justice.
Who is doing that to us, and what is the greater danger?
Historically, who is the greater danger?
Was it the Bolsheviks, or was it, you know, the SS, the secret police?
I mean, it's simple to me.
Well, it's also true, too, that when you're talking about the average Black Lives Matter protest in X town in America, these are the people from the neighborhood.
And the fact that communists show up, all that means is that communists are good on Black people's civil rights, then.
But that doesn't, it shouldn't in any way taint the fact, no matter what you think of hardcore leftists, it shouldn't taint the fact that these are just the people from your same town saying that they're, hey, listen to us, we're being treated unfairly.
And of course, I don't know exactly how the numbers break down, but American Blacks by and large are not leftists.
They're conservative Democrats.
They supported Hillary and Biden over Bernie, by far.
And they're Christians, and they're gun owners, and they're not Republicans, but they're certainly not the far left of the Democratic Party on most issues, anyway, in terms of overall identity.
Of course, there are many Blacks among the far left, but that's a different correlation.
Overall, American Blacks are not part of that caricature.
So that just seems like all the more reason for libertarians like me, and I'm not exactly sure how you describe yourself, but you and your friends and supporters, to show up and support them, too.
Why should we cede this issue to the leftists, when we all support the right of people to not be killed by their local security force, don't we?
Yeah, I think you've said it better than I've ever said it, just barely.
I mean, you know, and my intent, and popular or popular, it doesn't matter.
I'm going to reach out to those people, the Black community that I do believe will understand, and do understand, and even stand by correct principles.
And just because, you know, one wants to say, you know, I'm a Republican, the other wants to say I'm a Democrat, and there's, you know, I just don't believe that the answer is in either one of those parties, maybe no party at all.
But I'm certainly not going to say to a group of people that want to defund the police for the correct reasons that I disagree with you, just because you're primarily a Democrat or primarily part of an organization that others say is socialist.
I'm still going to support you, because the right thing to do is to minimize the power that our police agencies have, because it is the most dangerous thing that we face in this country.
Yeah.
Listen, I have to tell you, you know, not to accuse you in any way, but I fear you may underestimate just how awesome and important this is that you're doing this and saying these things.
I mean, for example, when the second Waco massacre took place, where the cops just straight up murdered all those bikers at the bar there a couple of years ago, I, on Twitter, got into a short exchange with Sean King of the Black Lives Matter movement and said, this is a perfect chance for you and your movement to come to Waco to support these bikers who, because they're not like you.
And this is a perfect opportunity to say, see, this is what we're talking about.
This is how they treat us.
I mean, how unfair is this, what they did to you here?
And for people who don't know the details there, it's like, one guy fired a shot in the air, and then the cops just opened fire from the periphery and just murdered a bunch of innocent people, just straight up massacred them.
The whole thing is completely crazy.
And then they charged everybody with felonies in order to try to cover it up.
It's just insane.
Anyway, and of course, Sean King gave me some stupid answer about, see, this is what we're talking about, but yeah, now you know how we feel.
As though somehow these bikers deserved it or some stupid ass thing.
But when it was his chance to be the bigger man, and that's what you're doing here, and I think that the reverberations from this, Eamon, could be absolutely huge, that this is about principles, not about identity.
It's about what's right is what's right, and it's all of us on the side of right against unjust and unaccountable power.
Yeah, I appreciate you saying that, and you know, whether it has a magnitude that you're speaking of or not, which I hope it does, but not for my own benefit, but for the benefit of basically the human race, because we're just polarized, and I believe that it feels like some of it might be intentional to keep us divided, and I'll give you an example of that.
As you may know, I was falsely accused, my family was falsely accused, and we were arrested and incarcerated in federal detention centers for two years, my father, brothers, friends, and ultimately our case was, we were acquitted on most of the charges, and our case was dismissed on everything else from prosecutorial misconduct, basically government's terrible misconduct.
Anyhow, in there, in prison, I learned a lot of things.
I didn't want to learn them, but I did, and one thing that I learned is that those prisons are clear full of different races and diversified people, and the prisons intentionally support and actually promote and even enforce the division of races inside the prison, and the reason why, if the people were not so divided in there, like blacks against the whites, the whites against the blacks, and Native Americans, and the Hispanics, if they weren't divided, they would not be able to guard them with just one guard over 100 men, and if they weren't divided, at any time, those people, those men could stand up and they could walk right out of that prison, but because they're divided, it's very easy to keep them under control, it's very easy to guard them, and it's very easy to keep them in those prisons.
Yeah, and it's great because it's such a great metaphor for society overall, but also it goes to show the roots of the worst neo-Nazi gangs, and the worst Mexican mafia gangs, and the worst Bloods and Crips and drug dealing black gangs, all of them come out of the prisons.
Yeah, that's where they're all formed, and that's where their organizations are enforced.
Well, and there's so many parallels that I learned while I was in there, but that's one of them, one of them is that if people are divided out here in society, because prison is like a petri dish of society, if we are divided out here, it makes it very easy for a small group of people to control the entire population.
If they keep us divided between blacks and whites and Native Americans or patriots and liberals or whatever else it is, if they keep us divided, it is very easy for them to remain in power and to grow their power, and to, frankly, to steal the lives, resources, and everything else that actually belongs to the people.
It's very simple for them to do that.
Yeah, so well said, and I'll tell you a funny story.
I'm almost certain it was during the Oregon situation there, and I was having a polite argument, discussion with a young female Black Lives Matter activist, which I've always championed that stuff all along, and so we're having this kind of thing, and I'm preaching this unity kind of thing, that like, look at these guys who you would think are these right-wing rednecks that you're supposed to be against and that you assume are against you, but look what they're going through.
They're being oppressed by the cops, too.
They're just like you, and so this is a great opportunity to be a bigger man, take their side, and to prove that you're right, that look, if this is how they treat these ranchers, then don't you think they treat blacks in the ghetto even worse than that?
Something, make an alliance and a good point out of it, build on it, and she answered me back with a picture of one of your guys, maybe you, I don't know, with a sign with BLM and a circle and a line through it, and she said, no, see, they hate our guts, and I said, oh, young lady, I'm sorry, this is just an honest misunderstanding.
That stands for the Bureau of Land Management, not Black Lives Matter.
That stands for the cops, the federal cops, and I understand why you might mistakenly think that because these people are white and own land that somehow they have power, but in fact, no, they're being completely mistreated.
Their relation to the BLM, the federal cops, is your relation to your local cops, okay?
It's the same thing.
These people are oppressed, they need your help, and then unfortunately the conversation died there, right when I should have won, but it really was an honest misunderstanding.
She thought that y'all's sign was denouncing the BLM movement at the same time that you're being harassed by the cops in your own way, and it's just unfortunate, but it goes to show, though, that how much potential is there.
Like, what would that lady think, well, what does she think right now if she read the news in the last couple of weeks that you came out and said that you like the Black Lives Matter thing and you want to help support it?
Is she impressed by that, or because she should be, right?
That should surprise her and impress her and she should see that, okay, you know what?
It is a bit more simple than black and white and left and right and all these things, and hey, patriots going around talking about the Constitution, well, the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution, right?
Seems like if all Americans can find one thing to agree on, it would be preserving the Bill of Rights.
How about that?
Can we all be Americans on the Bill of Rights issue?
Gotta be.
Yeah, let's do that.
Absolutely.
Let's base it on that, and I think that we'll all agree that we have those rights, that those rights belong to us, not government, and therefore it is our responsibility to stand for each other in defending them.
You know, the ranching community in Southern Nevada where my dad ranches and where all that happened, there was 53 ranchers in that area, and over my lifetime, well, half of my lifetime when I was younger, I watched all those ranchers get wiped out by one way or the other by the Bureau of Land Management, not the Black Lives Matter, the BLM Bureau of Land Management.
I watched them all get decimated until it got down to my dad only.
That's just our little community.
There's only one rancher in our entire community left, and that is my father.
And what does that mean that the BLM were the ones that did it to them?
What did they do?
Well, so, first of all, they came in and claimed that they had jurisdiction over the area, which is unconstitutional.
Then they began to regulate them in a way that was intended to actually put them out of business.
So, they literally put them in such extreme poverty that they couldn't survive, and they just had to give up and go find jobs.
And then the ones that wouldn't, they came in and manipulated them and basically said, well, we're going to push you out anyway.
We're going to push you out, so, therefore, you better sell to us.
And they bought their ranches for $75,000.
And then my dad and one other finally held out and wouldn't sell and wouldn't follow the regulations.
After a while, they wouldn't because they knew that it was putting them out of business.
And one of those ranchers passed away, leaving my father as the only one.
And then they came with 213 armed federal agents, put our family, literally, ranch under siege, snipers on the hills, began to kill our cattle with helicopters killed.
Over 60 head of cattle destroyed our water infrastructure, started literally abusing and beating us, arresting us, all for literally just trying to do what my family has done in that area for 140 plus years.
And it's our property.
It's just absolutely amazing.
And, you know, for all the demonization of you guys in that situation, it's the kind of thing sort of like as Russiagate falls apart, MSNBC just doesn't notice.
They didn't notice either.
I'm willing to bet anyway, I wasn't watching that closely, but it certainly did not get very much attention when it turned out that the federal judge sided with you guys and angrily dismissed these charges with prejudice, which means the judge was really pissed.
And don't you dare try to bring these charges ever again.
They're officially exonerated.
And the reasoning, as I understand it best, I'm sure you've read all the documents yourself and lived through it, I know.
But what I understood about it was that y'all's accusations that they started it by wringing your property with snipers was true.
And they lied and lied and lied.
And they lied to the court and they pretended that that was a lie.
And they called y'all conspiracy kooks and all of this.
And then you proved it.
And the judge was pissed.
And that was the kind of thing that should have been, you know, the biggest headline that, oh, yeah, sorry about all of what we told you and everything.
But it turns out that these people were not just innocent, but the judge has basically joined their militia.
How do you like that?
Well, and, you know, the other thing is, is all of that was done while we were incarcerated for two years.
And I spent my I spent almost half that two year period of time in solitary confinement.
Not one time did they ever.
Yeah.
And not one time the entire time did they ever allow us to actually, you know, see or have visits with our children or our wives.
We never had any physical contact with them the entire two years.
Unbelievable.
I mean, the abuse that they tried to put us through while we were incarcerated to get us to take a plea was terrible.
And we saw how they treated the black community.
We understand it.
And it's not just the black community, but it is, you know, the percentage is primarily black.
And we saw how they, you know, accuse a person falsely and how they scare them to death with, you know, a lifetime of prison sentencing until they admit to something that they didn't do in order to get out of it till they finally feel like they have to take a plea over and over and over.
We saw the injustice of it.
And we we said, hey, we're not going to take a plea no matter what.
And, you know, eventually we were exonerated and the truth came out.
But that's not what most do.
Most didn't have the support we had, you know, with with our family and even outside support.
So they just get railroaded by this terrible injustice system.
And a good amount of them are the black black people from, you know, from the black community.
Hey, I'll check it out.
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Hey y'all, Scott here.
If you want a real education in history and economics, you should check out Tom Woods's Liberty Classroom.
Tom and a really great group of professors and experts have put together an entire education of everything they didn't teach you in school, but should have.
Follow through from the link in the margin at scotthorton.org for Tom Woods's Liberty Classroom.
It's so true and everybody knows it, but it just rolls on.
But you know, I think what you're doing here is really the kind of thing that can help to make the change here.
Now, I wanted to, if it's all right, although I don't know how you feel about talking about this, is it okay if we talk about the case of the death of Lavoie Finnicum here for a minute?
Yeah, that's fine.
So, I mean, we've seen the video and then from the best I know about the case was that, you know, after the car was stopped, the guy was on his way to meet with the local sheriff.
The feds essentially stop him, run him off the road.
He gets out of the car and then they lied about this for a long time, but then they were forced to admit that the FBI hostage rescue team sniper fired the first shots that hit the roof of the man's truck.
Then at that point, he drew his weapon in self-defense and then the rest of the cops gunned him down.
Is that your understanding of the correct sequence of events there?
It's very close, but there is no evidence that, well, he didn't draw a weapon at all.
Okay.
You know, they say that he was reaching for a weapon, which is absolutely, you know, you can't even say that that was the case, but good heavens, because remember he sustained multiple shots and when you watch, you know, he's kind of tripping in the snow and he kind of goes down and like reaches down like he's trying to catch his balance and they say that that's when he was reaching for his gun.
I see.
And he never did, you know, grab a gun.
And I don't believe he was even reaching for his gun.
He had his hands in his air in the air.
He had his hands in the air.
What he was doing was he was drawing the fire away from the vehicle to try to save my brother and Shauna Cox and Victoria Sharp.
That's what he was doing.
They were firing at the vehicle unwarranted.
And he, you know, he risked his life and he gave his life to draw fire away from the vehicle to save his friends.
And and he never once grabbed a gun.
He never once, I don't believe even was grabbing for a gun.
I think that it's very clear that he was in the deep snow.
He had his hands in the air.
And when he was about ready to fall over, he was kind of grabbing his or getting his balance with his hands.
But either way, he had every right to grab a gun.
They were opening fire on him and his friends.
And ultimately, they shot him three times in the back and killed him, murdered him right there in the snow in the back.
Yeah.
And then the disgusting it's so hard for me to.
But and then what do they do?
They run up and handcuff him.
He's dead, lying in the snow, never give him CPR, never tried to reach, you know, to, you know, maintain his life or, you know, resuscitate him or nothing.
All they did is run up and handcuff him and let him bleed out in the snow.
Yeah.
I wonder what was the first consulting firm that came up with that training that always handcuffed the corpse?
Where do they come up with this stuff?
They're just not balls.
Crazy, completely crazy.
But now and it's important to point out again, HRT fired the first shot.
The same guys that killed Vicky Weaver, the same guys who were the Waco killers on April 19th, not the original raid, but the final raid on the Branch Davidians is and the HRT is essentially their FBI.
But they're really a special operations forces group trained at Fort Bragg.
They're paramilitaries.
They're like, you know, low class Navy SEALs, essentially.
Well, and you're exactly right.
And, you know, the all the cover up of what was going on down at the Bundy Ranch and why our case was dismissed, all of that cover up was because they were trying to scrub all the evidence and all the documents that the FBI HRT team was there at the ranch.
That was the same team with the snipers on the hills that were surveillance.
It was HRT team.
And then again in Oregon, the shooting, the ones that initially shot, they were again trying to scrub the record and the and the and the evidence that the HRT team was there and actually initiated and engaged, you know, the the force.
There's a wicked thing going on.
And it's certainly not just with the FBI.
We see it in many of these police agencies.
And I believe the answer is defunding them and putting the funds and the energy towards a constitutional agency, which is basically the sheriff's department, because he's the only person that is elected with policing and arresting power.
And he's the one that can be recalled.
And so can his deputies.
We've left our basically our foundation.
And I say we go back to it and defund all the rest of them.
Yeah, I totally agree with you.
And I got to say, I thought that defund seemed like such a red hair and got that's never going to happen.
We got to focus on more specific things like repealing their immunity and ending the war on drugs.
And I still think those things are important.
But what I mean to say here is that I underestimated the effect of defund the police that they're actually they cut a billion dollars or something from the NYPD budget.
And in a few of these cities, they've made massive cuts.
And I read it was just music to my eyes.
This article just yesterday or the day before yesterday about all of these cops across the country resigning in disgust about the defund the police movement and the effect it's having in their communities, which is just perfect.
That's exactly how it should be.
That screw you guys.
We didn't need you anyway.
Yeah, and we really don't.
And the interesting thing is, is like they hate accountability, right?
They hate accountability.
Well, this is what is creating is creating accountability for them.
And I get it.
Really, no one likes accountability, to be honest with you.
But I mean, who should be more accountable to the people and more accountable for their actions than those who basically have a license to kill?
And and yet they can they have been able to just do whatever they want in pretty much any fashion and know that, you know, they have this immunity and and they can, you know, implement that immunity anytime they've murdered somebody or they've or they've, you know, abused somebody or they falsely accused somebody.
And those are real terrible things that individuals have to go through.
And the cop just gets to go home.
You know, he accuses somebody and starts this cycle and a person is thrown into this terrible system.
And it might take him 10 years to get out of like complete tyranny and and oppression and prison time and and probation and all of that, which is terrible things when it comes to actually, you know, living life.
And the cop just gets to go on.
He never thinks twice about it.
You know, he's not accountable for anything.
Right.
And, you know, it's funny because all this is just a matter of like category errors, right?
Where instead of seeing each other as black and white and Mexican and all of this stuff, how about civilians versus government employees?
Those are the two races.
OK, fine.
The blue lies versus the people who pay for their existence as our supposed security force.
And then it's that simple to kind of make things clear in a different way.
And here's a great example.
This is the number one kind of right wing patriot nightmare would be the federal government organizing National Guard if they had to or whatever groups of federal Gestapo to go door to door to going around seizing people's firearms.
This is what the Second Amendment is for, is that if they ever try to do that, that's when you use them and keep this country free.
It's mutually assured destruction.
They better never try it.
Well, I just got this book and I'm ashamed to say I've not had a chance to read it yet, but I know what it's about.
It's called I Got a Monster, the Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad.
And it's by Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderbergh.
And it's about the cops in Baltimore.
And guess what they did?
They went around going door to door, kicking in doors, seizing people's firearms and then turning them over to the feds for federal no parole prison time simply for gun possession.
And their excuse, just like in the Bill Clinton years where and Bill Clinton himself personally justified this is that, hey, they live in government housing.
So that means that all their Bill of Rights is forfeit and we can kick in their doors and seize their guns.
And this is the definition.
This is what G. Gordon Liddy in the case of Waco said that these are jackbooted thugs.
This is Gestapo behavior.
This is the height of un-Americanism.
Take your thin blue line and shove it, man.
How in the world could anyone justify doing this to poor black people in Baltimore when it's the exact same thing that is the epitome of the ultimate kind of New World Order war fantasy of the radical right in America, that they're going to come and take the guns.
We're going to have to fight them then, which in fact, by the way, Joe Biden is running on banning AR-15.
So this is not entirely a fantastical argument here.
Well, I similarly categorize, you know, the two groups, if you will, as criminals and non-criminals.
And a criminal to me is someone who takes the life, liberty and property of another individual.
And it doesn't matter if they're wearing a badge or their National Guard or if they're, you know, a thug on the street.
It does not matter.
And I think that's how we have to identify.
We have to identify, look, this person here is a criminal because he's a taker of life, liberty and property.
And it doesn't matter, again, if they have a badge on or not.
In fact, like we've identified here, the greater taker of life, liberty and property are usually those who wear badges.
And historically, you know, 21st century, over 200 million people were killed by their own government.
So those who take life and those who take liberty are certainly those who wear the badge.
And that's the concern.
They're criminals.
It doesn't matter who you are.
If you're a criminal, I don't like you.
If you're a criminal, you need to be stopped.
If you're a criminal, you shouldn't be paid to be a criminal.
So end it.
So that's how I categorize it.
That's great, man.
This has been such a great interview.
Can you tell me you have a website?
Do you have an organization?
How can people learn more about you and what you're doing?
The best thing to do is we have organized, we've got over, we've got actually close to 34,000 people in it now.
It's called People's Rights.
It's called People's Rights.
You can join it by texting rights to 80123, or you can go to peoplesrights.org.
And basically, we are organizing people and communities to unite with each other.
And we have a way to do that securely and all of that, unite with each other to defend their rights in their communities.
And that's basically the gist of it.
So text rights to 80123, that's 0123 with an eight in front of it, or go to peoplesrights.org.
Great, man, that is so cool.
And obviously, the next step has got to be a big Zoom powwow with some of the leaders of the BLM movement and the organization.
You got to do it.
Well, we're still communicating.
And yeah, it'll be interesting to see how this thing plays out.
Okay, well, listen, man, I'm just so excited for this.
And I really appreciate it.
And I regret now I didn't do more to cover your story at the time I interviewed Will Grigg about it during the Bundy Ranch thing.
And I guess we talked about a little bit, but I should have interviewed you a bunch of times starting a long time ago.
And I'm glad we finally made this connection here.
And thank you very much for your time, Eamon.
Yep.
Thank you.
You have a good day.
All right, you too.
Okay, guys, that is Eamon Bundy, peoplesrights.org.
