Bundy Faces a Fate Worse Than Prison: Irrelevance

Cliven Bundy’s newfound freedom has cost him the most legitimate pulpit he ever possessed. For more than two years, he had been held on charges stemming from a 2014 standoff with federal officials over his refusal to pay grazing fees to the Bureau of Land Management. In that time, he commanded supporters on Facebook, Fox News, and conservative talk radio. Then, earlier this month, Nevada U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro tossed out the scofflaw rancher’s case, seemingly ending the saga. Speaking with reporters after he walked free, Bundy seemed to yearn for the trial that could have been.

“Judge Navarro, she did the government a very big favor,” Bundy said, adding that “there were a lot of things she covered up and protected from coming to the media and the people. If we go back to court, it’ll all come out.”

ndeed, Bundy wants to go back to court. The Nevada rancher has hired a lawyer and reportedly will file a lawsuit that would ask the judge to determine who, exactly, owns the land Bundy has been grazing his cattle on. Bundy’s argument that the federal government has no authority to hold and manage land rests on dubious, if not altogether false, legal grounds. The Supreme Court has declared over and over and over again to the contrary. But rather than a legitimate legal challenge, this lawsuit seems aimed at a different end: keeping Bundy in the spotlight.

Exhibit A is Bundy’s attorney, Larry Klayman, who has made a name for himself by chasing conspiratorial lawsuits. He has sued both Bill and Hillary Clinton for matters related to sex scandals and the Benghazi attack. In 2014, Klayman sued the Obama administration, alleging that weak Ebola screening at airports was “a reckless plan to open the door not just to Defendant Obama’s infected fellow Africans, but also American Muslim ISIS suicide terrorists.” Many of Klayman’s cases have been dismissed.

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