Ammon Bundy And Friends Fined $52 Million Just For Defending A Parent's Right To Starve Their Kid

These people, they just really love the children.

Noted crackpot Ammon Bundy and his associates were ordered by a jury this week to pay $52 million in damages to St. Luke's Hospital in Idaho after lies they spread about the hospital led to armed protests and harassment of hospital staff last year.

This all came about because the grandson of Bundy’s friend Diego Rodriguez was taken into custody and brought to the hospital because the child’s pediatrician determined that he was severely malnourished and the child’s mother was not taking him in for appointments.

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According to Dr. Rachel Thomas, the doctor who treated Rodriguez’s grandson in the emergency room, the child looked like the starving children she had cared for in Haiti — unable to even sit up, with a distended stomach and hollow eyes — and would not have lived for more than a week if he had not been brought in by force.

Rodriguez and Bundy responded by accusing the doctor and hospital workers of kidnapping, discriminating against them because of their “non-traditional” medical beliefs, including opposition to vaccination, and, naturally, being child traffickers.

The AP reports:

The jury’s verdict requires Bundy to pay the plaintiffs $6.2 million in compensatory damages and $6.15 million in punitive damages and Rodriguez to pay $7 million in compensatory damages and $6.5 million in punitive damages, according to Holland & Hart, the law firm, representing St. Luke’s. The remainder of the total $52.5 million in damages was assessed to the People’s Rights Network, Freedom Man Press and the Bundy campaign for governor.

Bundy, who refused to participate in the trial, said that the verdict was “illegitimate” and that he didn’t have the funds to cover it anyway.

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“I’ve been a thorn in the side of the establishment here in Idaho for quite a while and this is their mechanism to try to destroy me,” he said, insinuating that this was all just a nefarious plot to take him down for being a rebel who will never ever be any good. Instead of, you know, a hospital suing his ass for lying about them.

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Between this and the Giuliani lawsuit, re: the Georgia poll workers whose lives he ruined by going around accusing them of committing voter fraud, it’s becoming clear that this is the perhaps best way to deal with these people. Clearly, ignoring it until it goes away is not working too well.

I get the desire to not want to “Streisand Effect” things, I get that people want to “go high” and not “give attention” to stupid people who believe stupid things and don’t matter. But the fact is, these people are out here causing real damage and putting all of us in danger with their nonsense. I would love to see every Hollywood celebrity accused of being in an evil, blood-drinking Satanic pedophile cult sue the absolute shit out of these people. Hell, I’d like to see Hillary Clinton sue them as well. They’re not just harmless cranks or anonymous internet randos, these are people who have massive followings and political power. They should be forced, like Giuliani, to admit their lies. If they say things that hurt people they should have to pay, like Bundy and his friends. It’s not cute anymore.

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And you know what? Barbra Streisand was absolutely correct to sue that guy for putting a picture of her home on the internet, even if it didn’t turn out well. She needs her privacy, and as much as I hope to someday be invited down to the mall in her basement, whereupon we will sing a beautiful duet of “One Less Bell To Answer/A House Is Not A Home,” during which I intermittently burst into tears because I am so overcome with emotion just being there in her presence, I respect that. But not every Streisand fan is as sane and reasonable as I am.

Traditionally we think libel and defamation as being wrong because they hurt someone’s reputation — but they also lead to people getting hurt, getting harassed, being driven out of their own homes by people desperate to believe in fake child trafficking or voter fraud stories. The do-your-own-research crowd is notably a lot more violent than fans of Barbra Streisand.

It would be one thing if ridiculous conspiracy theories were largely confined to the darker corners of the internet, but it’s not. By tolerating this kind of nonsense without requiring people to prove that what they say is true, we are creating a society in which it is also okay for Ron DeSantis to claim that post-birth abortions are a thing and Republican candidates are even afraid to say they don’t think the election was stolen.

And hey — in addition to creating a less truth-averse environment, it would also be really, really satisfying to see these people get what’s coming to them (lawsuits!).

OPEN THREAD!