Ammon Bundy ordered to pay over $50 million in hospital defamation case

Far-right activist Ammon Bundy was slapped with 8-figure damages by a jury on Monday, in a defamation trial brought by an Idaho hospital he harassed, reported The Daily Beast on Monday.

"In March of last year, Bundy was arrested for trespassing outside of St. Luke’s Meridian Medical Center, where 10-month-old 'Baby Cyrus' was being treated. The then-gubernatorial candidate organized a week-long protest, claiming Cyrus was 'medically kidnapped' over a 'missed non-emergency doctor’s appointment,'" reported Kate Briquelet. "Two months later, St. Luke’s hospital filed a defamation suit against Bundy and Diego Rodriguez, the child’s grandpa and an activist in Bundy’s far-right People’s Rights Network (PRN). The complaint also named their companies, including Rodriguez’s Freedom Man Press, which posted Baby Cyrus 'kidnapping videos.'"

According to the report, the jury decided that Bundy, Rodriguez, and the entities they control are liable for $26.5 million in compensatory damages, and almost $26 million in punitive damages.

Bundy already accepted a plea deal in a criminal trespassing case related to his fight with the hospital. The lawsuit was fraught from the beginning because he refused to accept the service of the lawsuit and even threatened process servers.

As part of Bundy's attacks on the hospital, the report continued, "Bundy ... conflate[d] offerings of gender-affirming care for children at St. Luke’s to the hospital’s treatment of Cyrus, and noted St. Luke’s received millions from donations and COVID relief funds. 'And what are they using it for?' he said. 'They’re using it for things like child sex changes and to pay high-dollar attorneys to come after their political enemies.'"

The report recalled a letter Bundy sent a new judge presiding over the case threatening him.

"Please, do not give rich and powerful people false justification to destroy my life," Bundy wrote. "Please do not sanction a war that may end in innocent blood and require others to bring justice upon those who are responsible for shedding it."

Bundy is the son of Cliven Bundy, whose armed standoff with federal troops at a Nevada ranch was one of the first nationally prominent incidents involving the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia whose leaders went on to be convicted of seditious conspiracy for their role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The younger Bundy later staged another armed standoff at a wildlife refuge in Oregon, in defense of ranchers who were arrested for setting illegal fires.