Head of a Group Backing Trump Is Among 14 Charged in a Nevada StandoffBy JACK HEALYMARCH 3, 2016
Gerald A. DeLemus, in 2014 near Bunkerville, Nev., was charged on Thursday in connection with the armed showdown in 2014 led by the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. Credit Ken Ritter/Associated Press
DENVER — A conservative activist who served as a chairman of a “Veterans for Trump” coalition in New Hampshire was one of 14 people charged on Thursday by the Justice Department in connection with the armed showdown over federal control of grazing lands led by the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.
The federal indictments were part of an expanding criminal case that now includes charges against 19 members of the Bundy family and their allies stemming from the weekslong standoff in 2014 over Mr. Bundy’s illegal grazing on federal lands. During the confrontation, about 50 Bundy supporters from around the country gathered at the family’s ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., to prevent the Bureau of Land Management from confiscating Mr. Bundy’s approximately 500 cattle, whom he had been letting loose on federal land for decades, accruing more than $1 million in grazing fees.
Among those people arrested on Thursday was Gerald A. DeLemus, 61, of Rochester, N.H, a former Marine who in July 2015 was named to a New Hampshire veterans group supporting Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner. Prosecutors said that, in actions well before Mr. Trump’s campaign, Mr. DeLemus had acted as a “gunman and midlevel organizer” during the standoff in 2014 in Nevada.
Mr. Bundy and four others — including two of his sons, Ryan and Ammon — were indicted last month on charges they carried out a “massive armed assault” on the federal officers who tried to confiscate Mr. Bundy’s cattle; Bureau of Land Management rangers pulled back from the confrontation. This winter, Ammon and Ryan Bundy led a weekslong armed takeover of a wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon, and are among several facing separate criminal charges in that case.
“Today’s actions make clear that we will not tolerate the use of threats or force against federal agents who are doing their jobs,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said in a statement. “We will continue to protect public land on behalf of the American people, uphold federal law and ensure that those who employ violence to express their grievances with the government will be apprehended and held accountable for their crimes.”
Two more of Cliven Bundy’s sons, David and Melvin, were among those arrested on Thursday. Cliven Bundy has 14 children. “They just took him and went,” Arden Bundy said, describing his brother David’s arrest in Utah. “They’re tearing our family apart.”
Mr. DeLemus has been active in New Hampshire’s Tea Party movement and has drawn mentions in the local news for organizing a rally against illegal immigration and a provocative contest in 2015 in New Hampshire to draw the Prophet Mohamed. He ultimately called off the contest, telling his hometown newspaper, the Rochester Times, that its real aim was to show the importance of free expression.
In July, around the time he was named to the Veterans for Trump group, Mr. DeLemus told The New York Times that he liked Mr. Trump’s outsider status and blunt talk, saying, “We don’t have to like the truth. But we need it.”
Mr. DeLemus’s wife, Susan, a Republican state representative, confirmed his arrest on Thursday, but declined to answer other questions about his background or his role in the standoff. His lawyer did not return a telephone message, and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to an email asking about Mr. DeLemus’s role in the veterans’ group.
In 2014, he was among scores of ranchers and activists who flocked to the Bundy ranch, galvanized by the family’s complaints about their confiscated cattle and about federal control of Western public lands.
The federal charges against Mr. DeLemus say he recruited, organized and trained other armed supporters of the Bundys, and led armed patrols and security checkpoints. A prosecution memorandum that argues to keep Mr. DeLemus in custody says he was working as a self-employed carpenter when he answered Cliven Bundy’s “call to arms” and drove across the country with guns and ammunition to join the standoff.
Prosecutors say he drove for 40 hours, stopping briefly in Utah for target practice, and stayed at the Bundy ranch for three weeks.
News articles from the time described Mr. DeLemus as running a “protection force” of 30 people who slept in tents, carried military-style rifles around the ranch and built watering bins for the cows. “We haven’t been told by the Bundys that they’re ready for us to go,” he told The Associated Press in 2014.
Papers filed by prosecutors show photographs of Mr. DeLemus holding a .50 caliber machine gun with other Bundy supporters, speaking to news programs and standing in camouflage gear in front of an American flag.
It quotes him describing his role in heroic terms: “What we will do is we will all die right here in place to defend the Bundys and the freedom of this country. And if nobody else in this country will stand up, by god, you can look around here and see what true heroism is.”
