The heartsick wife of jailed rancher Ammon Bundy says authorities have locked her husband in a cramped, pitch-black cell, in a misguided bid to "break" his spirit and force him to cooperate with their probe into his armed takeover of a wildlife refuge in Oregon last month.
"It is a 6x6 cell. No mat to sleep on, just pretty much a board. He's got a small toilet and a small sink to wash his hands and that's pretty much it. There's no sunlight, there's no window," Lisa Bundy said Tuesday in an exclusive interview on
Newsmax TV's "Dennis Michael Lynch: Unfiltered."
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"There's a small tiny [space] they feed the food through. He's supposed to have one hour [outside], but it's been cut. One day he only had 15 minutes … And they're also taking time out of visiting [privileges] with his lawyer. So that's not right."
Bundy is one of 16 people accused of conspiring to impede federal officers from their work at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by seizing federal property while armed and ignoring orders to leave. Four others, who also have been indicted, remain holed up on the property.
Lisa, a mother of six, said her husband does not deserve solitary confinement.
"I think that they are trying to — many have said — break him and the others to the point of where he might not be thinking straight. But it's important to note that he hasn't even been convicted of a crime," she said, adding that a court has so far refused him bail.
"The first magistrate judge rejected [it, saying] he's a threat to the community. Yeah. That's what they said. But they forget he's got six young children. We've got a baby that's just barely turned one. [Ammon] missed his birthday.
"We own an orchard … [and] have a lot of work to do here as a family and what he's done, he's done. He educated, which is what his plan was — to get people that study the Constitution, learn their rights, learn of their freedoms, and that's it."
In a statement issued Monday through his lawyer, Ammon Bundy said:
"This is a call to action for any elected representative in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, the state of Washington and Ohio. You have constituents in federal custody. Please visit and contact them to voice your support for free speech, the right to assemble and civil disobedience ...
"If you do not advocate for government to tolerate ideas that it hates, then the First Amendment and free speech means nothing. Arm yourself with ideas. Arm yourselves with education. Argue and disagree. Be free."
The takeover at Malheur, which began Jan. 2 was a flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over the U.S. government's control of millions of acres of territory in the west. Protesters say they are defending the Constitution.
It ended Jan. 26, after officers stopped a car carrying Bundy and others near the refuge. One protester, Robert LaVoy Finicum, was killed in the confrontation. Finicum had earlier told NBC News he would rather die than be detained. Ryan Bundy, Ammon's brother, suffered a minor gunshot wound.
Lisa Bundy told Dennis Michael Lynch she and her husband should not be written off as crazy, right-wing radicals.
"We're not at all. In fact, we have a family of six children, we love our family, we would prefer to just focus specifically on them," she said.
"But we also love our neighbor and when we see these wrong things happening, we have to act, we have to help our neighbor. We're not crazy."
Lisa also said she's gratified by a huge showering of support from people across the country.
"Ammon and I have both felt everybody's prayers and I'm grateful for that. We do believe that God is in charge … If you can study the Constitution and you can learn about your rights and you know what you can do, that's how you can help. That's how we can help each other," she said.
"Ammon went into this because he loved his neighbor, he loved the Hammonds and we love the American people and we want them to know that we have rights and this shouldn't be happening. This isn't OK."