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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (July 20, 2016)
NATION/WORLD Wednesday, July 20, 2016 East Oregonian Page 7A Key Malheur refuge occupier Trump triumphs as GOP nominee, pleads guilty; Bundys stay in jail completing stunning climb to top STEVEN DUBOIS Associated Press PORTLAND — A military veteran accused of taking leadership roles in two armed standoffs involving federal authorities pleaded guilty Tuesday in Oregon to a conspiracy charge and is expected to do the same involving charges in Nevada, prosecutors said. Meanwhile, a federal judge decided to keep brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy behind bars as they await their September trial in Portland on conspiracy charges. The brothers have been accused of leading the standoffs at a wildlife refuge in Oregon and their family ranch in Nevada. At the federal courthouse in Portland, Ryan Payne of Anaconda, Montana, acknowledged that he conspired with others to prevent Interior Department employees from doing their jobs this winter during the occupation of the Malheur National Wildire Refuge. In a plea deal that included talks with prose- cutors in Nevada, the U.S. attorney’s ofice in Oregon recommended that Payne’s likely 3½-year prison sentence run at the same time as the punishment he could receive for his role in a 2014 standoff with federal agents at a Nevada ranch owned by Cliven Bundy, Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gabriel said. In Nevada, the deal calls for Payne to plead guilty to three charges, with one involving the brandishing of a irearm that carries a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years, Gabriel said. Nevada prosecutors plan to recommend 12 years in prison, and Payne’s defense will push for less, Gabriel said. Payne, 32, told U.S. District Court Judge Anna J. Brown in Portland that his irst adult decision was joining the military, where he took an oath to uphold Les Zaitz/The Oregonian via AP Ryan Payne, an Army veteran from Montana, participates in a community meeting in Burns Jan. 1. He was among key militiamen who seized con- trol of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and plead- ed guilty to conspiracy charges Tuesday in Portland. the Constitution. Payne said he came to Oregon last year to do that by defending two ranchers he believes were wrongly imprisoned for setting ires. He and others, including Ammon and Ryan Bundy, occupied the refuge from Jan. 2 until their arrests nearly a month later. A few holdouts continued the armed protest until Feb. 11. “In pursuing that effort, I have come to understand that folks who work for the government perceived my actions as intimidating and threatening,” Payne said in court. Payne was arrested during a trafic stop while traveling with Arizona rancher Robert “LaVoy” Finicum and others to a community meeting off the refuge. Payne complied with oficers and left the vehicle. Finicum and the others drove away, and Finicum was fatally shot by authori- ties at a roadblock. Gabriel said Payne, the eighth man to plead guilty in the Oregon case, took a leadership role in the occupation, coordinating armed guards and providing tactical training. He is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 18 but that date could get pushed back based on developments in BRIEFLY Turkey ires tens of thousands in coup plotters hunt attempted coup could have been staged as a pretext for the Erdogan government to seize even more power. ISTANBUL (AP) — Asserting that “all the evidence” points to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric as the mastermind of last week’s failed coup, Turkey’s government on Tuesday ired tens of thousands of teachers, university deans and others accused of ties to the plot and demanded the cleric’s extradition. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised the issue in a phone call with U.S. President Barack Obama, and his spokesman said the government was preparing a formal extradition request for the cleric, Fethullah Gulen. But he also suggested that the U.S. government shouldn’t require the facts before extraditing him. “A person of this kind can easily be extradited on grounds of suspicion,” said the spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin. “And there is very strong suspicion for his involvement, for Gulen’s involvement, in this coup attempt. So this is suficient ground.” Later, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that Turkey had submitted materials related to Gulen and the administration was reviewing whether they amounted to a formal extradition request. Earnest added that a decision on whether to extradite would be made under a treaty between the two countries — not by Obama. The extradition demand is likely to strain U.S.-Turkey ties as the Obama administration refers the matter to the Justice Department, which will determine whether the Turkish government has established probable cause that a crime was committed. Gulen has strongly denied the government’s charges, suggesting that Friday’s Feds remove the lesser prairie chicken from protection list ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Facing an uphill court ight, the U.S. government announced Tuesday it was formally removing the lesser prairie chicken from a federal protection list under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the move follows recent court rulings in Texas that stripped the lesser prairie chicken of federal protection. However, federal oficials say the removal didn’t mean authorities had concluded the lesser prairie chicken didn’t warrant federal protection. The previous rulings found that Fish and Wildlife failed to make a proper evaluation of a multistate conservation plan when it listed the lesser prairie chicken as threatened. Oil and gas groups had strongly opposed the threatened listing. The Permian Basin Petroleum Association said it would impede operations and cost companies hundreds of millions of dollars in oil and gas development in one of the country’s most proliic basins, the Permian Basin in the Texas Panhandle and eastern New Mexico. Ranchers also opposed the listing. The lesser prairie chicken’s Great Plains habitat has shrunk by more than 80 percent since the 1800s, and its population by 99 percent. It lives primarily in Kansas, but also in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Colorado. About 95 percent of the bird’s range is on private lands. Nevada, where authorities say Payne recruited gunmen and led an armed assault on federal oficers who attempted to round-up the Bundys’ cattle near Bunker- ville. Ammon and Ryan Bundy are also charged in that case, and would have likely been sent to a Nevada jail if U.S. District Court Judge Robert Jones had not decided Tuesday to keep them in custody at a downtown Portland jail. Jones previously granted pretrial release to many of the men and women indicted on conspiracy charges in the case. But in a written opinion, Jones said the Bundys are not good candidates for release because the confrontations show they believe they are justiied in refusing federal orders and might not appear for trial Sept. 7. “More dangerously, they may attempt to recruit another standoff or occupa- tion,” he wrote. The judge also cited what jailhouse deputies described as an effort by Ryan Bundy to escape. A search of his cell on April 8 yielded a rope made with multiple sheets tied together, author- ities said. “I reject his excuse that he was practicing braiding,” Jones wrote. CLEVELAND (AP) — Cementing an extraor- dinary political takeover, Republicans nominated Donald Trump Tuesday night as their presidential standard-bearer, hitching their hopes of keeping Democrat Hillary Clinton out of the White House on an unorthodox candidate who has sown divisions within the party and across the nation. While it was Trump’s night, Clinton was frequently the focus. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie energized the crowd with a full-throated takedown of Clinton, imploring delegates to shout “Guilty!” as he ticked through numerous accusa- tions of wrongdoing. Trump addressed the convention briely in video- taped remarks, thanking them for formally nomi- nating him as the party’s White House candidate. “ “This is a movement, but we have to go all the way,” he said. For Trump, the celebra- tions were a much-needed opportunity to regroup after a chaotic convention kickoff that included a plagiarism charge involving wife Melania Trump’s address on opening night. There were no big missteps Tuesday, but the event was void of the glitzy, Hollywood touch Trump promised, with a series of Republican oficials parading on stage to level sharp, but repetitive, criti- cisms of Clinton. The evening’s program ended on an unusual note, with an actress-turned-av- ocado farmer delivering the closing speech — a spot normally reserved for prominent speakers. Trump’s family again took center stage, under- scoring the campaign’s urgent task to reshape the image of a candidate seen by large swaths of voters as harsh and divisive. Two of Trump’s children testiied to his character, casting him as a man undeterred by AP Photo/Matt Rourke Ann-Marie Villicana from Pasadena, Calf., cheers during the second day session of the Republican Na- tional Convention in Cleveland, Tuesday. challenges. “For my father, impos- sible is just the starting point,” said Donald Trump Jr., the oldest of the Republican nominee’s ive children. Questions about plagiarism surfaced for a second day in a row, this time in the eldest son’s speech. But F.H. Buckley, the writer behind the original work in question this time — an article in The American Conservative — said he was a principal speechwriter for the younger Trump and said the campaign did nothing wrong. For some Republicans, the night also offered a glimpse of what could have been. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who resisted calls to jump into the presidential race, made a vigorous call for party unity — though his message focused more on the risks of letting Demo- crats keep the White House and make gains in Congress than a rationale for Trump. “Let’s compete in every part of America, and turn out at the polls like every last vote matters, because it will,” Ryan said. Many Republican leaders stayed away from the convention, still wary of being associated with the divisive candidate and unsure how his nomination impacts their own political futures. The crowd gathered in the cavernous convention hall relected the growing dissatisfaction among some Republicans with party elites. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been a lukewarm supporter of Trump, was greeted with a smattering of boos as he took the stage. It was one of the occa- sional lurries of dissent on the convention loor, including jeers as states that Trump did not win recorded their votes during the nomi- nating roll call vote. Still, Trump far outdistanced his primary rivals, and his vice presidential pick, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, was also formally nominated. Trump was put over the top by his home state of New York. Four of his children joined the state’s delegation on the convention loor for the historic moment and appeared overwhelmed with emotion. Wife Melania Trump was praised for making progress in highlighting her husband’s personal qualities during her Monday night address. She spoke of his “simple goodness” and his loyalty and love of family — while noting the “drama” that comes with Trump in politics. But her speech was quickly overtaken by charges that it included two passages— each 30 words or longer — that matched a 2008 Democratic conven- tion address by Michelle Obama nearly word-for- word.