Inside Cliven Bundy’s Constitutional Standoff

A reporter asked Mike Stickler, author Cliven Bundy American Patriot during an interview "What if Cliven is wrong?"

Mr. Stickler's answer was: "if he is wrong, he's sincerely wrong" — in the book Cliven Bundy American Patriot. The biographer covers in great detail Cliven's constitutional argument.

It's a fascinating read, and you get a sense that he agrees by the way he wrote it.

Christian author Mike Stickler published a biography of rancher Cliven Bundy in December 2017. The pair met during their internments at a federal detention center in Nevada.

When a fellow inmate at the Nevada Southern Detention Center suggested Stickler strike up a conversation with rancher Cliven Bundy, the Nevada native admitted he didn't know what to expect.

Imprisoned since 2015 for failure to pay employment taxes, he had a passing knowledge of the 2014 standoff near Bunkerville, Nev., between Bureau of Land Management agents and the Bundys and their supporters.

"You just don't realize what another guy's side of the story is until you sit down and talk to him," Stickler said.

He later added: "From my perspective, I'm going 'Who is this guy that would basically egg on the federal government?' ... I really kind of expected within time he'd put on his tin foil hat and talk about conspiracies and all that kind of stuff, and surprisingly he wasn't like that at all."

He added: "After I spent some time with him, I realized he was the real deal.

He was a real man who had real passions and a real intent for why he was doing what he was doing. And it wasn't perfect, but it was genuine."

In the wake of those first conversations — which largely focused on agriculture, farming and ranching, and the two men's respective Nevada homes — Stickler said he persuaded Bundy to share his life story and subsequently spent nearly 60 days conducting interviews with the rancher.

"Cliven Bundy may be wrong, but if he's wrong he's sincerely wrong," said Stickler, who released "Cliven Bundy American Patriot" through his own publishing firm, the Vision Group.

The standoff was sparked when federal agents attempted to seize Bundy's cattle, as a result of $1 million of unpaid grazing fees and trespass fines.

"I know that in his heart he's not intentionally trying to hurt anybody," Stickler said of the incident. "He's not trying to take advantage of anybody. He's risking his entire life, if you think about it, on protecting our constitutional rights.

If he's wrong about that, his intent is still pure, and I think that's important."

Bundy, an outspoken advocate of states' rights and limited federal government, has refused to recognize BLM's jurisdiction over the Gold Butte area where his cattle graze.

Despite federal court rulings and Nevada's Constitution, Bundy asserts the U.S. Constitution bans the federal government from owning vast Western lands and has refused to pay the federal government grazing fees since 1994, attempting instead to submit payments to Clark County.

In the 14-chapter book, Stickler explores those ideas, including Bundy's assertion of his rights to graze cattle on Nevada's ranges and his family history in the region dating to the Territory of Arizona.

He also focuses on the "manufactured federal crimes" against Bundy and his 18 co-defendants, as well as arguments that Bundy had been denied due process.

Stickler interviewed only Bundy for the book, though he also spoke with Bundy's spouse, Carol, and became acquainted with sons Mel and Dave Bundy.

"I wanted to keep the integrity of the book to be Cliven's story, not anybody else's," Stickler said, recalling how he took hand-written notes with a "little short stubby pencil" on legal pads and mailed them to his wife weekly before his own release in late June 2017.

Stickler noted that Bundy had "a lot of distrust" at first, pointing to the FBI's creation of a fake documentary company, Longbow Productions, to capture on-camera interviews with the Bundys.

But as Bundy grew to trust Stickler, he agreed to the project.

"Every quote in the book, every detail was him guiding me through it," Stickler said, noting he has since read thousands of pages of court documents and transcripts.

Stickler said he planned to attend the upcoming trial and could update the biography once it concluded.

"I plan to be there for pretty much every day of the trial. I feel like that's the conclusion of the story — not of the book," he said.

Update: That trial never reached a verdict. Just weeks in, U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial, then in January 2018 dismissed all charges against Bundy, his sons, and militia leader Ryan Payne outright — finding that federal prosecutors had committed "flagrant misconduct" by withholding evidence, including footage from cameras at the standoff and the presence of federal snipers around the ranch.

"The court finds that the universal sense of justice has been violated," Navarro said, as the courtroom gallery erupted in cheers and sobs.

The dismissal came "with prejudice," barring prosecutors from ever retrying the case, though the Justice Department appealed the following month, calling the errors negligent rather than deliberate.

Cliven Bundy walked out of that Las Vegas courthouse a free man — not because a jury cleared him, but because the government's own conduct undid its case.

Years later, that outcome remains part of the story Stickler's book set out to tell: a man who never wavered from his constitutional argument, and a federal case that collapsed under its own weight.

Original reporting: E&E News, Jennifer Yachnin, Sept. 27, 2017

Read the Book — http://ClivenBundy.net

For more like this and other articles, visit my author page: — Vincent Easley II https://reallibertymedia.com/author/https-reallibertymedia-com-author-vine

Real Liberty Media is a long-standing network that has been published for over 14 plus years, dedicated to providing a platform for free speech and open expression.

https://ko-fi.com/real_liberty_media Real Liberty Media © 2026. Powered by Ghost