Heller says Bundy 'should have been paying those fees.' Heller: I never called Bundy 'patriot'

Nevada Sen. Dean Heller wants to be clear: Cliven Bundy is no patriot.

As criticism has mounted over the controversial Nevada rancher’s comments and tactics, the GOP senator is distancing himself from Bundy and his supporters after referring to them as “patriots” earlier this month.


“I am very quick in calling American citizens ‘patriots,’” Heller said in an interview. “Maybe in this case, too quick.”

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Heller added: “I want to make it very clear that I never called Bundy a patriot. And I believe Bundy should have been paying those fees.”

Heller’s comments come as the senior Nevada senator, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has referred to Bundy’s supporters as “domestic terrorists,” has been the subject of threats at his home, prompting the U.S. Capitol Police to investigate the matter. Reid’s security detail has been increased, sources said, after he called Bundy a “hateful racist” last week.

“Each day that goes by it’s hard for me to comprehend how ugly, vile, vulgar and threatening people are, sending letters to my home and making other threats,” Reid, a Democrat, told reporters Tuesday. “So I don’t know who’s mad at me, but it’s a long list I guess.”

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Reid added: “What also bothers me is virtually every one of these horrible things they send, they cite scripture. They cite something out of the Bible. Now try that one on.”

The dispute between Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management has taken place about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, where the BLM has sought to seize about 500 of the rancher’s cattle illegally grazing on public lands. Protesting a BLM move to restrict grazing in an effort to protect an endangered species, Bundy has stopped paying fees to the agency, owing some $1.1 million to the government.

Bundy’s stand against the BLM — joined by scores of protesters and armed supporters — had become a rallying cry for conservatives furious at the overreach of an expansive federal government. But he began to shed his support on the right after his published comments last week openly questioned whether African Americans would be better off as slaves.

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Since then, the congressman in Bundy’s district, freshman Democrat Steven Horsford, has raised concerns that an “armed militia” of Bundy’s supporters have set up checkpoints to determine whether individuals live in the region before allowing them to pass. He has called on local police to investigate.

Asked about Horsford’s concerns, Heller said: “I think we would have all been better off if the sheriff’s department had handled this situation, and I think they need to be more involved in the future.”

But earlier this month in a joint Las Vegas TV interview with Reid and Heller, the Republican senator defended Bundy’s supporters against Reid’s charges that they were acting like terrorists.

“What Sen. Reid may call domestic terrorists, I call patriots,” he said during the April 18 televised interview. “We have a very different view on this.”

Asked about those comments Tuesday, Heller noted that there were Boy Scouts at the Bundy protests, while scores of supporters were singing the national anthem, delivering the pledge of allegiance and praying.

“I don’t think Occupy Wall Street [activists] were doing the same thing when they were having their protests,” he said.

While Heller said about “80 percent” of the protesters were “people I called patriots,” he added that there were “some bad apples in there, bad actors, no doubt.”

Burgess Everett contributed to this story.