Police arrest Idaho gubernatorial candidate for allegedly trespassing

Police announced Saturday they had arrested far-right activist and Idaho gubernatorial candidate Ammon Bundy for allegedly trespassing. 

He was taken to Ada County Jail for one count of misdemeanor trespassing after allegedly showing up with several supporters at St. Luke’s Meridian Medical Center and refusing to leave the property, according to a press release from the Meridian Police Department.

Bundy and his supporters showed up at the medical center after a 10-month-old child who had been taken into police custody was brought there to get medical treatment, according to the release. Bundy said in a post on Twitter that the child was “my very good friend Diego’s grandson.”

Police said they had been alerted early in March that the child had been admitted to the hospital with severe malnourishment. After the child gained weight and was released into its parents’ care, a follow-up appointment a week later found that the child had again lost weight.

The child’s parents canceled a subsequent follow-up appointment and could not be located, according to police, which led medical staff to alert authorities, saying the child’s case could be life-threatening.

Police took the child into custody after the family refused to allow officers to check on the child following another missed examination, the release said.

“Make no mistake about it, this was an ambush arrest with no legal grounds,” Bundy’s campaign said in a statement posted no Twitter, claiming the child had been “medically kidnapped” as a result of a “missed non-emergency doctors appointment.”

The Idaho Statesman reported Bundy was previously convicted of misdemeanor trespassing in July 2021 and is slated to go to trial Monday on two charges of misdemeanor trespassing and one charge of resisting or obstructing arrest in a separate case.