PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) — Ammon and Ryan Bundy will remain locked up pending trial on charges related to their leadership of the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, in part because of new accusations that Ryan Bundy tried to escape from jail.
Staff at the Multnomah County Detention Center found torn sheets that were knotted together and stuffed under Ryan Bundy's mattress, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Barrow told U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones at a hearing on Monday.
Staff also found extra clothes and containers of food from the commissary, which are considered contraband, Barrow said.
Bundy told corrections officers that he was simply a rancher keeping up with his braiding skills while in confinement, Barrow said.
And at the hearing, Bundy denied having plans to escape, telling Jones that allegation was "simply not true."
"I just had that stuff for comfort, as furniture," Bundy said. "They now let me have an extra blanket."
Jones didn't buy it.
"I reject his excuse that he was practicing braiding," Jones wrote in an order filed Tuesday.
Jones denied the brothers' motion for pretrial release, finding that while neither is at risk of fleeing the country, both "believe they are justified in refusing lawful federal orders."
Ryan Bundy is representing himself on charges of conspiracy to impede federal officers and bringing guns into a federal facility.
During the occupation, Ryan played a bit of the loose cannon.
While Ammon held daily press conferences and patiently explained the group's legal theories, Ryan told The Oregonian that he and other members of the group were "willing to kill or be killed, if necessary."
Ryan also openly carried a pistol in his hip holster, while Ammon kept an armed bodyguard nearby instead of personally carrying a gun.
Ammon Bundy took the stand for the first time on Monday.
He shuffled up to the front of the courtroom in ankle shackles, while a clerk for the court passed out tissues to the teary family members seated in the front row of the gallery.
Lisa Bundy, married to Ammon, and Angela Bundy, Ryan's wife, were both present for the hearing. Angela, a tall blonde dressed entirely in denim, sat surrounded by her and Ryan's eight blonde children.
On the stand, Ammon underscored his belief that the occupation was a legal protest, that law enforcement had never specifically demanded that the occupiers leave the refuge and that his group's purpose in hunkering down in the 187,000-acre bird refuge was to seize the land legally through adverse possession.
"We had every intent to take adverse possession of the refuge and get people to take back that land and get their economy restored," Bundy told Jones.
"How were you planning on returning the land to the citizens?" Jones asked.
"By adjudicating all the parcels and documenting the deeds with the county," Bundy said. "By unwinding when the citizens of Harney County lost their rights to the land and getting those people back on their feet."
Adverse possession is the legal method of obtaining title of land by using it. Under Oregon law, there must be actual and continuous use for 20 years, and it must be open, notorious and hostile to the interests of the owner.