Trevor Aaronson - The Bizarre Story Behind The FBI Fake Documentary About The Bundy Family
Oct 22, 2023

"RYAN BUNDY SEEMED uneasy as he settled into a white leather chair in a private suite at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. As the eldest son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who had become a national figure for his armed standoff with U.S. government agents in April 2014, Ryan had quite a story to tell.

Eight months had passed since Cliven and hundreds of supporters, including heavily armed militia members, faced off against the federal government in a sandy wash under a highway overpass in the Mojave Desert. Now, here in the comforts of the Bellagio, six documentary filmmakers trained bright lights and high-definition cameras on Ryan. They wanted to ask about the standoff. Wearing a cowboy hat, Ryan fidgeted before the cameras. He had told this story before; that wasn’t the reason for his nerves. After all, the Bundy confrontation made national news after armed agents with the Bureau of Land Management seized the Bundy family’s cattle following a trespassing dispute and the accumulation of more than $1 million in unpaid grazing fees. But the Bundys, aided by their armed supporters, beat back the government, forcing agents to release the cattle and retreat."

Trevor Aaronson is an American journalist. He is a contributing writer at The Intercept and author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism. He was a 2020 ASU Future Security Fellow at New America and a 2015 TED Fellow.

Aaronson is the creator and host of the documentary podcasts American ISIS, which tells the story of Russell Dennison, an American who joined the Islamic State as a fighter in Syria; and Chameleon: High Rollers, which investigates an FBI undercover operation in Las Vegas.

In January 2023, Aaronson launched a podcast series called Alphabet Boys about "secret investigations of the FBI, CIA, DEA, ATF, and other alphabet agencies". The first season, "Trojan Hearse", focuses on the summer 2020 COINTELPRO-like infiltration of antifa / Black Lives Matter protesters and activists in Denver, Colorado, following the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota in May 2020. The second season, "Up in Arms," tells the story of a DEA narcoterrorism sting that targeted a former FBI informant who claimed to work for the CIA.

Aaronson has won the Molly National Journalism Prize, the Data Journalism Award, and the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award.