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SEE SHERIFF CLAREMONT

MACK

see main const sheriffs page

see cows

bundy

finchem

GUANDOLO

see bak 11 22

provided info ON COPS in several standoffs?!

rww tag  CSPOA

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The Highest Law in the Land

How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy

By Jessica Pishko

BOOK

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msn no lnx

President Donald Trump has pardoned a sheriff from Virginia — who happens to be a stalwart MAGA supporter — after his conviction of accepting more than $75,000 in bribes.

Trump announced the pardon in a Truth Social post on Monday.

He declared that former Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins would receive a "full and unconditional" pardon in the Memorial Day social media missive.

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Jenkins was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison after he was convicted of conspiracy, honest services fraud, and bribery last December, according to the Daily Beast.

The president used some familiar terminology to describe Jenkins' experience with the U.S. justice system. Trump claimed the bribed sheriff had been "dragged through HELL by a Corrupt and Weaponized Biden” Department of Justice.

“This Sheriff is a victim of an overzealous Biden Department of Justice, and doesn’t deserve to spend a single day in jail,” Trump wrote. “He is a wonderful person, who was persecuted by the Radical Left ‘monsters,’ and left for dead.”

The president said instead of sitting in a cell, Jenkins will instead have a "wonderful and productive life."

Prior to losing an election in 2023 for the sheriff’s job, Jenkins had been Culpeper County's top law enforcement officer for more than a decade.

That long career fell apart after the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Virginia brought allegations against Jenkins accusing him of taking tens of thousands of dollars worth of bribes in exchange for appointing businessmen from Northern Virginia as auxiliary sheriffs. The businessmen reportedly weren't interested in enforcing the law, but rather skirting traffic tickets and carrying concealed guns without the need for a permit, according to prosecutors.

Officials said that none of the men who paid for the positions were trained for the roles, or vetted, and none ever rendered any kind of law enforcement service to the sheriff's department.

“We hold our elected law enforcement officials to a higher standard of conduct, and this case proves that when those officials use their authority for unjust personal enrichment, the Department of Justice will hold them accountable,” Acting U.S. Attorney Zachary Lee said in March after Jenkins' conviction.

Jenkins has connections to the MAGA world through the Claremont Institute, a far-right think tank where he was one of eight sheriffs selected as fellows. The institute's membership includes a number of former Trump officials.

In April, Jenkins insisted if he could talk to someone in the Trump administration, he could get help in his case.

"I truly believe if I could get an hour of time with someone in the administration, and lay out some facts with my attorney” it could spare him prison, Jenkins said during a webinar hosted by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. "I believe wholeheartedly in the president. I believe if he heard the information, I know he would help if he knew my story."

It appears he was right.

The Independent stands for many things, often uniquely so. It stands independent of political party allegiance, and makes its own mind up on the issues of the day. The Independent has always been committed to challenge and debate. It launched in 1986 to create a new voice and in that time has run campaigns for issues ranging from the legalisation of marijuana to the Final Say Brexit petition.

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claremont

[### Trump pardons MAGA sheriff who took more than ...

The Independent

https://www.the-independent.com › ... › US politics](https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-pardons-maga-sheriff-bribes-b2758198.html)

2 days ago — Jenkins has connections to the MAGA world through the Claremont Institute, a far-right think tank where he was one of eight sheriffs selected as ...

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MAGA Claremont Institute Honors Sheriffs Who Defy Laws They Don’t Like

NO LNX

Trumpland

MAGA Institute Honors Sheriffs Who Defy Laws They Don’t Like

LAW AND ORDER OPTIONAL

The Claremont Institute’s new “sheriffs fellows” have vowed not to enforce pandemic restrictions, vaccine mandates, gun laws—and basically any other laws they disagree with.

Adam Rawnsley

Former Senior Researcher

Published Nov. 22 2021

The MAGA think tank at the vanguard of pro-Trump public intellectuals is recruiting sheriffs with ties to the far right and a dubious devotion to the “rule of law” to be academic “fellows” as part of a new program launched by the conservative institute this week.

The Claremont Institute, a far-right research group that’s home to a number of former Trump administration officials, announced a new crop of eight “sheriffs fellows” selected from across the country on the basis of their “character, aptitude, accomplishments, zeal, and community reputation” to visit Claremont’s California campus and study a syllabus of standard conservative political catechism.

The coursework, Claremont says, is fairly anodyne—lectures on Locke, the Federalist Papers, and English legal history—but the Institute’s choice of students is far more radical. Of the eight fellows announced this week, six have some affiliation with the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), an organization labeled as an anti-government extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center for its endorsement of the idea that sheriffs can pick and choose which laws to enforce based on their own personal beliefs about what the Constitution allows.

In that spirit, members of Claremont’s first crop of sheriff fellows have vowed not to enforce pandemic restrictions, vaccine mandates, gun laws, and basically any laws they disagree with. For far-right groups like the Claremont Institute, those efforts to sidestep the rule of law and the will of democratically elected governments are a feature, not a bug.

“There are a growing number of groups who are clinging to the idea of the constitutional sheriff as the way to undermine everything from school board elections to attempts to curtail the pandemic restrictions to Biden administration regulations,” says Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights in Washington state. “Claremont is just the most recent example of many of these organizations that are pushing the constitutional sheriff idea as a way to gain power at the local level.”

In response to questions from The Daily Beast, a Claremont spokesperson said the institute did not consider affiliation with the CPSOA or the constitutional sheriffs movement in selecting applicants. “We rarely take institutional positions, and don’t do so here, but Sheriffs who revere the Constitution are a good thing,” the spokesperson wrote.

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The constitutional sheriffs movement arose in the 1970s and ’80s in the wake of the farm crisis, when plunging land and agricultural commodity prices forced parts of rural America into poverty and swelled the ranks of extremist vigilante movements, says Burghart. In the years since, the idea of a “constitutional sheriff” who could nullify federal laws and create “posses” of like-minded civilians to stiffen that resistance has grown in times of anti-government sentiment, including the militia movement of the 1990s and the Tea Party of the 2010s.

While the constitutional sheriffs movement drew its strength from the backlash to gun-control measures in the 1990s, the current incarnation of the movement is focused on undermining COVID-19 public health restrictions—an issue Claremont’s chosen fellows seized on.

Sheriff Mark Lamb, for example, is a newly minted sheriff fellow from Arizona’s Pinal County and a favorite of both Fox News bookers and former President Trump himself. Lamb, an avowed constitutional sheriff, became a right-wing celebrity when he publicly vowed not to enforce Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s stay at home order in early 2020. Lamb subsequently tested positive for COVID-19 after he was invited to the Trump White House for a press event with law enforcement but the infection hasn’t changed his attitude. He’s since taken to Fox News to state that he will refuse to enforce any state or federal vaccine mandate.

As then-President Trump pressured Democratic governors to open their states, many of Lamb’s colleagues in Claremont’s freshman class of sheriff fellows followed suit with acts of public defiance. When Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a stay-at-home order in April 2020, she earned then-President Trump’s wrath and a tweet demanding that residents “Liberate Michigan.”

Neither Lamb nor any of the sheriffs fellows responded to requests for comment from The Daily Beast.

Kim Cole, a Claremont fellow and sheriff from Mason County, Michigan, who had previously signed a CSPOA letter vowing not to enforce any Obama administration gun control measures, answered the call. He joined with a handful of Michigan sheriffs to vow that they would not enforce the measure.

Culpeper County, Virginia Sheriff and Claremont fellow Scott Jenkins announced a similar response following Trump’s call to “liberate” Virginia under then Gov. Ralph Northam. Jenkins, a speaker at CSPOA’s 2020 conference, said in a Facebook post that he would “not trample the constitutional freedoms of our citizens to enforce an edict” of Northam’s executive order to close some businesses.

In the case of Riverside’s Sheriff and Claremont fellow Chad Bianco, that casual attitude towards the risks associated with COVID-19 has had dangerous consequences. Like a number of his colleagues, Bianco made a name for himself through Fox News appearances and membership not just in the CSPOA, but in the far-right Oath Keepers militia. In Bianco’s case, his public refusal to enforce COVID-19 precautions has spilled over into Riverside’s jails, which have experienced “one of the largest outbreaks of COVID-19 of jails,” according to the ACLU.

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Will Sommer, Martha Mercer

While the constitutional sheriffs movement may seem like a handy cudgel against the growth of vaccine and quarantine rules, its most troubling appeal to the MAGA right may lie in an imagined ability to nullify not just laws, but elections.

In the weeks before the 2020 election, a Claremont working group sketched out a scenario in a report, “79 Days to Inauguration,” that reads like a mixture of conservative war game and fan fiction. The report, first reported by The Bulwark, posits a contested presidential election that sparks a violent insurrection in which sheriffs promise to “deputize regular citizens into posses”—augmented with volunteers from the far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys—and band together to restore order and suppress “lawlessness.”

Adam Rawnsley

Former Senior Researcher

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.

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02/06/2025 rww

by

Kyle Mantyla

A staffer for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whose access to U.S. Treasury payment systems was approved by a federal judge on Thursday has links to a deleted social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.

The attorney general had all kinds of first-day moves, but the creation of the Justice Department’s “Weaponization Working Group” was the most ridiculous.

The right-wing disinformation machine on Wednesday transformed the banal reality that the federal government purchases subscriptions for news outlets into what President Donald Trump described as potentially “THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST IN HISTORY.”

The many grievances of Jack Posobiec.

A small Idaho county is the blueprint for the future of America’s burgeoning constitutional sheriff movement.

Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio revealed on Wednesday that he would run for office after going from prison to Mar-a-Lago in the space of just two weeks.

rww

no lnx

EXCLUSIVE: A constitutional sheriff led a campaign to take over a whole county—and won

A small Idaho county is the blueprint for the future of America’s burgeoning constitutional sheriff movement.

Photo of Aneela Mirchandani

Aneela Mirchandani

Posted on February 6 2025 7:38 am CST

Photo collage illustration showing Sheriff John Wheeler speaking at a convention and in the background scenes from a Bonner County meeting. A bold yellow lightning bolt cuts across the image.

@CROSSPOLITIC/YouTube @Bonner County Video/YouTube Daily Dot Art Desk

Last November, a board meeting in Bonner County, Idaho went completely off the rails.

Featured Video

Instead of county business, officials spent the hour waging a heated war against one another.

Halfway through, the county comptroller spoke over Zoom, her voice harried.

“I’ve been thinking for quite some time about what I’m going to say,” she said. “My name has been slandered on social media, in the paper … I’ve just seen way too much over the last couple years. I’m tired of it. All of this, I’m sorry for my language, but this bullshit has to end. Enough is enough.”

Ostensibly at issue was an investigation into the possible abuse of funds at the county’s fairgrounds.

Lurking behind it all was a non-stop string of legal threats, personal grudges, official investigations, clandestine surveillance, and the death of one county official a year earlier.

Seated at the table, the three-member board of commissioners could barely look at each other as they lobbed their own threats.

“I am glad that I take up so much free rent in your head,” Asia Williams, a county commissioner said, lambasting an attempt by the other board members to review her emails. “The precedent of this behavior is making our county look foolish. You can not like me all you want to but it is gonna be a long three years.”

Williams had recently obtained a protection order against another board member and was now escorted everywhere by a sheriff’s deputy. But a member of her protection detail had just been outed for filming the board’s private sessions.

“We had no idea, for two months, we were being filmed,” chair Luke Omodt said in disbelief, adding, “I want to know as the chairman of the board of commissioners, what the heck is going on?”

An enraged citizen approached the board, shouting.

“You know what,” he said, jabbing his finger at the third commissioner, Steve Bradshaw, “The reason that deputy is here is because he threatened to shoot her.”

An exhausted Bradshaw leaned back and, with his hands behind his head, deemed the recording criminal.

“Does this constitute a Bonnergate?” he asked. “Because I’ll find out by the end of the day?”

A graphic page break.

The man who helped throw the county into turmoil was not in the room that morning.

But Bonner County Sheriff Daryl Wheeler’s presence was everywhere. Wheeler identifies as a constitutional sheriff, a growing breed of law enforcement officials in America. He’s served in the county since 2008, repeatedly winning local elections.

Estimated to run around 300 departments in America, these police officers consider themselves the supreme authority in their land, answerable only to the Constitution.

And according to their beliefs, only they are allowed to interpret it.

Some scholars trace this movement back to frontier America when sheriffs played a vital role in guarding Western settlers’ expansion.

But in some jurisdictions, they’ve been linked to abuses of power. A cadre of sheriffs in several other states announced their refusal to enforce a new ATF gun law. One, in Michigan, ignored a red flag law.

Wheeler, the sheriff of a 47,000-person county nestled into the northern part of the state, wields power that critics say goes well beyond his job’s remit.

Wheeler did not respond to multiple detailed inquiries from the Daily Dot.

This story is based on over 7,000 pages of documents obtained from Bonner County via public records requests by the Daily Dot and multiple interviews with residents and county officials.

His detractors say he’s put his county in a financial stranglehold, attempting to block COVID relief funds while asserting himself as the ultimate arbiter of the county’s budget. Along the way, he’s tussled with nearly everyone in the county government, trying to take control of servers from the commission, leaning on other law offices to investigate his detractors, accusing them of crimes, and spying on county officials.

A former county commissioner who sparred repeatedly with Wheeler accused him of running a shadow government.

And at the center of it all is six acres of land.

A graphic page break.

Darcey Smith worked as the director of the county’s fairgrounds, which lie at the northern edge of the city of Sandpoint in Bonner County. For nearly 100 years, the town has held a week-long fair celebrating agriculture, alongside rodeos, and demolition derbies.

South of the fairgrounds is six acres that often lay fallow. In 2021, Smith and the board proposed several community projects that would make the fair self-sustaining, including an ice rink and RV park.

Wheeler, however, had his heart set on building a new Justice Center to house a courthouse, alongside new prosecutor and public defender’s offices, as well as upgrades and expansions to the county’s jail and detention facilities.

He said in public meetings that these plans had been in the works for a decade, noting he pushed for a new jail in his first campaign for sheriff in 2008. The county board discussed building the Justice Center during a 2019 workshop.

But the project was deemed unfeasible by the county’s then-top commissioner.

“I started running budget numbers and it was gonna be $150 million,” Dan McDonald, who served as county board chair from 2020-2022, said in an interview with the Daily Dot. “We are a county of about 47,000 and there’s just no way that the taxpayers would pay for it.”

While the short-term proposal to earn the town more cash wouldn’t have prevented any massive development down the road, the effort didn’t fly with Wheeler.

“I said listen, ‘We’ve got this ground here that we can lease you for a dollar a year and then you cut us in with a little stipend on the ticket prices,’” McDonald said in the interview with the Daily Dot. “The community gets this great ice rink. Everybody’s happy. And then out of the blue, the sheriff goes crazy.”

When the board signed the agreement for the ice rink—upon the recommendation of Smith— Wheeler released a statement titled “Misappropriation of public property,” calling the ice rink a “shameless bread and circuses act” that would “defund the police.”

“The jail desperately needs repair and upgrading,” Wheeler said at a public meeting. He went over a list of deficiencies that included leaky roofs and limited bed space. “Instead, our current commissioners are giving away our public property for recreational purposes, I have a problem with that.”

His supporters rallied, emailing the commissioners.

“Skating rink vs public safety? Give me a break! Are we in far-left Democrat Portland or Bonner County, Idaho?” wrote one.

“The Sheriff budget has not been touched and the claim that we are defunding the police is a flat out lie,” McDonald responded.

Wheeler’s political allies helped push the cause.

They workshopped complaints with the Sheriff’s Office to send to the Idaho attorney general, harangued Idaho Parks and Rec staff to refuse grants for the land, and released a statement questioning if it was legal.

It didn’t help that the fair board is staffed with some of the most influential members of Bonner County society. Wheeler’s son-in-law, Scott Bauer, served as its legal counsel.

Bauer is engaged in his own claims against Bonner and its officials, threatening torts and lawsuits.

During the development drama, Bauer allegedly tried to redefine Smith’s role downward, attempting to move her under his supervision and acting in an “intimidating manner,” according to a grievance statement Smith filed with McDonald that was later leaked to the press.

She wrote Bauer pushed her to hold a secret meeting and questioned the fair’s charter, asserting that the county board had no authority over it.

Emails reviewed by the Daily Dot bear this out.

“I have to say I feel uncomfortable scheduling this … without the [county board] knowledge,” Smith wrote to Bauer about a secretive meeting during which he attempted to usurp the board’s authority over the fair. “I would be happy to reschedule this when they are at least made aware of this.”

“You work for the Fairboard, not the BOCC [Bonner Board of County Commissioners],” Bauer responded, in what appeared to be an effort to block the fair from building the ice rink.

“Seems odd,” Smith said in the grievance statement, “that in the middle of what most perceive to be some type of ‘land war’ between the [commissioners] and the Sheriff that the Sheriff’s son-in-law all of a sudden takes a bizarre interest in the Fairboard and Fairgrounds … All in a very manipulative and intimidating manner.”

Pull quote, text over: Seems odd that in the middle of what most perceive to be some type of ‘land war’ between the [commissioners] and the Sheriff that the Sheriff’s son-in-law all of a sudden takes a bizarre interest in the Fairboard and Fairgrounds … All in a very manipulative and intimidating manner.” Darcey Smith, Director of Bonner County Fairgrounds

Bauer declined to answer a number of questions from the Daily Dot, saying the county exerted attorney-client privilege over his legal advice to the fair board and Smith.

He added, “I did not try to intimidate Ms. Smith, ever. None of Ms. Smith’s accusations have any merit.”

Smith’s grievance memo ended on a note of foreboding. Bauer was trying to “embarrass and shame” her.

“I fear retaliation and continued harassment.”

At the same time as Smith battled the sheriff over the land, she was targeted by accusations of embezzling fairgrounds funds.

The county prosecutor assigned Bauer to open an internal investigation, based on tips the prosecutor received.

The prosecutor also referred Smith to Sandpoint Police. Smith denied all allegations when questioned.

She wrote in texts to McDonald, “I am angry, I am confused. I didn’t do what they are accusing me of.”

The basis given to launch the investigation cited a belt buckle invoice that was allegedly faked and gas certificates cashed by Smith’s daughter and her friends. A later investigation pinned the claim on an invoice for a pair of boots.

In an interview, Kristina Nicholas Anderson, a friend of Smith’s, described a campaign of intimidation that began after the sheriff started agitating against the ice rink. “[The sheriff] would park some of his deputies outside her office door and just stay there,” Anderson said. “She really felt like they were trying to get her to leave.”

Four days after being questioned by Sandpoint Police, Smith drove to the fairgrounds and died of a gunshot wound.

Within days, the coroner ruled it a suicide. The Sandpoint Police agreed with the findings in its report.

But the part of the community at odds with Wheeler refused to believe the official narrative.

A graphic page break.

According to the police report, Smith drove to the fairgrounds alone on Halloween morning, her vehicle spotted by a security camera.

Just four minutes after parking in a wooded area, police say she shot herself in the forehead with her own gun, holding it with her left hand and pulling the trigger with her thumb.

But, as her friend Anderson noted, she was right-handed.

Her keys, purse, and wallet were found discarded in a line on the ground outside the car. She was only wearing one shoe and one glove.

Police cited a journal entry of hers the day before where she said she was depressed.

In the report, they say her shoe fell off as she walked, she dropped things from her purse while pulling out her handgun, and took off her glove to access the trigger.

However, locals saw inconsistencies in the report that merited further investigation on their part.

Two separate Facebook groups, “Bonner County Public Record Requests Results” and “Documents for Darcey” both launched, requesting public records on Wheeler’s activities and Smith’s death.

They obtained crime scene photos, 911 calls, Smith’s journal entry, and the fairground budget.

A cottage industry of independent journalists tore through the documents

At the center of their belief is a certainty Smith wasn’t the type of person who would commit suicide.

Her Facebook page, full of remembrances from friends and family, describes her as a lively person with a wacky sense of humor.

“The woman who could make anything fun,” a friend wrote.

J.D. Leighty, a vocal critic of Wheeler ever since a close friend was killed during a confrontation with Wheeler’s deputies, pointed to anomalies he thought were in the official report.

“Her shoe came off and the insole popped out as if she was running from something,” he said.

Leighty, who is a veteran, also pointed to the fact that her semi-automatic gun was found with its slide locked.

“You can’t have a loaded magazine fully seated in your handgun, shoot yourself, and then have the slide locked to the rear while there’s still bullets in the magazine. That’s impossible. That has to be physically done by a person.”

“As I’m reading through them, I’m like, ‘wait a minute,’” he said. “What they’re describing here is impossible.”

Skeptics were also frustrated an autopsy wasn’t performed.

“Because she was outside and because the projectile was retained, an autopsy should have been performed,” Dr. C. R. DiAngelo, a member of the National Association of Medical Examiners, said to the Daily Dot.

The coroner’s report pointing to “depression” as her motive also said that she noted in her journal that her “books were bad,” looping in the embezzlement accusations.

But that phrase was never uttered, a misinterpretation by the coroner in his conclusion about her suicide. A supplement to the police report later noted investigators incorrectly cited the diary entry.

They revealed she wrote not that her books were bad but that she had “fluctuating #’s.” Smith, a diabetic, was referring to her glucose levels.

“The information from the journal entry does not change my opinion,” the detective wrote after the mistake was discovered.

“The list of ‘how the hells’ in this entire death are long and growing,” one person wrote in the Bonner County Public Record Requests Results.

Pullquote, text over: The list of ‘how the hells’ in this entire death are long and growing...” @DeeDee, Bonner County Public Record Requests Results Facebook Group

People’s questions around the circumstances of Smith’s death worked their way back to Wheeler, who demanded on Facebook that they stop speculating while announcing the embezzlement investigation.

“The recent unfortunate death of the Fair Director does not impact the search for the truth and the investigation will continue,” he said.

“Why the F would you post this? There are family members that have enough to deal with right now,” a commenter said. “You just threw that match on this fire! Way to go!”

Smith’s husband of 20 years, now widowed with two kids, wrote an impassioned post filled with grief and rage. “So let me get this correct: the three TOP law enforcement officials in Bonner County are afraid of a few threats and accusations. Grow thicker skin boys and man up.”

“Once you ring that bell, you can’t unring it,” McDonald said. “Knowing the woman herself, I still doubt that she ever took a penny,”

Wheeler went on a crusade against anyone criticizing his or Bauer’s role. He heard from the founder of Redoubt News, a right-wing site that supports him, that McDonald had been speaking about the pressure Smith felt.

Wheeler filed a complaint against McDonald with county HR.

“There has been lively FaceBook discussions about Darcey Smith’s suicide, to include

people criticising me and Scott Bauer for bullying Darcey to the point of taking her own life.,” he said, escalating his complaint to a criminal referral for libel to the Idaho Attorney General.

“I had the investigator from the AG’s office along with the deputy AG in my house about a month after I left office,” McDonald said. “Wheeler’s claim was fabricated and bogus and I was able to quickly disprove [them].”

After Smith’s death, the prosecutor commissioned external agency Resolve Investigations to take over the fraud investigation. The choice raised eyebrows in the community because the chief investigator had once been a Bonner County Sheriff’s deputy. Its final report was released in July 2023, touted by Wheeler and the prosecutor as proof of Smith’s guilt.

It listed six sums they accused Smith of embezzling, totaling $40,358.22. She may have embezzled another $206,956.44, the report said.

But the firm fell short of making the case in many people’s eyes. It did not release the supporting records. It made assumptions about what 2022 revenue should be based on prior years, even though each year varied. It went with assertions from fair board members about which purchases were “unauthorized”—but members wildly disagreed with one another. Smith was accused of stealing money used to hire part-time help off the books—but according to the police interview of office staff, these hires did indeed occur.

Neither of the original accusations, the belt buckle and the gas cards, were addressed in the report.

“The report read as if it was a junior high project,” a citizen wrote to the Sheriff’s Office, calling it a set of “unproven random loose facts.” It was torn apart by the community online.

Months later, any hope for a fuller investigation was lost because the fair board no longer had the financial records. “Now we are told there are no records…” a person noted at a board meeting in December 2023. “I believe that the prosecuting attorney’s office and the sheriff need to issue an apology as big and bold as the accusation they made against [Smith].”

No such apologies were forthcoming. Instead, a blame game ensued.

“I do think it is important for the BOCC and other electeds not to pin it on the fair board,” Bonner County’s prosecutor wrote to Wheeler in a private email, referring to the missing funds.

Which is exactly how it went down. With Smith dead, both the prosecutor and Wheeler pinned the blame on county officials.

A graphic page break.

Wheeler’s support in the community stems from many convergent factors

Bonner County, nestled in the Idaho panhandle, is also known as “Cop Land” and “Blue Heaven,” a refuge for law enforcement officials fleeing the anti-police ethos of more liberal western states.

Wheeler himself is part of the great cop migration, a transplant from the Bay Area.

Northern Idaho is also the center of the American Redoubt: a migration movement of survivalist Christian conservatives.

Its media organ, Redoubt News, is one of Wheeler’s political allies. It runs down his opponents, supports his pet projects, and publishes op-eds by Wheeler and his wife.

And the growing Christian nationalist movement in the state has adopted law enforcement as its shepherd.

At a public meeting Wheeler held at a church, the pastor announced, “We are fans of constitutional sheriffs.”

“Our Father, we are grateful for the men and women you have put in authority over us,” he prayed.

Then, an act of God helped supercharge everything. When COVID-19 hit, constitutional sheriffs leaped at the opportunity to assert authority.

At the height of the pandemic, constitutional sheriffs refused to enforce mask mandates and lockdown orders, deeming them unconstitutional.

Wheeler was one of the most vocal. In April 2020, he wrote an open letter to Idaho’s governor saying it was time to “reinstate our Constitution” because COVID-19 is “nothing like the Plague.”

That episode was part of a tendency from Wheeler to rely on iffy information about the pandemic. He cited a Florida businessman who emailed his senator about his belief the media and globalists loyal to then-President Barack Obama created “this incredible—yet completely baseless fear” over COVID to harm President Donald Trump.

The uncompromising stand raised his political capital in a community awash in fears of COVID overreach.

After the Biden administration passed a COVID package that would send millions in aid to Bonner, Wheeler used his political clout to turn people against the funds, claiming they were tied to mandatory vaccination.

“I’ll tell you what my blood’s boiling again,” he said at a meeting. “I just want you to know, as your sheriff … if anyone comes knocking at your door and says roll up your sleeves, please call the Sheriff’s Office, we will come to your house, and we will remove that person.”

He got a standing ovation.

In October 2021, he returned almost $20,000 set aside for his office, the first Idaho sheriff to do so, saying the funds came with “strings attached.”

“I will not follow […] executive orders of President Joe Biden!” Wheeler wrote.

His defiance radicalized the citizenry, who attended board meetings in early 2022 and demanded the commissioners refuse all federal COVID aid.

“Our freedom is not for sale!” a woman said. “Totalitarian rules violate human rights!”

The resistance kept the stimulus money in limbo.

The directors of the county’s emergency services and waterworks made public pleas, highlighting how the money could provide critical infrastructure.

Wheeler’s resistance was built on another inaccurate foundation.

Emails reviewed by the Daily Dot show that Wheeler put his trust in a blog post from “Crack Newz.” The article, written by “Blarp Blog,” falsely stated that accepting COVID stimulus funds would “require full compliance with Biden vax mandates.”

The prosecutor’s office rejected this notion.

But as the county finally moved to accept the funds, Wheeler threw up new roadblocks.

He formed the Individual County Constitutional Officers Committee (ICCO) and asserted only it could decide when funds would be available. He appointed himself head of the subcommittee that would control the process. He also put an outsider who would later become his most vocal champion on the board: Asia Williams.

McDonald, then chair of the county board, dismissed the ICCO as Wheeler’s attempt to set up a shadow government.

“I don’t recognize any perceived authority you have given yourself,” he wrote to Wheeler, calling it a “frivolous effort.”

By Idaho statute, the audit of the county’s finances is under the purview of the commissioners.

Dismissed by McDonald, Wheeler claimed he was ceasing his efforts.

But, in the next board term, in the wake of the fairgrounds fraud investigation, Wheeler repeatedly tried to revive ICCO to control auditing, only to be shot down by county officials. Even so, in a December 2023 meeting, Omodt pointed out that Wheeler’s ICCO continued as a secretive unit within the county government.

“Somehow the ICCO came up with this idea that they had the authority to create an audit committee,” he said, calling it a “long convoluted exercise of overreach.”

But that wasn’t the only attempt by Wheeler to maintain power in the community.

Wheeler strongly rejected efforts by the board to set up a unified IT department and instead attempted to take the county’s technology under his control.

McDonald said that during his term, the county hired a new CIO to improve its systems, who stress-tested computer security across the county government.

Wheeler vehemently blocked these efforts, McDonald said.

“[The CIO] gets an email from the sheriff saying, ‘if you go down this road, I will arrest … you for hacking into the Sheriff’s Office,’” McDonald recounted.

At issue was the sheriff’s 911 center, which had its own IT department. It grew, over time into a full-fledged, parallel system.

According to a recording of an April 2023 meeting obtained by the Daily Dot, the sheriff’s allies tried to increase its scope. Bauer, Wheeler’s son-in-law, helped steer the fair board under the sheriff’s IT purview, presenting it as legal advice from the prosecutor’s office.

When Omodt, the new county commissioner, continued the process of upgrading the county’s IT, Wheeler refused access to the courthouse basement where his servers were located.

“Permanent access to this location will never be granted to you or to county IT staff,” he wrote back.

According to a letter from Omodt, Wheeler and his allies, the prosecutor and the coroner, refused to attend technology briefings—and then were surprised by changes in early 2024 that reduced the privileges of the “law side.”

They threatened litigation against the county with a cease-and-desist letter, demanding that the privileges be restored. The letter was leaked to Redoubt News, which called for the arrest of “this usurper” Omodt.

Meanwhile, the community wondered what the sheriff was hiding.

One person asked if he was trying to protect his “secret ICCO servers.”

A graphic page break.

Amid the fights, a Wheeler’s ally joined the board, going up against his opposition.

Williams, endorsed by Wheeler’s daughter, won a set in 2023.

Emails reviewed by the Daily Dot show a regular flow of communications between Wheeler to Williams, complaining about the other commissioners.

Even before Williams had been sworn in, Wheeler forwarded her a transcript of a board meeting, complaining that the commissioners violated open meetings law. It is unclear what the transcript showed.

Since joining, she’s run interference for Wheeler. She berated and filibustered other commissioners in board meetings. She once brought her own microphone to a meeting to speak over them.

Pullquote, test says: I am glad that I take up so much free rent in your head ... The precedent of this behavior is making our county look foolish. You can not like me all you want to but it is gonna be a long three years.” Asia Williams, Bonner County Commissioner

When a county employee informed Williams that he heard another commissioner, Bradshaw, say he wanted to shoot her, Williams obtained the protection order against him.

“He has been on a warpath,” she said.

Bradshaw denied he had meant to threaten her, calling it a “lie from the pits of hell.”

But, the restraining order allowed Wheeler’s deputies to reach further into board meetings.

In November, a deputy from this detail was found recording the board’s private meetings.

”It was revealed today in executive session that LT Riffel has been recording the proceedings within the BOCC office and during executive sessions,” Omodt wrote to the top officials of the county, “…without the permission or knowledge of the BOCC. … I am appalled.”

Wheeler said the deputies were running their cameras as part of the protection order in case anything happened to Williams.

“Commissioners Omodt and Bradshaw threw hissy fits like little school girls,” Redoubt News reported.

But now, Wheeler won’t need to act in secret. Last November’s election eliminated any resistance in the county.

Bradshaw challenged Wheeler for the sheriff and lost. He has been replaced by Brian Domke, a weapons instructor associated with the American Redoubt.

Omodt lost his primary in May to Ron Korn, the founder of a branch of the Three Percenters, an anti-government militia.

Meanwhile, Wheeler, who was first elected in 2008, will start another term as sheriff in January 2025.

What will become of the fairgrounds, with his allies in place, is unknown

ref

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mma

December 5, 2024, edition of Steel News with Ann Vandersteel, streamed on Rumble

RICHARD MACK (FOUNDER OF CONSTITUTIONAL SHERIFFS AND PEACE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION): And, I have made this proposal on Steve Bannon's show, I've made it on Roger Stone's show, numerous other shows all across the country, and I'll do it again right now on your show. We need the sheriffs involved in that deportation if it's going to be fair and effective.

ANN VANDERSTEEL (HOST): Right.

MACK: First, we don't want to round up people who are Americans, who are American citizens.

VANDERSTEEL: Right.

MACK: And who are here legally. We don't want to round them up. The best way to do that is with the sheriff. No one knows the county better than the sheriff does. He lives there. He's from there, usually, and he's been there for, usually, a decade or more. And he knows people that knows — that can give him the intel where these people are. Most of the sheriffs already know where the gangs are. They already know where the international terrorists are hold up, and let's be real here. Biden —

VANDERSTEEL: So, let me — sorry.

MACK: Well, go ahead.

VANDERSTEEL: No, I'll — let me just interject here. When it comes to, you know, the collaboration between what Tom Homan is planning on doing and, you know, Tom has been talking about this for some time since I know him.

MACK: Yes.

VANDERSTEEL: And he's said, "I can't wait to get back in. Trump's already told me I'm coming back," and, frankly, I've seen Tom lately. He's lost about 30 pounds. He looks fit as a fiddle, and he's in fighting shape right now to go and get this job done. And he has been very clear to me in private conversations that it is going to take a network of law enforcement. So, what I'm hearing you say dovetails right into what Tom has said.

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10/24/2024 mma

by

Kyle Mantyla

Constitutional Sheriffs are duly elected lawmen who believe they answer only to God. They’ve spent the last six months preparing to stop a “stolen” election—by any means necessary.

America First Policy Institute didn’t even exist four years ago. But it is poised to be more influential than Project 2025.

The former Fox News anchor likened the Republican nominee to an angry dad coming home to beat his children.

Conservative activist and Donald Trump surrogate Charlie Kirk added a new notch to his white Christian nationalist belt on Wednesday when he called on pastors to take to the pulpit and preach against Democrats as “everything God hates.”

A group funded by the far-right Heritage Foundation think tank published a list of federal officials it referred to as “targets.” Targets for what? The site, titled “DHS Watchlist,” does not specify.

no lnx many pix

Inside the bizarre Las Vegas conference where Trump-loving sheriffs, felons and conspiracy theorists vowed to form militias to patrol polling places and seize voting machines to stop Biden

A recent CSPOA conference in Las Vegas drew attention for its controversial mix of attendees, including felons, disgraced politicians and sheriffs

The event aimed to address extremism allegations within the group and outline plans for upcoming elections, such as investigating alleged voter fraud

Critics raised concerns about potential election interference and misinformation

By JAMES GORDON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 19:46 EDT, 21 April 2024 | UPDATED: 21:00 EDT, 21 April 2024

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A right-wing sheriffs' group that challenges federal law held a bizarre rally in Las Vegas last week featuring felons and conspiracy theorists as the country's presidential election is just months away.

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, founded in 2011 by former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, held its annual conference in Las Vegas last week at the Ahern Luxury Boutique Hotel conference center.

The group, known as CSPOA, teaches that elected sheriffs must 'protect their citizens from the overreach of an out-of-control federal government' by refusing to enforce any law they deem unconstitutional or 'unjust.'

The right-wing 'constitutional sheriffs,' claim legal power in their jurisdictions that exceeds U.S. federal government and state authorities.

In particular, this time around, the organization is urging its members to seize voting machines while investigating claims of 'rampant voter fraud' that during the 2020 election proved to be baseless.

Last week's Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association conference in Las Vegas drew attention for its controversial mix of attendees, including felons, disgraced politicians and sheriffs. It's founder Richard Mack is seen speaking on the stand

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Last week's Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association conference in Las Vegas drew attention for its controversial mix of attendees, including felons, disgraced politicians and sheriffs. It's founder Richard Mack is seen speaking on the stand

Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser and retired three-star general who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump, was a speaker at the conference

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Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser and retired three-star general who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump, was a speaker at the conference

Trump's friend and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell also spoke as he pushed his election denial theories

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Trump's friend and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell also spoke as he pushed his election denial theories

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This time around, the group want to form a group that will patrol polling places and have the power to seize voting machines while investigating Democrats and other countries that are sending immigrants to the the U.S. in order to vote illegally, they claim and reported by NBC News.

In 2022, the group continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories that the last presidential election was stolen from Trump are have recently been pushing a dubious theory that county sheriffs can access voting machines and intervene in how elections are run - and also have virtually unchecked power in their counties.

Voting-rights advocates and election experts said any attempts by law enforcement to interfere in elections would be alarming and an extension of the threat posed by the continued circulation of Trump's claims about the 2020 election.

'The safest way to actually achieve that is to have local law enforcement understand that they have no obligation to enforce such laws,' Mack said during a recent interview. 'They're not laws at all anyway. If they're unjust laws, they are laws of tyranny.'

Mike Gannuscio (left) is running to be a sheriff in Mohave County, Nevada

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Mike Gannuscio (left) is running to be a sheriff in Mohave County, Nevada

In 2022, the group continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories that the last presidential election was stolen from Trump are have recently been pushing a dubious theory that county sheriffs can access voting machines and intervene in how elections are run. Zapata County, Texas, Sheriff Raymundo Del Bosque holds his hat over his heart during the national anthem

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In 2022, the group continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories that the last presidential election was stolen from Trump are have recently been pushing a dubious theory that county sheriffs can access voting machines and intervene in how elections are run. Zapata County, Texas, Sheriff Raymundo Del Bosque holds his hat over his heart during the national anthem

'The sheriff is supposed to be protecting the public from evil,' Dar Leaf, the chief law enforcement officer for Barry County, Michigan, said during last year's conference. 'When your government is evil or out of line, that's what the sheriff is there for, protecting them from that.'

The sheriffs' group has railed against gun control laws, COVID-19 mask mandates and public health restrictions, as well as the alleged election fraud.

It has also quietly spread its ideology across the country, seeking to become more mainstream in part by securing state approval for taxpayer-funded law enforcement training.

The public-facing image of the sheriffs group, prominently features the American flag and the experiences of black civil rights icons who pushed back against unjust laws.

But details of its operations are closely held, and its finances are shielded from public scrutiny.

It was briefly registered as a nonprofit in Arizona, but internal records indicate it is now a private company.

The group does not release its list of dues-paying members, nor does it publicize information about where or how it conducts trainings.

The sympathies of the group's leaders for right-wing, white-nationalist extremist causes, however, are well documented.

The CSPOA is also unequivocal about gun rights and supports the right of criminals and the mentally ill to carry firearms, opposing gun registration or background checks.

About 100 people attended the day-long conference in Las Vegas last Wednesday

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About 100 people attended the day-long conference in Las Vegas last Wednesday

Attendees of the conference milled around and mingled with one another in the lobby

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Attendees of the conference milled around and mingled with one another in the lobby

Various speakers from the 'law enforcement' community were on the stand and able to speak

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Various speakers from the 'law enforcement' community were on the stand and able to speak

Mack was an early board member of the Oath Keepers, the group involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Although he said he split with the group several years ago when it became a militia, Mack still speaks at Oath Keeper-affiliated rallies.

Leaf was investigated, but not charged, in connection with the Michigan attorney general's investigation into the alleged illegal seizure and breach of vote-counting machines in 2020.

He also appeared at an election-denier rally with two men later charged in the conspiracy to kidnap Michigan's Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Over the last six years, the group has hosted trainings, rallies, speeches and meetings in at least 30 states for law enforcement officers, political figures, private organizations and members of the public.

The group has held formal trainings on its 'constitutional' curriculum for law enforcement officers in at least 13 of those states. In six states, the training was approved for officers´ continuing education credits.

The group also has supporters who sit on three state boards in charge of law enforcement training standards.

Legal experts warn that such training - especially when it's approved for state credit - can undermine the democratic processes enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and is part of what Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University, called a 'broader insurrectionist ideology' that has gripped the nation since the 2020 presidential election.

'They have no authority, not under their state constitutions or implementing statutes to decide what's constitutional and what's not constitutional. That's what courts have the authority to do, not sheriffs,' McCord said.

'There's another sort of evil lurking there,' McCord added, 'because CSPOA is now essentially part of a broader movement in the United States to think it's OK to use political violence if we disagree with some sort of government policy.'

Mach, who founded was an early board member of the Oath Keepers, the group involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, pictured above

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Mach, who founded was an early board member of the Oath Keepers, the group involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, pictured above

Mack, seen here, said he split with the Oath Keepers group several years ago when it became a militia, although he still speaks at Oath Keeper-affiliated rallies

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Mack, seen here, said he split with the Oath Keepers group several years ago when it became a militia, although he still speaks at Oath Keeper-affiliated rallies

At least one state, Texas, canceled credit for the sheriffs´ training after determining the course content - which it said included a reference to 'this is a war' - was more political than educational. But other states, such as Tennessee, have approved the training, in part because it was hosted by a local law enforcement agency.

Unlike other law enforcement continuing education, such as firearms training, the sheriffs' curriculum is largely focused on the alleged constitutional underpinnings of sheriffs' absolute authority to both interpret and refuse to enforce certain laws.

One brochure advertising the group's seminars states: 'The County Sheriff is the one who can say to the feds, `Beyond these bounds you shall not pass.´'

Nationwide, there are some 3,000 sheriffs, whose salaries are funded by taxpayers. Mack has claimed about 10 per cent of those are members of CSPOA together with a further 10,000 regular citizens. About 100 people attended the Vegas conference.

They sheriffs serve as the chief law enforcement officers in their counties and are the only elected peace officers in the country.

They appoint deputy sheriffs and jailers and service the courts in their jurisdictions.

Especially in rural areas, sheriffs hold immense sway over what happens in their county.

Amy Cooter, research director at the Middlebury Institute Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism, said many sheriffs join the group from 'a misinformed but well-meaning perspective.' But, she added, it also allows some sheriffs to 'potentially engage in extremism by not enforcing legal, lawful, legitimate orders.'

Some states have pushed back against the group's training efforts, and not all sheriffs subscribe to the group´s ideology.

Many at the National Sheriffs' Association conference distanced themselves from the constitutional sheriffs or claimed not to know what they were about.

'When I took an oath 17 years ago as sheriff, I took the oath to uphold the Constitution, not overstep it,' said Troy Wellman, sheriff of Moody County, South Dakota, and a vice president of the National Sheriffs' Association.

And there has been public pushback in some counties led by 'constitutional sheriffs.' In Klickitat County, Washington, residents alleged Sheriff Bob Songer, a board member of the sheriffs group, engaged in fearmongering and intimidation.

He was the target of a formal complaint in 2022 that the state's law enforcement standards agency ultimately dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

Michael Peroutka, another sheriffs group board member and former candidate for Maryland's attorney general, was once affiliated with the League of the South, which supports 'a free and independent Southern republic.'

At a 2019 sheriffs´ training event, he said, 'There is a creator God. Our rights come from him. The purpose of civil government is to secure and defend God-given rights.'

Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University's Program on Extremism, described the sheriffs group as 'insidious' and said it had become 'mainstream standard-bearers for entrance into more violent forms of extremism.'

'Just because it's not as overt in their subversion of the democratic system, just because it's quieter about how it does it and what it's calling for, doesn't make the ideas any less dangerous,' said Lewis.

year in hate

https://www.splcenter.org/year-hate-extremism-2022/trends-and-threats#sheriffs

the no lnx nice grsf

Sheriffs Working to Subvert Democracy

By Rachel Goldwasser

A smattering of county sheriffs across the U.S. tested the limits of democracy in 2022, with an assist from extremist law enforcement groups.

These constitutional sheriffs are devoted members of an antigovernment extremist movement that believes sheriffs are the highest authority in the country, above even the president. They usurp the duties of the Supreme Court by personally deciding which U.S. laws are legitimate and whether to enforce them.

These sheriffs are actively damaging the nation’s rule of law and attempting to shape the U.S. into a country where fringe law enforcement officers determine what human, civil and property rights they will enforce.

In the U.S., where the justice system already perpetuates great inequities that disproportionately effect people of color, these members of law enforcement further undermine equal justice under the law.

In 2022, constitutional sheriffs’ ideology intruded into another facet of democracy: elections. Members melded their extremist positions with their law enforcement authority to investigate rogue, conspiratorial allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election and brought doubt into the legitimacy of the 2022 midterm elections.

Two extremist law enforcement groups, Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) and Protect America Now (PAN), led these efforts.

CSPOA radicalizes sheriffs and the public through law enforcement training, presentations to lawmakers and civilians, online media and books written by the group’s founder Richard Mack. The organization is linked to extremists, including Oath Keepers, sovereign citizens, neo-confederates and white nationalists.

PAN was founded by political operatives and is less outspoken about their constitutional sheriff beliefs, but most of their advisory board and members are constitutional sheriffs whose ideology has shaped the organization at large. PAN has focused its attention on immigration issues, supporting the anti-immigrant hate group Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) in its efforts to demonize migrants and lobby for policies that reflect this.

Beginning in the summer of 2022, both organizations worked with election conspiracy group True the Vote, whose founders participated in the film 2000 Mules, which promotes the “Big Lie,” the conspiracy theory parroted by former President Trump that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.

The Sheriffs Alliance Interfering with U.S. Elections

Graphic connecting individuals and groups with efforts to interfere in U.S. elections

Photos credits: Donald Trump: James Devaney/GC Images; Michael Flynn: Chris Kleponis/AFP via Getty Images; Sidney Powell: Drew Angerer/Getty Images; Catherine Engelbrecht: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images; Lin Wood, Mark Lamb, Richard Mack: Gage Skidmore; Gregg Phillips: CNN Screen Shot via Texas Tribune

CSPOA posted a press release to its website on May 24, 2022, calling on local law enforcement agencies to investigate the 2020 election. The organization’s leaders and member sheriffs repeated the claim on July 12 at a CSPOA press conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Sheriffs that were investigating and those considering it spoke publicly about their efforts and repeated themselves a day later at the Libertarian Freedom Fest in Las Vegas.

True the Vote announced its partnership with PAN on June 22, calling it ProtectAmerica.Vote. The group advertised that the effort was intended to teach sheriffs about their state election laws and provide them with grants to investigate alleged voting violations. The partnership included a plan to build a “National Election Integrity Voter Hotline” that would be linked to sheriffs’ offices and promote their cause in an informational campaign starting Aug. 1.

Multiple sheriffs affiliated with CSPOA and PAN spent the year attempting to investigate the 2020 election or interfering in the 2022 midterm elections. A group of devout constitutional sheriffs from Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin were the most egregious.

ARIZONA’S CONSTITUTIONAL SHERIFF PROBLEM

Mark Lamb, sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, and PAN leader acted as the face of the PAN True the Vote partnership. In an interview published in the right-wing media source American Greatness on July 20, Lamb claimed that he was “disturbed” by talk of a law enforcement focus on domestic violence threats, that the feds had no jurisdiction over his county and that if they tried to push what he called unconstitutional mandates, “We would stop them,” Lamb said.

David Rhodes, Sheriff of Yavapai County, Arizona, has been linked to CSPOA and the Oath Keepers, and most recently an Oath Keepers offshoot organization, the Yavapai County Preparedness Team (YCPT). YCPT and the group Lions of Liberty formulated a plan to stake out and film Arizona ballot drop boxes for cases of fraud. At a July 23 YCPT meeting, group leader Jim Arroyo told members, “We have already coordinated with Sheriff Rhodes, and he told us if we see somebody stuffing a ballot box, and we get a license plate, they will make an arrest, and there will be a prosecution. Bottom line.” YCPT and Lions of Liberty eventually halted monitoring after a lawsuit was filed against them by Protect Democracy on behalf of the League of Women Voters asserting the group was engaging in voter intimidation.

MILITIAS, ELECTIONS AND PLOTS IN MIDWEST

Dar Leaf, Sheriff of Barry County, Michigan, is a lifetime member of CSPOA. He received the group’s Sheriff of the Year award in 2017. On May 18, 2020, Leaf appeared at a protest alongside members of theMichigan Liberty Militia (MLM), whose members were found guilty in 2022 of a 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Leaf was asked if he regretted having shared a stage with MLM members, and he replied, “It’s just a charge, and they say a ‘plot to kidnap,’ and you got to remember that. Are they trying to kidnap? Because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So, are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt? Because you can still in Michigan if it is a felony, make a felony arrest.”

In December 2020, Leaf began his investigation into the presidential election. Leaf’s attorney Carson Tucker reached out to Trump allies, including conspiracy theorist and former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn, attorney Sidney Powell and Lin Wood’sFight Back Foundation asking for information regarding "counties that have been potentially compromised.” Leaf tried to seize the voting machines from those counties to run his own investigation. In 2021 Leaf also worked with a private investigator who partnered with a sheriff’s deputy to question county clerks in six Michigan townships. After learning that the state was investigating his own investigation, on June 3, 2022, Leaf sued the Michigan attorney general, secretary of state and members of the state troopers for illegal interference. His claims in his lawsuit were dismissed by a Michigan judge on Aug. 29, 2022.

Leaf’s extremist election denial continued through 2022 as he made claims of voter fraud at the July CSPOA True the Vote press conference, FreedomFest in Las Vegas and to CSPOA members after the midterms. Leaf has gone so far as to call for sheriffs to host common law grand juries on the 2018 “stolen election” conspiracy. This type of grand jury is promoted by the National Liberty Alliance, a sovereign citizen group Leaf has worked with.

Christopher Schmaling, Sheriff of Racine County, Wisconsin, has also closely affiliated with CSPOA. He has appeared on Sheriff Mack’s online show and presented with CSPOA at 2022 FreedomFest. Schmaling, who was once the keynote speaker at a Trump rally, launched his own investigation into alleged 2020 voter fraud.

In 2021, Sheriff Schmaling tried to have nursing home staff and the majority of the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) arrested. He claimed they committed voter fraud after the WEC changed a policy during the pandemic that allowed nursing home staff to assist residents with their ballots in 2020. The Racine County District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute.

Ironically, in 2022, Schmaling refused to charge Harry Wait, leader of the group H.O.T. Government, who requested multiple absentee ballots using false information. When asked about it, Wait said, “Basically, I committed a crime when I ordered them. I emailed Sheriff Schmaling, asked if he was going to arrest me, and he said, ‘hell no.’ ” The Wisconsin attorney general’s office began an investigation July 29, 2022.

Schmaling also presented at 2022 FreedomFest, alongside other election denying sheriffs.

Unfortunately, these men have made a significant impact, using their power as law enforcement officials to make and investigate spurious allegations and gotten their ideas in front of a wide audience. Fortunately, these men represent a fringe movement, one many law enforcement officers still refuse to participate in.

While multiple Arizona sheriffs including Sheriffs Lamb and Rhodes joined the constitutional sheriff’s movement and meddled in U.S. elections, making the process more fraught for voters, another Arizona sheriff, Paul Penzone of Maricopa County, Arizona, exemplified the legitimate role of sheriffs: He chose to denounce the same extremist ideology and support democracy rather than participate in actions or groups working to damage it.

In in the run-up to the 2020 election, Penzone said in a press release, “With the same conviction we display when taking the oath of office, we must commit to practice impartial and nonpolitical actions during the course of our duties.” He continued, “Denying, ignoring or refusing to recognize and apply the laws as they are written is not within the authority of law enforcement professionals. Terms such as ‘Sanctuary’ county become an excuse to circumvent the law and defy due process and democracy.”

Then again on Nov 12, 2022, when speaking to the groups and politicians targeting elections and voting facilities, Penzone told the press he would not stand for any threat to voting, voting facilities or election workers.

“We are seeing a radical movement, including some local law enforcement, of people who are committed to destroying trust in our system for their own selfish gain,” Penzone told the press in August as the 2022 midterm elections heated up. “We must fight against it, or our nation will no longer be the democratic standard.”

REJECTING CONSTITUTIONAL SHERIFFS IN POLICY

All law enforcement can play a role in minimizing the harm from the constitutional sheriff movement. They can resist disinformation and conspiracy theories. They can resist recruitment into extremist groups like CSPOA, PAN and the Oath Keepers that actively prey on them. County sheriffs and police chiefs can push back on the notion that their function is to interpret the law rather than enforce it. The National Sheriffs Association can finally decide that there is no place for extremism among their ranks and refuse membership to sheriffs who actively promote antigovernment ideologies, including constitutional sheriffs.

State leaders can ensure that board members of their state police officer trainings and certification programs (POST) are not constitutional sheriffs or affiliated with extremists. These same boards can also create rules that prevent extremists from conducting official law enforcement training in their state.

States should limit the role of sheriffs’ posse members or deputized private citizens to core law enforcement functions – not election administration. And federal and state authorities should ensure that constitutional sheriffs do not engage in voter intimidation or intervene or interfere in election administration in any way.

Congress can ensure no federal funds are used for training that promotes CSPOA propaganda. Congress should investigate all law enforcement departments’ links to extremism. Law enforcement officials who self-identify as constitutional sheriffs, engage in election interference or otherwise violate the Department of Justice’s new Title VI protocols prohibiting discriminatory conduct, should be ineligible to receive federal funds.

Every level of government from national, state, and local law enforcement organizations should publicly reject the views and practices of constitutional sheriffs – and should not permit these individuals to serve in leadership positions.

2 23 random mma

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Tags: Dalton Clodfelter Nick Fuentes Nikki Haley Christian Nationalism Round-Up CSPOA

an 1 23

Last summer, the sheriff of Coryell County in Central Texas took to an elevated platform in a small Las Vegas ballroom and made an unusual announcement: He was a “born-again sheriff,” he said, having “realized that I wasn’t doing my job 100%.”

Sheriff Scott Williams runs a 92-bed jail and provides security for the courthouse in Gatesville. He oversees around two dozen employees. The county is known for its six state prison facilities, and Williams has struggled to keep his overcrowded jail in compliance with state standards. He cannot keep his department adequately staffed because his deputies are “tired of working like Hebrew slaves for very little money,” Williams told a local news source.

In Vegas, he told the audience that he wanted to protect America from “globalists that are coming to destroy our nation,” saying “the moment we start acting like we are Americans, we are going to take our country back.”

First elected in 2016, Williams is part of the growing “constitutional sheriff” movement, which claims that sheriffs have the power to override federal and state authority on matters from border enforcement to gun control to election security.

Legal scholars say the movement has no grounding in law, yet it is gaining steam: A study last year by scholars at Texas Christian University and Tulane University on behalf of The Marshall Project found that as many as 1 in 10 of America’s 3,000-plus sheriffs believe they have the authority to stand between their constituents and higher government entities, a tactic they call “interposition.”

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, the key organization fueling the movement, led around a dozen training sessions in Texas in 2020 and 2021. A February 2021 session in The Woodlands drew at least 27 sheriffs or deputies. At an October 2021 session in Mesquite, the keynote speaker was Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and attendees included state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, and former state Sen. Don Huffines, who unsuccessfully challenged Gov. Greg Abbott in the Republican primary for governor. Other attendees have included justices of the peace, police captains and members of the Texas Farm Bureau.

The seminars count for six to eight hours of continuing training credit required by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which certifies peace officers. Last summer, the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group that tracks far-right organizations, raised concerns that the agency was effectively blessing the training.

In response to that complaint plus an email from the Anti-Defamation League, TCOLE sent a field agent to attend a July 2021 training session in Houston County, which he recorded. In a one-paragraph report, the agent wrote that “the class was a study of the law and making sure law enforcement, particularly Sheriffs, were following their oath, standing up for, and protecting the individual rights of every citizen they swore to protect … some officers [said] that they had not covered this material as in depth before and thought it was a good class.”

Another agent attended a session in Burnet County in July 2021 and noted, “I heard no negative or derogatory comment made, or provided, about any segment of society.”

TCOLE’s director of government relations, Gretchen Grigsby, said in a phone interview for this story that the trainings remain under investigation by her department.

Richard Mack, a former sheriff in southeastern Arizona, founded the CSPOA and has become well known for opposing COVID-related business closures and health measures, holding absolutist views on the Second Amendment and arguing that the federal government is an unwanted intrusion into people’s lives. Most recently, the association and Mack have taken to fueling rumors about widespread voter fraud and encouraging sheriffs, in particular, to investigate complaints of voter fraud, which scholars say falls outside their authority.

Mack is a former board member of the Oath Keepers, two of whose leaders were recently convicted of seditious conspiracy for their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Richard Mack, former sheriff of Graham County in Arizona and founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, speaks during a news conference in Las Vegas on July 12, 2022.]

At the event in Las Vegas, Williams acknowledged the controversies around Mack. He explained that he was initially reluctant to attend a training session sponsored by the CSPOA, then looked up Mack on the internet at the suggestion of a community member.

“According to the internet, Sheriff Mack is the antichrist, so don’t believe none of that crap,” he said with a chuckle, adding that Mack had converted him to the movement. Mack explained the conversion was “not to the gospel of Jesus Christ, but to the Constitution. Some people think they are one and the same, and I’m one of them."

Violent roots

The constitutional sheriff movement has its roots in the Posse Comitatus (“power of the county”) movement of the 1970s and ’80s.

Posse Comitatus founder William Potter Gale was a self-ordained minister who called on sheriffs to supersede federal agencies and serve as quasi-vigilantes, primarily to resist school desegregation.

His ideas went on to influence sovereign citizens and militia movements. Many Posse Comitatus adherents were violent; in one incident, an acolyte of Gale’s instigated a shootout that left two U.S. Marshals dead. Later, the same man was killed in another shootout, in addition to a local sheriff. Gale himself was convicted of mailing death threats to a judge and IRS agents.

Mack, who leads the modern-day sheriffs’ movement, counts as an inspiration W. Cleon Skousen, a member of the John Birch Society who proposed that the Constitution was divinely inspired and under attack from communists and liberals.

After attending a seminar by Skousen, Mack has said in various speeches and books, he was inspired to run for sheriff in his home county of Graham County, Arizona. He won in 1988 and was reelected in 1992. During his second term, Mack was one of a handful of sheriffs recruited by the National Rifle Association to challenge the gun-sale restrictions of the Brady Bill in court.When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the federal government could not require state and local governments to conduct background checks, he became a far-right hero.

After losing his bid for a third term, Mack began going around the country talking to far-right groups and moved to Fredericksburg, Texas, around 2011 to start the CSPOA. He described a far-right group geared toward recruiting law enforcement officers, although anyone is allowed to join.

A group called the Patriots of Gillespie County was instrumental in persuading Mack to move, advertising on its website that he would “bring government back to its proper role in these United States.” (In an email, Mack said he lived in Texas for 20 months “under contract” with the group. He did not agree to a phone interview.)

In 2012, he ran as an far-right, libertarian Republican primary candidate for Congress from Texas’ 21st Congressional District, which includes parts of Travis and Bexar counties. (He lost, receiving only 15% of the vote.)

Mack stepped down as the formal head of the CSPOA in November, but a CSPOA announcement in November 2022 has said he will retain a leadership role.

Mack asserts that elected sheriffs are accountable only to their voters, not judges or legislators, even when other branches of government make or interpet the law. In effect, sheriffs can nullify a law by refusing to enforce it. “The federal government, the White House, or Congress do not hire us, they cannot fire us, and they cannot tell us what to do,” he wrote in his 2009 book “The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope.”

Mainstream legal scholars say the theory is quackery. “Mack has history wrong, and dangerously so,” says Robert Tsai, a Boston University law professor. James Madison explicitly repudiated nullification as a doctrine, Tsai said, noting that politicians used the theory to justify the expansion of slavery in the 1850s and to resist desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s.

The COVID-19 pandemic gave Mack and his movement a burst of new attention, as did the unrest in 2020 that followed the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black civilian, by a Minneapolis police officer. He argued in August 2020 that sheriffs could call upon posses to deal with protesters.

According to Mack, 27 Texas sheriffs or deputies attended a CSPOA event in February 2021 in The Woodlands. The speakers included:

Speaking early in the conference, Sheriff Randy Hargrove of Houston County, in East Texas, said that Mack had endorsed both his runs for sheriff and spoke about his struggles enforcing pandemic-related business closures and mask mandates. “I took a step back and went back to what I had been taught by Sheriff Mack … look to the Constitution first,” he said. He explained it was a learning process for him: “Thank God that we got someone like Sheriff Mack who is out there helping us with that.”

Then Mack took to the stage. “We have never and we will never advocate violence of any kind,” he said, mentioning Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. “The backdrop of this entire conference is, what is government’s role?”

“We have sheriffs who will interpose. Stand in the way. And make sure we are not victimizing our citizens all in the name of ‘it’s for your own good,’” he said.

Later, Hargrove wrote, “What this CSPOA training is, in reality, is a good old-fashioned Constitutional Revival!”

According to documents obtained through public records requests from Williams’ office, the CSPOA had a list of 50 Texas sheriffs who attended its trainings and at least 50 more it sought to recruit. Some sheriffs sent multiple employees. Williams went to one training with 12 other sworn officers from his office, which cost the office and taxpayers just under $700.

Along with sheriffs, several elected officials and county judges have attended, according to a CSPOA 2021 year-end report.

A bare-bones syllabus appears to be the only documentation submitted to TCOLE to qualify the CSPOA conferences as training, alongside a letter in which Mack claimed that the syllabus and all his information was proprietary. There are no assessments or other tests at the end of the training sessions, nor is there a textbook or manual.

After each event, sheriffs were given a “Statement of Constitutional Sheriff” to “use as a guide in all law enforcement endeavors.”

In July 2021, as part of the so-called “Texas Tour,” Mack held a training session in Burnet County, in the Hill Country, that offered six hours of TCOLE continuing education credit. Burnet County Sheriff Calvin Boyd provided an introduction, explaining that what people want from a “constitutional sheriff” is someone who “will protect you from a government that attempts to overreach.”

“And this thing’s grown,” he continued. “One of the things we need to change is that this is not radical. It’s not radical to follow the rules. It’s not radical to follow the Constitution. The other side is pretty good at turning that around.”

According to a recording provided by TCOLE, the law-enforcement-only portion of the training that counts as continuing education credit does not include legal analysis or legislative history. Mack says nullification doctrine “has nothing to do with racism,” and merely leaves it to states “to judge the constitutionality of laws and decrees.”

Interposition, he has told attendees, is like playing defense in basketball. “The bureaucrat is here trying to get to the innocent citizens and your job is to stay in the way. You make it messy for them. You make it difficult for them.”

Other sections of Mack’s training are plainly in opposition to the federal government. He told sheriffs and deputies that the IRS “is violating the constitution” when it conducts audits. “If your legislature can legislate anything in your life, they own you,” he said, saying the government makes people “slaves” through laws and excessive government spending.

Not all sheriffs who attend CSPOA training fully buy into the dogma. Sheriff Brad Norman of Ellis County, south of Dallas, said he attended a training but did not remember very much about it. He said he identifies as a “constitutional sheriff” but isn’t “part of any card-carrying organization or anything like that.”

Sheriff Trace Hendricks of Bosque County, in Central Texas, said he’s gone to three CSPOA trainings over the past two years. He was reluctant to speak about them, he said, because the media was “trying to make sheriffs look like fools.”

Hendricks said he didn’t “understand the hype” and certainly doesn’t think a sheriff can overrule federal law enforcement. While Hendricks said he identified as a “constitutional sheriff,” he added that Mack has “a couple of points that I disagree with. I didn’t go and join any cult.”

Sheriffs on the border

Experts in extremism argue that the CSPOA training events introduce fringe ideas into political discourse that gradually push the Republican Party further to the right.

“Law enforcement officers and other attendees who took part in trainings or events hosted by constitutional sheriffs have used what they see as their newfound knowledge to speak out or lobby for new policies that are often aligned with a far-right agenda, one that has been developed and promoted by constitutional sheriff’s organizations, conspiracy theorists and an anti-immigrant hate group,” said Rachel Goldwasser of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Texas, where Abbott has poured around $2 billion into Operation Lone Star, benefiting sheriffs who can militarize their departments in the name of “border security.” (Mack said in an email that the “disaster at the border” was a reason Texas sheriffs were interested in his trainings.)

[The Kinney County Courthouse in Brackettville on May 9, 2022. The county’s sheriff — on a CSPOA member list — and the county attorney planned to patrol the border by hiring private citizens as an official posse, using state funds. The plans were later dropped after some objections.

Some far-right sheriffs willingly partnered — informally at least — with border militias. In Kinney County, for example, the sheriff — who is on a CSPOA member list — and the county attorney wanted to use state funding to hire private citizens, many of whom were members of a local militia called Patriots for America, to conduct patrols of the border: an official posse. Community members and civil rights groups like the ACLU objected, so the plans were dropped. But the sheriff continued to communicate with these militia groups.

The Operation Lone Star task force is also primarily composed of sheriffs who have attended at least one of Mack’s trainings. Sheriff Raymundo Del Bosque of Zapata County has repeatedly praised Operation Lone Star, and his county has received substantial funding from the state.

“Good always prevails against evil,” he said at the July 2022 Las Vegas conference. He claimed Operation Lone Star was curbing “Biden’s open-border policies.”

“We are holding the front line together,” he said. “We need to join the fight and protect the front line.”

Four Texas sheriffs in leadership positions with the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas, which represents sheriffs all over the state, are listed as having attended at least one CSPOA training: Greg Capers of San Jacinto County, Del Bosque of Zapata County, Rand Henderson of Montgomery County and Mark Reynolds of Comal County, according to a list from the CSPOA. None returned calls for comment.

Zapata County Sheriff Raymundo Del Bosque holds his hat over his heart during the national anthem at an event held by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association in Las Vegas, Nevada on July 12, 2022]

Part of the reason CSPOA trainings are popular in rural Texas might be linked to the role of the sheriff in Texas life. Texas has 254 counties, and many are lightly populated. Most of the sheriffs who participated in CSPOA trainings run departments with fewer than 50 employees. The Deason Center report on rural Texas sheriffs, the result of a focus group conducted by the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at SMU's Dedman School of Law, points out that sheriffs, unlike other law enforcement offices, are elected and maintain connections with their voters in a hands-on, personal way.

Many sheriffs cited community as a reason for joining the CSPOA. Sheriff Cutter Clinton — who joined the CSPOA before he became sheriff of Panola County — shared his experience after Mack at one Texas conference. “We’re blessed that we haven’t been troubled with a lot of the troubles that have plagued the country. … The year 2020, though, we saw things like that. Things we haven’t seen … the different executive orders, the mandates. I began to question a lot of things I believed in for a long time.” He said a friend referred him to the CSPOA.

“You got a lot of reading material,” he said, explaining that such reading helped him make sense of the role of sheriff. He praised the trainings as a chance to be “among my people.”

Williams, the sheriff of Coryell County, has said that after the CSPOA training his “relationship with the community blossomed.” All of his deputies, he says, now carry one of Skousen’s pocket constitutions.

Chasing voting fraud

In recent months, CSPOA-affiliated sheriffs have aligned with election-denier groups to form coalitions that appear ready to promote “the big lie” and pounce on any chance to highlight potential fraud in their communities. At a July event in Las Vegas, at least three Texas sheriffs appeared onstage with Mack to promote a new partnership with True the Vote, a Houston-based organization that peddles election conspiracies. (Mack claimed more Texas sheriffs were in attendance, but that could not be confirmed.)

These sheriffs have also been influential in the far-right push for more election policing, including concerns that people are voting illegally, worries about the accuracy of voting machines and the desire to appear willing and ready to investigate and arrest individuals, even members of their own county government. In rural Michigan, for example, Sheriff Dar Leaf, who works closely with Mack to steer CSPOA policies, has spent nearly two years investigating what he alleges are local election fraud claims. Despite limited resources, he has a full-time detective focused only on election investigations and has targeted local election officials, making them the target of threats of violence from radicalized community members.

Coryell County Sheriff Scott Williams (second from left) and True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht (third from right) onstage during a Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association event in Las Vegas on July 12, 2022.]

While it’s not clear that all of the Texas sheriffs who attended CSPOA trainings are election-deniers, some expressed those views in interviews. Hendricks, the Bosque County sheriff who did not agree with Mack entirely, said he believes there was election fraud: “I don’t have evidence one way or the other. I follow the news pretty closely, and I’m not comfortable with the way the outcome was.” In an interview after the press conference in Las Vegas, Williams confirmed: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” when asked about election fraud.

In November of last year, Mack announced that he would be stepping back from the day-to-day operations of the CSPOA. He said he plans to remain active but has taken a formal position with America’s Frontline Doctors, an anti-vaccination group whose founder, Simone Gold, was sentenced to 60 days of incarceration for her role in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6. Sam Bushman, a long-time collaborator with Mack, is now the CEO of CSPOA. Bushman is best known for his daily far-right podcast “Liberty Roundtable,” which has hosted guests like Eric Trump, son of the former president; he said in November 2022, “I don’t believe that (convicted Oath Keepers founder) Stewart Rhodes was guilty.”

Shortly after Mack’s announcement, Williams appeared as a guest on “Liberty Roundtable” with Mack, who discussed the change in command at the CSPOA. Mack said that he hopes other sheriffs will get more involved with CSPOA events and trainings.

“We are just growing so quickly, and we need sitting sheriffs like Sheriff Williams to help shoulder that load,” Mack said. Williams is a member of the new CSPOA Advisory Board, alongside Leaf and other well-known far-right sheriffs.

Kirk Launius, a one-time candidate for Dallas County sheriff, is the Texas State Director for the CSPOA. He recently said that the CSPOA plans to expand its presence in Texas, using local connections and county groups like the True Texas Project as “leverage” and a way to “grease the skids.” In another recent podcast, Bushman cited the success of TCOLE certification in Texas as inspiration to expand to other states like Nevada and Utah.

Williams agreed and added, “What the CSPOA has done is taken like-minded, liberty-, God-loving sheriffs and brought us together.”

Jessica Pishko is a New America fellow working on a forthcoming book about sheriffs, to be published by Dutton.

Disclosure: Southern Poverty Law Center, Texas Christian University and Texas Farm Bureau have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/01/13/constitutional-sheriffs-texas/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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https://newrepublic.com/article/168567/constitutional-sheriffs-midterms-arizona

the “Constitutional Sheriffs” Movement Is Planning to Disrupt Election Day

:{A group of law enforcement officers who think their authority supersedes the federal government’s are running for elections across the country—and monitoring voters at the polls Given the numerous election deniers running right now—for the U.S. House and Senate, for governor and for secretary of state—the 2022 midterm elections’ consequences for the state of democracy are hard to overstate. But beyond the likes of Kari Lake or Doug Mastriano, who are garnering loads of national attention, there are hundreds of local officials whose races will shape the fate of future elections: county sheriffs. Just as a smaller-scale series of local acts of intimidation and violence led us to the violent attempt to overthrow the election on January 6, 2021, there’s a growing nationwide movement of self-proclaimed “constitutional sheriffs” who are preparing for their own slow-motion insurrection.

Adherents believe that county sheriffs are empowered to enforce the law in accordance with their personal interpretation of the Constitution, that their law enforcement authority supersedes that of states and the federal government. There is “no valid basis in the text or history of the U.S. Constitution” for this, as Georgetown University Law Center and the States United Democracy Center have outlined in depth. However, fueled by this political ideology, one rooted in white supremacism, these “constitutional sheriffs” and their supporters in far-right and paramilitary groups are gearing up for the first national election after the insurrection. https://revealnews.org/article/big-lie-sheriffs-target-us-elections

investigation by Jessica Pishko, published at Reveal, exposes the alliances and ties between far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers and a national network of sheriffs who have embraced election denial and have “appointed themselves election police.” Election deniers have also encouraged constitutional sheriffs to run in 2022. You can hear constitutional sheriff rhetoric in a number of incumbent candidates in states such as Washington, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts. Though constitutional sheriffs’ groups had been on the wane in recent years, Pishko reports, the pandemic and the “Stop the Steal” movement has given them new life, infusing them with new members and granting them a bigger platform with anti-vaxxers and election deniers.

more than half of Arizona’s current sheriffs, according to the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, “are at least partially aligned” with the constitutional sheriff movement. Some have also joined the election denial effort, such as Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes, who spoke to the Yavapai County Preparedness Team in Arizona, an organization that has some association with the Oath Keepers, as it was planning surveillance of ballot drop boxes in Arizona—“Operation Drop Box.” As the head of the Preparedness Team said at its meeting ahead of the midterms, “Everybody is worried about civil war.” Richard Mack, a former board member of the Oath Keepers and founder of the influential Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, has also visited Arizona to speak to the group. Democrats are “getting away with murder,” he told a gathering of the Preparedness Team, and “all we are asking for is that every county sheriff look at what happened in his county and make sure that we don’t fall prey.”

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Elsewhere in Arizona, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb is working with True the Vote, who were behind the debunked election-denying 2000 Mules film and who have collaborated with QAnon influencers. Lamb is “promising to act as a liaison between them and law enforcement,” as Media Matters reported. In addition to supporting “Stop the Steal” and blaming the January 6 insurrection on Hillary Clinton, among others, Lamb led a “posse” in response to Black Lives Matter protests, recruiting civilians, though his county saw no protests.

the campaign Lamb has joined, called Protect America Now, encourages sheriffs to “be ready to enforce the law and protect our constituents from any form of illegal activity,” according to documents Pishko obtained. It also offers the sheriffs “much needed grant resources to help you secure the voting procedures in your county with equipment, personnel, and increased citizen communication.” Among its recommendations are increased “patrol” at ballot drop boxes and reporting any suspicious activity to a national hotline run by True the Vote. “When other areas of government breakdown,” their letter to sheriffs says, “our local Sheriffs step in to make sure the law is enforced.”

Through such outreach, invoking election “security,” other sheriffs have enlisted in their efforts, pledging to carry out “investigations” into alleged election fraud across the United States. In Johnson County, Kansas, Sheriff Calvin Hayden failed to identify any election fraud. His investigation, The Kansas City Star reported, “hasn’t led to any charges or arrests but has helped build his profile among election deniers.” As he told supporters at an August meeting, “We’ve got to find somebody” who can say definitively that fraud is happening. At the same meeting, Hayden also told supporters, “I’m so sick and tired of hearing, ‘You’re hurting our democracy. You’re hurting our democracy.’ We don’t have a democracy. It’s a constitutional republic,” a far-right trope.

Those behind “Operation Drop Box,” the ballot box surveillance effort, stood down after they faced legal action for their desire to monitor voting locations while carrying guns. But that was just one part of the larger effort pushed by True the Vote and others, who have been coordinating to monitor ballot boxes on a much larger scale, as Pishko uncovered. As of October 27, Jen Fifield at Votebeat reported, more than 4,500 people signed up with True the Vote to monitor ballot boxes nationwide. “Their list of volunteers is growing by dozens a day,” Fifield noted, “especially since the news of voter intimidation at the sites began to spread.” That is, as the media has tracked these groups, as voters have lodged complaints, their numbers are growing.

Melissa Gira Grant@melissagira

Melissa Gira Grant is a staff writer at The New Republic and the author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work.

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https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/politics/elections-law-enforcement-conspiracy-theories-invs/index.html

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Tags: David Lane Doug Mastriano Round-Up American Renewal Project Turning Point USA

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Angry Right-Wing Moms Are Trying to Have Librarians Arrested by “Constitutional Sheriffs”

BY JESSICA PISHKO

NOV 04, 2022

Pippin wearing a "Moms for Liberty" shirt and placing her hands over stacks of books.

Jennifer Pippin, president of the Indian River County chapter of Moms for Liberty, helped launch a criminal investigation of her local school library, seeking to criminalize Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, among other books. Giorgio Viera/Getty Images

In March, special counsel to the sheriff of Hamilton County, Tennessee, Coty Wamp, was campaigning for district attorney when she met with a group of parents calling themselves Moms for Liberty. Wamp said afterwards that she had facilitated a meeting between the “parents’ rights” group and the sheriff’s office because she thought law enforcement could help the group in its goal of banning books. “I think that there’s going to come a time with some of these books where it crosses a criminal line,” Wamp said. “It’s called contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” Wamp won that promotion to district attorney and was one of the earliest law enforcement figures to begin to establish a frightening new alliance between far-right sheriff’s offices and the radical right-wing parent’s group seeking to upend America’s educational system.

After Wamp’s meeting, she did not shy away from the possibility of filing charges for “criminal” books, although she later told Jezebel that she did not intend to suggest she was going to go about arresting librarians. Whatever her actual intentions, the alliance Wamp sought to foster is a dangerous one and one that is spreading.

Across the country, members of Mothers for Liberty, a far-right group focused on banning library books and whitewashing school curricula, have appealed to sheriffs as allies in these goals. Much like the partnerships between sheriffs and militia members, or sheriffs and election deniers, this alliance is another example of how sheriffs have become the arm of the law willing to enforce the radical agenda of the far-right. It also shows how determined groups like M4L are to be seen as having legal legitimacy—and how willing sheriffs are to provide it.

I have spent the past few years reporting on far-right sheriffs and their allies and confidants. One notable change since 2020 has been the increasing number of women who identify with the politics of far-right groups like the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. While most people associate groups like CSPOA with hyper-masculine-fueled violence, women are often key facilitators between these groups and voters.

Much of this alliance emerged during the pandemic, when far-right parent groups opposed masking in schools. On forums like Facebook, these parents, mostly mothers, passed around information about the so-called constitutional sheriff movement, citing its members as potential allies. This blossomed into an anti-public-school movement focused on altering classroom curricula to eliminate material about racism, sex, or LGBTQ people; policing classrooms and libraries; eliminating requirements for all forms of vaccines as well as masking for COVID; and pushing parents to embrace home-schooling as an ideal way to escape federal and state government indoctrination.

While many anti-mask and election conspiracy rallies were filled with men clad in military-style apparel and carrying long guns, women presented a softer side and turned out in equal—if not stronger—numbers, in my observation. During the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association’s “Arise USA Resurrection Tour” last year, the two women founders of Freedom Angels appeared onstage to talk not just about resisting mask and vaccine orders but also about establishing entire communities free from government regulation, like food co-ops and alternative home-schooling. Large public events sponsored by CSPOA drew crowds approaching gender parity.

Moms 4 Liberty—their slogan is “Parents’ Rights”—is just one of these influential women-led groups. It was formed in Florida by Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice after both lost their reelection campaigns for their respective local school boards. Their latest conference theme was “Joyful Warriors,” another example of how far-right women mitigate the toxic masculinity associated with groups like the Oath Keepers, border militias, and the Proud Boys. According to recent reporting by Mother Jones, the group now claims 100,000 members across 38 states.

While M4L has been accused of various direct actions like harassing local school board officials with emails, calls, and threats, it has lately begun to approach county sheriffs as a way to legitimize its grievances and gain actual traction in criminal courts. Granted, it hasn’t been too successful yet. But these alliances suggest that should it not achieve its goals via democratic means, M4L is perfectly willing to find its own firepower.

One strategy has been to bring criminal complaints to sympathetic sheriffs, which become “sex crime” investigations, further spreading the QAnon-influenced anxieties that children are being recruited or brainwashed by sex predators presenting as progressives. In the spring, Jennifer Pippin, who is an M4L chapter chair, filed a criminal complaint against a school library in Indian River County, Florida, for failing to remove dozens of books flagged by the members as inappropriate. The original list of books for examination included more than 150 titles, and while some were removed, not all of them were. In an email, Pippin told a member of the school board that she was focused on “ALL of the books currently in the libraries that have sex, rape, drugs etc etc in them that need to be removed immediately so they don’t get into the hands of anymore students in our district.” She threatened, “I’m holding all of you accountable.”

Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers—who last year was aSheriff Fellow at the far-right think tank Claremont Institute—assigned a sergeant to investigate the issue, reviewing emails between an M4L representative and various local officials. There were even annotated pages of the books in question, including sections of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer about a 9-year-old boy whose father is killed in the 9/11 attacks. (The book has been the subject of previous attacks by some parents since it was published.) The pages are annotated with handwritten notes like “sexual encounter” and “masterbation.”

The six-week investigation resulted in a 74-page report, which concluded that “no crime occurred.” Whether patently unconstitutional charges are ultimately filed in cases like these, though, is not the issue. The chilling effect of the threat is.

That threat is real. In a letter to the school superintendent, Flowers wrote that “the totality of the circumstances do not allow us to make an arrest in this case,” but added, “We do not feel that this content is appropriate for young children even though it does not rise to the level of a crime.” Flowers then recommended “stricter oversight” for children’s books.

Other sheriffs—especially those in Florida, where M4L began and has garnered support from Gov. Ron DeSantis—have conducted similar investigations into so-called dirty books, and while no criminal charges have resulted thus far, they indicate that going to the sheriff is an accepted strategy. In Flagler County, Florida, another M4L member filed an almost identical complaint to Pippin’s. And in Polk County, Florida, a dark money group called County Citizens Defending Freedom funded a series of complaints about books (under the guise of citizen complaints) to Sheriff Grady Judd, who deemed the material “vile and nasty and inappropriate” but not pornographic. Judd added that the matter was “under review to determine if there will be a criminal investigation” based on additional complaints, which all appear to have stemmed from the same dark money group that produced the initial complaints.

Sheriff candidates in many counties are also courting M4L members as political allies, appearing alongside them at events, providing legal legitimacy to their fears, and contributing to the spread of misinformation. Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County, who was recently exposed for potentially trying to bribe political candidates he did not like to exit races and endorse his preferred candidates, has embraced M4L-allied members for school board.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, Sheriff Vic Regalado did an April speaking event with an M4L county chair in which he supplied background on “applicable laws,” explaining that many criminal laws do not apply to book banning, even things that would “make a normal person puke.” He noted, however, regarding a book of poetry, “If an individual on the streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were showing this to a child, they would be in cuffs like that”—snapping his fingers—“and they would be prosecuted, but I don’t know that they would be convicted in today’s world.”

“This is now accepted,” he continued, waving a page around, arguing that a jury would be unlikely to convict because “a lot of parents are apathetic,” and blaming in particular single mothers. He ended by promising to consult with the district attorney about “how we can insert law enforcement into this thing.”

It might seem unusual to have elected law enforcement—especially in a time of much-hyped fears of violent crime and alleged understaffing—insert themselves into whether a book should be in a school library. Sheriffs, as politicians, need not justify the use of their resources, though, whether they are used to solve murders, investigate non-existent election fraud, or thoroughly report out whether Jonathan Safran Foer’s book about 9/11 is too sexy for the youths.

The alliance between sheriffs and M4L makes further levels of political sense as well. Local police chiefs are unlikely to be allies, as their budgets are scrutinized by city leadership and they tend to be in larger cities. Sheriffs serve longer terms than police chiefs and are politicians at heart, having the ability to deploy time and personnel however they see fit, with little if any oversight. And even if there were oversight, in most states where M4L is active, it has the support of state actors and other powerful politicians. Investigating a school book is both safe, easy, and popular in these jurisdictions, especially compared with solving actual crime.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/report/conspiracy-theorists-with-badges-and-guns-pro-trump-sheriffs-vow-to-police-elections/

An Unholy Alliance of Election Deniers, ‘Constitutional Sheriffs,’ and Profiteering Propagandists Threatens Elections

Two years after former President Donald Trump began aggressively attacking the integrity of the 2020 election to justify his efforts to stay in power, an unholy alliance threatens the fair conduct of elections this fall and again in 2024. A national network of conspiracy theorists and right-wing political operatives have been joined by far-right sheriffs, whose determination has been fortified by lies about election fraud and fueled by a belief that they are waging a holy war against the forces of evil.

Richard Mack, a former Arizona county sheriff and former board member of the anti-government extremist organization Oath Keepers, summoned members and supporters of his Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association to a July gathering in Las Vegas, where he delivered an urgent message:  The country’s county sheriffs, Mack said, must launch investigations into voting fraud in the 2020 election—investigations that he thought could put Trump back in power.

“I would love for the investigations to prove that he indeed won the election, and I think at the time the Supreme Court would have to rule that he gets put back in because it was based on criminal activity,” Mack said. Though he wasn’t sure enough sheriffs would step up and “do their duty” to make investigations into the 2020 election happen, Mack urged sheriffs to take an active role in policing this year’s elections.

Mack is the founder and leader of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which teaches local sheriffs that they are the supreme law enforcement officer in their counties, and that it is their duty to resist state and federal “tyranny.”

Mack and other MAGA-minded sheriffs like Mark Lamb turned their focus to policing elections after seeing “2000 Mules,” a film produced by right-wing propagandist Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote leaders Catherine Englebrecht and Gregg Phillips, longtime promoters of election fraud conspiracy theories. Experts from across the political spectrum debunked the movie’s claims about voter fraud, but Trump and many of his supporters have embraced and promoted its inflammatory claims.

The Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol and evidence gathered by the House select committee investigating the insurrection have provided clear evidence that lies about election fraud can drive people to violence. In the weeks before Election Day, the embrace of “2000 Mules” and its inflammatory claims by public officials and far-right activists has already led to multiple reports of armed voter intimidation by vigilantes at ballot drop boxes. It could also increase the potential for violence at the polls.

“The involvement of ‘people with guns and badges’ to intimidate voters, and attempts to access voting equipment, could become ‘go-to-tactics,’” Bulwark editor Charlie Sykes told Reuters. “It doesn’t feel hyperbolic to say this is extremely dangerous.”

Armed Enforcers for the Anti-Democracy Coalition?

Mack founded CSPOA in 2009, a period of far-right ferment after the election of former President Barack Obama. As a leader of the self-described “constitutional sheriffs” movement, he has painted the federal government as authoritarian, referring to federal agencies as “the gestapo” and suggesting there were “some startling and irrefutable comparisons between Barack Obama and Adolph Hitler.”

Mack became a right-wing folk hero when he successfully challenged a Clinton-era federal gun law in the mid-90s. In 2014, Mack was back in the spotlight when he joined Cliven Bundy’s armed standoff with federal officials promoted a public relations strategy of putting women up front if shooting started.

Political scientists Emily Farris and Mirya Hollman recently conducted a survey of sheriffs’ attitudes and concluded that “Mack’s group has successfully radicalized a generation of sheriffs to believe that the office has seemingly unlimited power and autonomy.” That attitude is particularly dangerous among sheriffs, who compared to other law enforcement officials often have little structural oversight and accountability.

“We can and must take America back county by county and state by state,” Mack wrote in his 2014 book, “Are You a David?” That message is central to his current organizing efforts and one that he delivers to sheriffs and other law enforcement officials, often in state-sanctioned training sessions.

After the release of “2000 Mules” in May, Mack began shifting CSPOA’s focus from training sheriffs about his view of their constitutional superpowers to urging them to mobilize against “voter fraud.” He has described the movie’s oft-debunked claims as “overwhelming” and “compelling” evidence and said that “every sheriff and every chief of police in this country should be following up with a criminal investigation on the claims made in ‘2000 Mules.’”

Richard Mack speaks at CSPOA press conference on election fraud.

While Mack claims that his “2000 Mules”-inspired “election integrity” efforts are nonpartisan— he declared in a July press release that he simply wanted to know whether the claims made in “2000 Mules” are true and called for “honest, professional, and independent investigations”—it’s clear where his support lies when speaking to right-wing audiences. On a right-wing radio show in July, he called Trump’s defeat “a horrible, heinous crime” and “one of if not the worst crime committed against the American people in the last 100 years.”

“This is a coup against the American people,” Mack declared during a September appearance on another radio show. He recently told listeners of the right-wing Liberty Monks podcast that they “must vote for any Republican that we possibly can” to “punish the Democratic Party” and “stand against the destruction of America.”

Other sheriffs have taken up Mack’s call to investigate the 2020 presidential election and police future elections. One of Mack’s allies, Sheriff Calvin Hayden of Johnson County, Kansas, has “promoted unsubstantiated suspicions of election fraud,” according to the Kansas City Star. Hayden also offered to have his staff collect ballots from drop boxes, a move rejected by local officials as an attempt to interfere with the election.

Mack has also backed Dar Leaf, a sheriff in Berry County, Michigan, who is under investigation by the state’s attorney general over the conduct of his investigation of election equipment. Leaf has been represented by an attorney who was sanctioned by a federal judge for her role in Sidney Powell’s legal efforts to overturn the election results. Turning the system of governance on its head, Mack has said Leaf has the right to arrest state officials who interfered with his investigation.

From Insurrection to Elections: Sheriff Mark Lamb and Protect America Now

Mack isn’t the only far-right law enforcement official who was fired up by “2000 Mules.” Mark Lamb, sheriff of Arizona’s Pima County, was also drawn in by True the Vote’s conspiracy fraud claims. After viewing an interview that right-wing activist Charlie Kirk did with Engelbrecht—an interview that has been viewed more than 2 million times—Lamb contacted Englebrecht and brought his Protect America Now organization into a formal partnership with True the Vote. In October, Mack met with the Arizona Oathkeepers to talk about “election integrity” and the partnership being between Lamb and True the Vote, the Arizona Mirror reported.

An admirer of Mack and the CSPOA, Lamb built a national following through reality TV shows before turning energy toward Trumpian politics and the promotion of false voter fraud claims with the launch of his own organization in 2021.

Lamb founded Protect America Now in the month following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The insurrection, Lamb said, was not Trump’s fault, adding, “I don’t know how loud we have to get before they have to listen to us and know we will no longer tolerate them stripping our freedoms away.”

Describing Lamb as “charismatic and ambitious” in a 2021 profile, Politico reported that at an anti-vaccine rally that year, Lamb told supporters, “We’re going to find out what kind of patriots you are. We’re going to find out who is willing to die for freedom.”

Protect America Now’s website declares, “We support Sheriffs and law enforcement members that believe in God, Family and Freedom.” The group asks for a monthly donation of $17.76 to “help us win this battle for the soul of America.” It promotes a hard-right line on immigration and other issues. In videos on Protect America Now’s YouTube channel, Lambwarns that crime is running rampant and “liberals want to take our guns.” In another, Lambsays, “together, we are fighting back against the liberal takeover.”

In June, True the Vote and Protect America Now announced ProtectAmerica.Vote, a partnership that it said would “empower sheriffs” to “support election integrity” and would bridge the gap between voters and law enforcement to “ensure we have secure elections in this country.”

Engelbrecht has said she embraced the sheriffs after the FBI dismissed True the Vote’s allegations of voter fraud. “It’s like the lights went on,” she saidat a CSPOA event this July. “It’s the sheriffs. That’s who can do these investigations; that’s who we can trust; that’s who we can turn over information to.” True the Vote says its partnership with the constitutional sheriffs will include raising grant money and providing equipment to sheriffs to expand ballot drop box surveillance and investigate fraud claims.

Lamb claims his partnership with True the Vote is a nonpartisan effort, but he makes no secret of his support for Trump and Trump’s stolen election claims. Trump “loves the rule of law,” Lamb said at a Trump rally in Arizona this July. “We’re gonna make sure that we have election integrity this year,” Lamb pledged. “We will not let happen what happened in 2020.”

Local critics say Lamb has politicized law enforcement. Pinal County, where Lamb is sheriff, experienced ballot shortages during the August primary, and Lamb, true to character,suggested on right-wing media that there might be something more at play than incompetence by election officials and vowed to investigate.

Inspired by Lies: ‘2000 Mules’ as Political Warfare

Right-wing filmmaker and author D’Souza describes his propaganda movies as weapons of political and spiritual warfare. By that measure, the “2000 Mules” movie has proven itself effective in mobilizing Trump’s troops.

Far-right wing media have boosted Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules” even though its claims have been widely debunked.

In “2000 Mules,” D’Souza dramatized claims made by Engelbrecht and Phillips that liberal nonprofits had mobilized “ballot harvesting” operations to stuff drop boxes with illegal votes. But for all the wild hype about their use of mobile device geolocation data and security camera footage from ballot drop boxes, election experts have repeatedly said that there’s essentially no there there. Even former Trump administration Attorney General William Barr dismissed the movie’s claims as laughable in testimony before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The movie’s claims have also been declared bogus by experts in cell phone tracking technology and by election officials. As critics have pointed out, despite all the data, footage, and money available to the producers, the film does not show a single documented instance of the kind of fraud it claims to expose. Georgia election officials tracked down one person the movie accused of being a “mule” and determined that the person was depositing his own ballot and his family members’ ballots, as permitted by law. On Oct. 26, a Georgia voter sued D’Souza, Englebrecht, Phillips, and True the Vote for wrongly accusing him of casting illegal votes.

Among the other demonstrably false claims in the movie was that True the Vote’s geolocation data was so accurate that it helped solve a murder case.

But MAGA world activists primed to believe Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories ate it up. Trump himself hosted a premiere for the film at Mar-a Lago in May. Many Republican officials and proponents of election conspiracies like MyPillow founder Mike Lindell have joined Trump in promoting the film and its claims.

As the film took MAGA world by storm, it came to the attention of far-right militias, too. It was cited by Lions of Liberty, an Arizona “preparedness” group connected to the far-right Oath Keepers that is organizing armed surveillance of ballot boxes, and by Matt Shea, a far-right former state legislator known for his handbook on “biblical warfare,” who is organizing similar efforts in his state.

The release of the book version of “2000 Mules” was delayed at the last minute by the publisher after it had been printed and sent to bookstores containing potentially libelous accusations against several nonprofit groups it accused of mobilizing voter fraud. Before a toned-down version was released, Engelbrecht and Phillips distanced themselves from the book, saying they were looking ahead to future elections and their work with sheriffs.

Before ‘2000 Mules’: True the Vote’s History of Election Fraud Conspiracies

True the Vote is well known among voting rights experts for its long history of promoting voter fraud conspiracy theories and supporting actions to restrict voting.

“True the Vote and groups like it are well-documented voter intimidation scams,” former Harris County Clerk and current Houston mayoral candidate Chris Hollins told Texas Monthly this summer. “They’re created to amplify conspiracy theories, funded by wealthy right-wing activists, to tie the hands of election administrators and embolden partisan poll watchers.”

Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center points to True the Vote’s “long history of anti-voter conduct, including orchestrating mass challenges to voters,” some as recent as the 2021 Georgia runoff elections.

True the Vote leaders Engelbrecht and Phillips—business and reportedly romantic partners—have profited from unproven claims of voter fraud. The organization has been the subject of multiple investigations and exposés revealing their repeated failure to make good on outlandish claims while funneling money raised by their nonprofit group into their own pockets via loans and payments to for-profit companies they run.

True the Vote was founded after the 2008 election and grew out of a local Tea Party organization in Houston, Texas, called the King Street Patriots, which was accused of conducting “1960s style” voter intimidation during the 2010 election cycle.

For the past decade, True the Vote has promoted alarmism about voter fraud and resisted voting rights protections. It falsely claimed, for example, that the Obama administration was intentionally registering noncitizens to vote and charged that renewing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would encourage “race-based segregation.” As “voter fraud” and “election integrity” became right-wing justifications for voter suppression, True the Vote pulled in money from right-wing funders and activist groups, including the Bradley Foundation, Donors Trust, the Judicial Confirmation Network, and State Policy Network.

True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht railed against a bill she said would “blow up our elections” in a March 2020 YouTube video.

When Trump was elected in 2016 while losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, Phillips stroked Trump’s ego by claiming that Phillips could verify that 3 million noncitizens cast votes in the election. While Trump touted the baselessand repeatedly debunked claim that he was the actual popular vote winner, True the Vote never released any evidence to back him up.

Though True the Vote claims that its so-called “election integrity” work is nonpartisan, the group aggressively promotes the interests of right-wing Republican candidates. In 2018, a New Jersey judge decided not to renew a 1981 ban on the Republican Party recruiting soldiers and cops as poll watchers to intimidate Black voters. True the Vote saw this as an opportunity. At a 2020 gathering of the Council for National Policy, a secretive network of influential right-wing and far-right leaders, Englebrecht touted True the Vote’s “Continue to Serve” initiative, which she said would recruit retired military and law enforcement as poll watchers. One participant suggested it would be especially useful in “inner city” and Native American precincts.

True the Vote’s credibility has been challenged by some on the right, even by other Big Lie and voter suppression advocates. After Trump’s defeat in 2020, True the Vote officials took $2.5 million from Fred Eshelman, a Trump-supporting billionaire who believed that the group was going to use state-level election data to prove Trump’s fraud claims in court. When they seemingly did little more to overturn the election than pay piles of cash to their companies and their lawyer, right-wing movement consigliere James Bopp, for a few short-lived lawsuits, Eshelman sued in an unsuccessful effort to get his money back.

Conspiracy Theories as Spiritual Warfare

Just as Christian nationalist ideology and the belief that keeping Trump in office was a sacred cause energized the Jan. 6 insurrection and suffused much of the MAGA movement, True the Vote’s leaders and their far-right sheriff allies rely on spiritual warfare rhetoric to justify their actions and motivate their followers.

Before the 2020 election, True the Vote partnered with Intercessors for America, a group of pro-Trump “prayer warriors,” to spread right-wing talking points about the threat of voter fraud. On an online prayer call in May 2020, Englebrecht called the struggle over expanded voting by mail a “spiritual battle” for “control of the free world.”

After the release of “2000 Mules,” Intercessors for America claimed that the movie documented “an indisputable and alarming gravy train for fraudulent votes.” Intercessors for America defended Engelbrecht and Phillips from critics, portraying them as victims of persecution.

This August, True the Vote held a gathering focused on voter fraud that it called “The Pit,” a name taken from a biblical passage that says God will grant his disciples relief from days of trouble “until a pit is dug for the wicked.” On a “prayer call” promoting the event,Intercessors for America’s Kris Kubalsaid that election fraud is “demonic” and an “evil from Satan.”  True the Vote, she declared, was involved in a “supernatural battle.” Phillips agreed that “there is so much evil around all of this right now.”

“God wants us to expose that pit and shut it down, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Engelbrecht said. True the Vote leaders did not release compelling new evidence of voter fraud at “The Pit,” but they did announce the creation of a “fusion center” that would gather “actionable intelligence” for local sheriffs to act on.

Like Engelbrecht and Phillips, Mack portrays his “constitutional sheriff” movement and its involvement in election issues in spiritual terms. In his 2014 book, “Are You a David?” Mack argued that “modern-day Davids”—by which he meant sheriffs and other local public servants—are “the only viable solution for the restoration of our God-given rights, in conjunction with our willingness to repent and return to God’s law as a people.” At a July press conference Mack organized during the right-wing “Freedom Fest” held in Las Vegas, he urged sheriffs to “join us in this holy cause.”

Sheriffs: The Law or a Threat to the Law?

There is a long history in this country of corrupt local sheriffs abusing their power, from Jim Clark leading attacks on civil rights marchers in Alabama in the 1960s to Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva overseeing a department notorious for violent deputy gangs threatening public safety today.

In 2020, the research group Political Research Associates identified 136 sheriffs aligned with the far-right “patriot” and militia movement in which Political Research Associates situates Mack’s CSPOA. The research group noted that at the time, 90 percent of the 3,081 county sheriffs in the United States were white men, and that “there has been a concerted effort in the last decade to mobilize sheriffs toward further supporting and expanding systems of racialized social control and expulsion.” The Reflective Democracy Campaign, a project of the Women’s Donor Network, noted that “The alarmingly skewed demographics of sheriffs suggest a system hard-wired for abuse, and their track record of mistreating women and people of color confirms it.”

Some sheriff’s offices have connections to, or have been infiltrated by, other far-right extremist groups. The Brennan Center found that sheriff’s deputies in Washington state and Louisiana had publicly supported and joined the Proud Boys—whose leaders have been charged with seditious conspiracy in the attack on the Capitol—and noted that a sheriff’s deputy in Orange County, California, was photographed wearing a patch that included the word “Oath Keeper” and the logo of the Three Percenters on his bulletproof vest. The Washington state and Louisiana deputies were fired; the California deputy was not.

Added to this already toxic mix are messages from the likes of Mack and Lamb that sheriffs must investigate electoral fraud. Such declarations are a “significant overreach of authority,” David Mahoney, a former president of the National Sheriffs Association, told The Guardian.

So what role, if any, should sheriffs play in our elections?

“There is a critical role for law enforcement to play in protecting our election: they should be offering protection to election officials and election workers that have come under attack as a result of lies being spread by groups like True the Vote,” the Brennan Center’s Sean Morales-Doyletold The Guardian in August.

It is not difficult to imagine the chilling effect of being accused of voter fraud by a person with a badge and gun, what Jessica Pishko called “part of an escalating campaign to police the vote” in a recent story for Bolts magazine. “The prospect of increased involvement of armed officers recalls the days of voter intimidation in the Jim Crow South (and beyond), and could also help encourage extremist vigilante violence by perpetuating baseless rumors of fraud, often against Black and Latinx communities,” Pishko wrote.

Recent reports of armed bands gathering at ballot drop boxes and challenging voters suggests that Pishko was right. (This week a federal court ordered a group in Arizona to stop intimidating voters with their armed and body-armored presence at ballot drop boxes.) [check]

The multi-faceted campaign to corrupt elections by convincing millions of Americans that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump by Black and Brown voters is a threat to democracy. It has created and inflamed a large group of enraged Trump supporters and sparked harassment and threats against election officials. It has led to a wave of state laws designed to restrict registration and voting. It has led to Trumpist partisans and conspiracy theorists becoming poll workers and running for political offices where they will have the power to interfere with the administration of elections. And it has led some armed vigilantes to set up intimidating “security” operations at voting locations.

Added to this volatile mix are groups of sheriffs riled up by falsehoods and propaganda, pumped up an ideology of virtually unchecked power, and spurred on by the belief that they are engaged in a holy war to save America from destruction. Voters and other public officials must be alert to the abuses that could flow from these new partnerships and be prepared to hold individuals accountable for any actions to intimidate or interfere with people exercising their right to vote.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7wvj/lions-of-liberty-oath-keepers-midterm-ballot-boxes

Armed Fringe Groups Are Gearing Up to ‘Protect’ Midterm Ballot Dropboxes

The groups, inspired by conspiracy theories and the Big Lie about the 2020 election, could deter some voters, experts warn.

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By Tess Owen

October 6, 2022​Screenshot of a YCPT meeting in August led by Jim Arroyo

A “patriot group” in Arizona called Lions of Liberty—which is closely tied to the Oath Keepers—is organizing their supporters to go out and conduct round-the-clock surveillance of ballot dropboxes during the midterm elections. It’s the latest sign that groups with clear ties to extremists, galvanized by conspiracy theories, are seeking to take matters into their own hands this election season. 

Ballot dropboxes have become the central focus of election fraud conspiracy theorists, thanks to the debunked documentary 2,000 Mules, by right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza.

That film claims that a shadowy network of hired “mules” in contested states were hired by nonprofits as part of a giant ballot trafficking operation to stuff dropboxes with fake absentee ballots, all with the goal of stealing the 2020 election from Donald Trump. The film was released in May, six months before the midterms, reinvigorated the “Stop the Steal” movement and inspired vigilante efforts around the country—in some cases spearheaded by innocuous-sounding groups that obscure the known ideologues and extremists behind them.

Lions of Liberty is the “political arm” of a newly-formed nonprofit called Yavapai County Preparedness Team (YCPT), led by the former vice president of Arizona’s Oath Keeper chapter, Jim Arroyo. At a meeting in August that was posted to YouTube, Arroyo explained that they had turned the Oath Keeper chapter into a corporate nonprofit under the name of YCPT, which in turn gave them the ability to get a bank account.

In an email to VICE News, Arroyo said that the Arizona chapter officially broke ties with the national leadership of the notorious militia group after it was  implicated in the violent riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. (Five members are currently standing trial for seditious conspiracy charges, including the group’s leader Stewart Rhodes. Prosecutors allege that Rhodes and his cohort plotted an “armed rebellion to shatter a bedrock of American democracy.”) However, they had been operating more or less independently from the national organization for about four years, said Arroyo; Rhodes broke ties with the Arizona contingent after they declined to assist in armed vigilante activities at the border, out of respect for Border Patrol.

News

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Arroyo, who insists YCPT is not a militia, led that August meeting in an Oath Keepers hat and T-shirt. He explained to the crowd that he would need volunteers to monitor ballot drop boxes, and that he was particularly concerned about the period between midnight and 6 a.m. “If you saw the movie 2,000 Mules” he said, that timeframe was “when the bulk of the problems happen, that’s when we will be on scene with a camera and flashlight.” Arroyo told VICE News that some volunteers might be armed. “This is Arizona; almost everyone is armed, all the time,” he said. “That's not a big deal here.”

Arroyo said he will likely pick up a couple of shifts to monitor dropboxes.

In the August meeting, Arroyo assured members of the crowd that they’d be welcome to continue wearing their Oath Keepers merch, even while conducting ballot dropbox surveillance. “Your shirts and hats are what tell the world you’re not ashamed to be an Oath Keeper, or afraid of the government just because of that crap that happened on January the 6th, which was completely staged. It was a setup,” Arroyo said, before acknowledging, “Yeah, they did something stupid beyond all belief.”

During the meeting, Arroyo also stoked fears of an imminent civil war. “This is not the same as (Black Lives Matter) and George Floyd or antifa. This is a direct confrontation with the federal government,” he said. “This is now the federal government of the United States of America in direct conflict with its own citizenry.”

The Lions of Liberty describe themselves as a “resolute nucleus of concerned, passionate conservative patriots who are determined to correct the course for our country which has been hijacked and undermined by global elites, communists, leftists, deep state bureaucrats, and fake news.” Their goal? “To bring God back to our leadership and win this spiritual battle for the soul of our nation.”

The Lions of Liberty aren’t the only ones calling for and coordinating vigilante activity around the midterm elections.

Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a Seattle-based nonprofit, has been closely tracking this trend.

“The threat of groups of far-right vigilantes, some potentially armed, fueled by Big Lie misinformation, lurking near ballot dropboxes, could potentially deter some from casting their votes,” warned Burghart. “The possibility of conflict in such a scenario is real.”

Burghart added that “dropbox vigilantism” perpetuates unsubstantiated claims of rampant voter fraud that “keep the Big Lie alive and further erodes confidence in elections and democracy.”

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Former Washington state Rep. Matt Shea runs On Fire Ministries, an apocalyptic Christian nationalist church in Spokane, and has been leading “training sessions” for prospective volunteers to monitor dropboxes. 

“We are doing something for the community. How many of you watched 2,000 Mules? Raise your hands,” said Shea during a service in September. “I think it would be good if we had some folks who were certified, trained, dropbox observers, in Spokane County.” The training took place on Sept. 30.

Shea is a particularly controversial character; a 2019 investigation by the Washington Legislature concluded that he’d “participated in an act of domestic terrorism” for his involvement in three armed conflicts against the federal government between 2014 and 2016, including the Bundys’ armed standoffs in Nevada and Oregon and an armed conflict with the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department in Priest River, Idaho.

And a group called True the Vote, which was involved in the 2,000 Mules documentary, is also teaming up with the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) to monitor dropboxes nationwide. CSPOA is headed by Richard Mack, who has long-standing ties to the militia movement, including to the Oath Keepers.

“The plan from national Big Lie groups, like True the Vote, is to use those “voter fraud” claims to get sympathetic sheriffs to intervene in elections,” said Burghart.

Dropbox surveillance efforts started getting underway earlier this summer, during the primaries, described then by the New York Times as a “nascent” movement. In some places, like in Arizona, groups were planning dropbox “tailgate parties.” One person with a handle referencing QAnon posted a photo of their party to Trump’s platform Truth Social, and credited Seth Keshel, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer and conspiracy theorist, for the idea.

[Screenshot from the app TruthSocial showing a "dropbox tailgate party"

Brian Cates, a columnist for the fringe-right publication The Epoch Times, has long been a proponent of the “Big Lie” and has been riling up his more than 120,000 followers on Telegram around the idea of taking matters into their own hands this election season. 

“The time for calling for people to just show up to vote is long past. We’re moving into another completely different era,” he wrote. “Citizens will be given the tools to monitor all the dropboxes and engage in massive real-time information operations in order to bring about election integrity.”

“Forewarned is forearmed,” he added. “An army of patriots is going to force compliance with the election laws in their states before these next elections are held.”

One of the primary examples of “evidence” of nefarious activity offered by 2,000 Mules was surveillance videos that appeared to show individuals posting multiple ballots into a dropbox, including in Georgia. Submitting multiple ballots on behalf of other people is known as “ballot harvesting,” and it is legal in several states, including Georgia.

However, the fact that submitting multiple ballots has been presented as a telltale sign of election fraud lays the groundwork for possible confrontations between dropbox “monitors” and people who are acting entirely within the law. (Right-wing political commentator Monica Matthews, from Clear Talk Media, even tried to remind her followers of this fact. “Before you all plan Dropbox tailgate parties to monitor the integrity of your elections- MAKE SURE you check your new state laws. Some states allow harvesting,” she wrote on Twitter in August. “Confronting people at dropboxes could land you in jail.”)

Earlier this summer, ahead of Washington’s August 2 primary, some signs began showing up near dropboxes near Seattle saying “This Ballot Dropbox is Under Surveillance” and warned of criminal penalties for ballot harvesting, the Seattle Times reported. However, it’s also legal in Washington to drop off multiple ballots at once on behalf of family members.

The signs also had a QR code that allowed passersby to report “suspicious activity” to the King County Republican Party(whose chair disavowed the vigilante activity). Amber Krabach, a GOP activist, QAnon conspiracy theorist and member of the Kings County Republicans’ “Election integrity Committee”, was behind the signs. The county elections office asked the sheriff’s department to investigate whether Krabach had broken a state law barring civilians from influencing someone’s vote within 25 feet of a ballot dropbox. They didn’t press charges, but they did refer the matter to the FBI.

All these vigilante efforts are taking place against a backdrop of increasingly incendiary rhetoric from GOP figures and far-right forums alike, about what will happen if they get even so much of a whiff of “voter fraud” this election season.

“If our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place—and it’s bloodshed,” said ex-Congressman Madison Cawthorn at a GOP event in North Carolina this summer.

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On Patriots.win, a pro-Trump forum, some have discussed the need to bring guns to monitor dropboxes. Someone shared an article from the right-wing Gateway Pundit claiming they’d found evidence of massive voter fraud in Detroit during the 2020 election. “We need people waiting for that shit this time and take that shit at gun point,” someone responded. “Use walkie-talkies and don't park anywhere near there or use fake plates and a vehicle wrap.”

Others, like Arroyo from YCPT, have stoked fears of an imminent civil war instigated by the Democrats. “Keep your powder dry until after the midterms,” one person wrote. “No matter what, they are going to try like hell to provoke a civil war before then.”

“Hold the line till Nov… then do whatever the fuck you gotta do,” another user on patriots.win wrote.

p. 16 1 occurrence

According to the Sheriff, on the same day within one hour of leaving the meeting withBundy and Payne, Richard Mack,a member of COWS and associate of Representative Shea who Investigators identified as the head of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Police Officers Association (CSPOA), called the Sheriff and extended an offer in dealing with the government overreach in the Hammond case. Mack spoke very highly of the Bundy family. Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, Nevada, identified as a close associate of Representative Shea and member of COWS also called the Sheriff that same week in support the Sheriff stepping in to prevent the Hammonds from going back to federal prison.

p. 47 1 occurrence

• • Richard Mack , President of the CSPOA called Sheriff Wardand told him he participated in the protest march on January 2, 2016 but not the armed takeover of the refuge and did not condone it.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Sheriffs_and_Peace_Officers_Association

https://www.azmirror.com**/2020/01**/06/the-arizona-connections-to-domestic-terrorism-advocate-matt-shea/

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a Washington state lawmaker accused of participating in acts of domestic terrorism by an independent report commissioned by his own legislature has connections to two former elected officials in Arizona. 

Matt Shea had been a key figure in multiple armed standoffs that took place between federal authorities in Oregon, Nevada and Idaho from 2014 to 2016. 

Shea, a Republican lawyer first elected in 2008, was :{suspended from Washington’s House Republican Caucus:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and stripped of his position as the ranking member of the House Environment and Energy Committee after the report was released. 

The :{report:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: claims that Shea gave information on the movements and tactics of law enforcement to groups who were being monitored during incidents such as the high-profile standoff between the FBI and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. 

The report details the ways Shea and his group, :{the Coalition of Western States:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, often referred to as COWS, worked behind the scenes to provide information, intelligence and logistical support. 

COWS also included members who are residents of Arizona, two of whom were elected officials at the time. 

Arizona elected officials

Robert Corbell was elected to the Greenlee County Board of Supervisors from 2013-16. He’s also a member of COWS. 

:{Corbell has been vocal in the past:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: about his role in the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. However, the report sheds additional light on his and COWS’ roles in the occupation. 

On Jan. 2, 2016, armed men seized the wildlife refuge and occupied it until Feb. 11. Ammon Bundy led :{the occupation:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: to protest what he believed were the wrongful convictions of fellow ranchers. 

Ammon Bundy is the son of rancher Cliven Bundy, has been a key figure in the militia movement and was a central figure in the 2014 standoff in Nevada between his father and federal authorities.  

Corbell in March told Oregon public radio station OPB that he had met Shea at the Bundy ranch years earlier to discuss “sovereignty” and how to get laws changed.

“So, we went to the casino at the state line, and in the motel room there … we created COWS,” Corbell said about the meeting in April 2014. Corbell also told OPB that he knew that the occupation was likely going to happen, something that investigators noted in the report on Shea.   

Another video shows Corbell with Shea, speaking from the Bundy ranch during the 2014 standoff in Nevada. 

"The Constitution is being trampled on and people are finally standing up, thank God and God bless,” Corbell says in the video.

Corbell often shares anti-government and conspiracy theory posts on his personal Facebook page, some involving the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, a frequent target of COWS, Shea and the Bundys. 

[twt hammond land to russia for uranium?!] vid]

corbell is not the only former elected official from Arizona linked to COWS and Shea. 

Barry Weller, who was elected to on the Apache County Board of Supervisors from 2013-16, was also in the 2014 video.

“I’m here to support the Bundys and I’m here to support the process,” Weller says in the video. “I’m here to call all those thousands of other supervisors to stand up for their citizens.” 

Weller is also mentioned in the report as a member of COWS. 

In 2016, Weller made news after :{speaking in favor of a bill:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: in the Arizona legislature that would split Apache County at Interstate 40. Lawmakers have been debating similar proposals for decades, and Gov. Bruce Babbitt in 1982 vetoed a bill that would have created a predominantly Navajo county, calling it racial legislation.

One of Weller’s fellow supervisors said he believed Weller’s advocacy for the measure was racially motivated. Weller said his support of the measure, which would have divided the predominantly white part Apache County he represented away from the Navajo parts of the county, was economic in nature and not motivated by race.

Corbell and Weller did not respond to requests for comment. 

Other notable Arizonans

The report names other Arizona figures who participated in both the Malheur and the Bundy Ranch standoffs. 

Former Graham County Sheriff :{Richard Mack:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, founder of the :{Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, is a member of COWS and, according to confidential sources, helped Shea plan the Malheur takeover, the report said.  

Mack denied helping to organize the takeover or having any advance knowledge of it.

“That’s a lie,” Mack told Arizona Mirror. He said he was unaware of the armed takeover and later told Ammon Bundy he was opposed to the idea: “I had no idea it was heading towards that sort of escalation.”

Investigators in Washington interviewed Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward in Oregon, whom Mack and others approached prior to the takeover of the Malheur refuge.

In November 2015, Ammon Bundy and others told the sheriff that if he did not intercede on behalf of father-and-son ranchers in Oregon who were charged with arson amid a land dispute with BLM that they would “bring thousands of people here to do your job for you” and that they would create “civil unrest.”

Dwight and Steven Hammond had :{been convicted of arson:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: on federal land that they say they started to stop an invasive plant from growing further into their cattle grazing fields. President Donald Trump later :{pardoned them:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: on the arson charges.  

Within an hour of Bundy leaving, Mack called Ward and spoke very highly of the Bundy family. Mack later participated in a protest march involving the Hammonds. Some men broke off from that protest to take over the refuge, though Mack was not a part of the actual takeover.

According to the report, Mack told Ward that the sheriff could “get out from under the situation” by taking the Hammonds into his custody and simply charging them with crimes they didn’t commit so “the Feds” couldn’t have them and they would be adjudicated. 

Ward said this suggestion was similar to one in a letter he’d received from Cliven Bundy.

Shea was also a featured speaker at one of Mack’s events in 2013.

Mack told the Mirror he hasn’t been active in COWS for at least four years, and said if he ever received one of the intel emails that Shea was sending out during the Malheur standoff, he likely didn’t notice because “it was so innocuous that it had no lasting effect on me,” adding that he “never saw anything that promoted violence or domestic terrorism.”

The former sheriff said he did call Ward and said they’re “on pretty good terms.” Mack said none of the investigators reached out to him and he questioned their motivations. 

The report mentions Peoria resident Jon Ritzheimer, who organized an infamous :{Phoenix mosque protest:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and used to sell products featuring the slogan “Fuck Islam.” Ritzheimer was a participant in the Malheur takeover. He was arrested and later eventually :{struck a plea deal to federal conspiracy charges:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: for his role in the standoff. He was not a member of Shea’s group. 

Ritzheimer did not respond to a request for comment.

Arizona resident Lyle Rapacki, the vice chairman of COWS and an online columnist who pens articles about :{alleged satan worship at naval bases:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and the :{QAnon conspiracy theory:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: that liberal elites run a global cabal of pedophiles, received email updates from Shea about the Malheur takeover that included military style protocols and information, according to the Washington legislature’s report. 

It is unclear if Rapacki had any role in Shea’s intelligence reports that he had been allegedly giving to those involved in the armed standoffs in Nevada and Oregon. Rapacki did not respond to a request for comment. 

The report also mentions Arizona resident Cope Reynolds as a member of COWS and a recipient of the intelligence emails that Shea was sending out during the standoffs. Reynolds is the owner of a gun shop in Pinetop that :{disallows anyone who voted for President Barack Obama:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: from entering the store. Reynolds did not respond to a request for comment.

The full report can be read below: [doc] 2019

:{https://www.dailykos.com:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}::{ › stories › 2022 › 9 › 1 › 2120294 › --Constitutional-sheriffs-embrace-of-Big-Lie-could-have-consequences-for-elections-in-November:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:

:{Extremist sheriffs double down with their embrace of Trumpist 'election ...:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:top;display:inline-block;max-width:100%;overflow:hidden;text-overflow:ellipsis;white-space:nowrap"):}:

Sep 1, 2022 Leaf harkened to the "constitutionalist" claim that county sheriffs are the supreme law of the land, saying: "What that does, it gives you the power—and I don't know if you're gonna appreciate me...

kos

no lnx vid

Extremist sheriffs double down with their embrace of Trumpist ‘election integrity’ campaign

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff

ThursdaySeptember 01, 2022 **

Barry County, MI, Sheriff Dar Leaf

Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf sought warrants on voting machines even after coming under investigation for tampering with the devices.

Daily Kos

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It’s a testament to the cult power of Donald Trump’s Big Lie that an elected lawman who himself now faces investigation for tampering with voting machines will not only refuse to apologize, but proceed to double down. Another law enforcement official subscribing to the same authoritarian conspiracy theories is meanwhile threatening everyone within his fiefdom with repercussions if they don’t submit to his similar “investigations,” and setting the stage for his nakedly partisan deputies to patrol at polling places.

These cases, both involving the so-called “constitutional sheriffs” movement’s open embrace of Trump’s election denialism, reflect the challenge that awaits much of the country—particularly the rural areas where these sheriffs rule—when we head to the polls in November. Their well-financed campaign, coordinated with leading Trumpists, to overturn election results and seize voting machines they suspect of skewing the vote could wreak havoc with election results around the country if it continues to gain steam.

Dar Leaf, the sheriff of Michigan’s Barry County, has played a leading role in the unfolding saga. It recently emerged that not only does Leaf insist that his dubious “investigations” of election outcomes in his county—based almost entirely on a fraudulent Dinesh D’Souza pseudodocumentary—are legitimate, but that he has continued to seek warrants to confiscate voting tabulators from election officials in townships throughout his county.

Leaf sought warrants to seize machines and search offices of the Barry County Clerk, as well as in Woodland Township and Irving Township, Bridge Michigan found through a Freedom of Information Act request. His affidavits could not cite any evidence justifying the searches, saying only that Leaf sought "evidence of the crime of election law violations."

The report found that Leaf wanted to seize "components of voting and election equipment"—tabulation machines, poll books, election reporting modules, as well as 2020 election paper ballots. He also demanded keys to unlock the devices.

Leaf’s intentions, the affidavits showed, were to have the voting equipment "forensically examined" by someone "who is certified and trained to conduct data extractions."

His involvement in seizing one such tabulator in 2021—which resulted in its being dismantled and examined, then returned with its seals broken—is part of a state investigation that involves not just Leaf, but the Republican nominee for Michigan’s attorney general, Matthew DePerno.

Last month, the current Democratic attorney general, Dana Nesso, filed a petition for a special prosecutor to handle that investigation since it involves her likely Republican opponent in the fall election. The petition indicated that state police investigators believed that DePerno was “one of the prime instigators,” along with Leaf and a state legislator, of a conspiracy to persuade Michigan clerks to allow unauthorized access to voting machines.

DePerno’s campaign issued a statement ridiculing Nessel’s petition as “an incoherent liberal fever dream of lies.”

Barry County Prosecutor Julie Nakfoor Pratt's office refused to sign off on the warrant requests because Leaf had not established "probable cause" to conduct the searches.

"There just wasn't anything in there that amounted to any fraud that I could see," she told Bridge Michigan.

Leaf’s efforts on Trump’s behalf began in December 2020, when he filed a lawsuit demanding Barry County’s voting machines be impounded—which was swiftly laughed out of court. He then embarked on an “investigation” of the machines by sending a deputy and a private investigator to grill township officials about their intricacies.

It was during one of these interrogations that the Irving Township clerk surrendered one of the town’s Dominion machines to Leaf’s team. “I’ve been told they took it (to the Detroit area) and tore it apart,” she told a local TV station, noting that when the machine was returned during a meeting in a parking lot, its security seal had been broken.

Dominion’s machineswere the focus of a conspiracy theory popular after the election among the Trumpist right claiming that vote totals had been secretly manipulated to hand the presidency to Joe Biden. The theory was widely circulated on right-wing media such as Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax, all of whom now face multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits from the company.

Leaf was connected through his attorney, Carson Tucker, to a number of the leading Trump-loving conspiracists the former president employed, including ex-Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood. “My client Barry County Sheriff and several other county sheriffs in Michigan would like to consider issuing probable cause warrants to sequester Dominion voting machines if there is evidence of criminal manipulation,” Tucker wrote to them in one email.

His claims made little sense in Barry County, where Trump won by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. Rutland Charter Township clerk Ruth Hawthorne observed tartly: “They seem to think there was some kind of microchip in our tabulators that was throwing votes to Biden. But Trump won Barry County. He won by 65 percent of the vote, so I don’t know where they’re thinking that any kind of chips were in any of our machines or thinking that something had happened to them. The whole thing is nutty. It is nutty, totally nutty.”

Leaf’s extremism was well established before the 2020 election. He had appeared on stage at an anti-masking rally bashing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer with three of the “Patriots” who were later charged with plotting to kidnap and execute her. He first suggested to reporters that perhaps the plotters were only trying to make a “citizens arrest.” Leaf and other Michigan “constitutional sheriffs” also later refused to enforce a statewide ban on guns in Michigan polling places.

His “election integrity” campaign in Michigan caught the attention of Richard Mack, the founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Keepers Association (CSPOA), who then announced a nationwide campaign involving all of the country’s “constitutional sheriffs.”

In May, Mack called on sheriffs and police around the U.S. “to come together in pursuit of the truth regarding the 2020 election.” A CSPOA press release made clear that the basis of their “investigations” was D’Souza’s widely debunked pseudodocumentary, 2000 Mules:

Considering the persistent allegations of election fraud since even before the 2020 elections began, and as a response to the perpetual polarizing effect this has had on the American people, the CSPOA would like to put this issue to rest. Our constitutional republic and peaceful future as a free people absolutely depend on it.

In the opinion of the CSPOA, there is very compelling physical evidence presented by truethevote.org in the movie “2000 Mules” produced by Dinesh D'Souza. “Law Enforcement has to step in at this point,” asserts D'Souza, and we absolutely agree with him. Therefore, we are asking for all local law enforcement agencies to work together to pursue investigations to determine the veracity of the “2000 Mules” information.

In fact, D’Souza’s documentary has been repeatedly demonstrated to be utterly groundless garbage. It has been debunked by Reuters, the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, FactCheck.org, Politifact, and NPR, to name only a few of the outlets where its phony “facts” and false premises have been eviscerated.

In short order, the CSPOA had teamed up with Trump’s most fervent election denialists, True the Vote, which receives substantial funding from notorious pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell. “Constitutional sheriffs” in other counties—including one in Kansas and another in Wisconsin—attempted similar “investigations” but came up empty-handed.

At a Las Vegas gathering organized by Mack and True the Vote in July, Leaf called the county prosecutor’s refusal to hand out the search warrants "ridiculous,” adding: “We think we have enough for search warrants and everything else,” Leaf said during the conference, which also featured speeches from Trump loyalists like Lindell. “We're gonna keep moving forward, folks. We’re not done with this.”

Leaf harkened to the “constitutionalist” claim that county sheriffs are the supreme law of the land, saying: “What that does, it gives you the power—and I don’t know if you’re gonna appreciate me saying this—if we can’t get anywhere, we’re looking at doing grand juries, at the common law.”

One of True the Vote’s partners in the “election integrity” campaign is another “constitutional sheriffs” organization called Protect America Now, run by Sheriff Mark Lamb of Arizona’s Pinal County.Lamb was a featured speaker at a Trump rally in Prescott in July, where he revved the crowd up with promises that the nation’s sheriffs would intervene on their behalf in future elections.

“We’re gonna make sure that we have election integrity this year,” Lamb declared. “Sheriffs are going to enforce the law. This is about the rule of law. It is against the law to violate elections laws—and that’s a novel idea, we’re going to hold you accountable for that. We will not let happen what happened in 2020.”

Lamb has plenty of local critics in Pinal County. At recent meeting of the county’s Board of Supervisors, he was accused by longtime residents of indulging in baseless fearmongering over election results.

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}:

Roberto Reveles, a longtime Arizona civil rights activist, told commissioners that Lamb was engaging in naked partisan threats: “I recently was subjected to the intimidation referred to by a previous speaker. Sheriff Mark Lamb walked up to me and pointed at me … and said, ‘You and your fellow Democrats are destroying our country.’”

Lamb defended himself shortly afterwards during an appearance on Newsmax. “Last week in the board meeting I had probably 8 to 10 Democrats show up and absolutely blast me because I believe in the ‘Big Lie,’” Lamb said.

“It clearly shows that these folks don’t care about election integrity,” he continued. “They’re happy that their guy is in power, and right now they should care more than ever because this guy in office, Joe Biden and his administration, is absolutely destroying America and freedom and they’re turning this into a country that we just don’t recognize.”

Local Democrats like Ralph Atchue, formerly a candidate for Arizona Senate, state that Lamb and his deputies will begin patrolling polling places. “I hear from everybody that the line is being crossed,” Atchue told Jessica Pishko of Bolts. “Completely blurred.”

Far-right election denialists in Seattle’s King County placed signs during the July primary at ballot drop boxes warning people that their actions were being recorded on camera. Ironically, the King County Sheriff’s Office is now investigating those actions at the behest of the county’s elections office.

“The specter of law enforcement at the polls is already enough to discourage people from going to the polls,” observes Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. “Moreover, the threat of surveillance of polling places and drop boxes proposed by groups like True the Vote is meant to intimidate voters, particularly people of color, and deter them from casting ballots.”

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/tpusa-promotes-john-guandolos-call-for-right-wing-activists-to-bully-and-harass-political-opponents/

922

a new film produced by the right-wing youth organization Turning Point USA spotlights radical right-wing conspiracy theorist John Guandolo urging sheriffs to take the law into their own hands and resist federal authority.

Guandolo is a former FBI agent who resigned in 2009 “before the bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility could question him about his sexual liaisons” with a star witness in a government corruption case as well as “with women FBI agents,” according to a report from The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate.

Following his resignation, Guandolo became a radical right-wing conspiracy theorist and anti-Islam activist who now runs an organization called Understanding The Threat through which he trains law enforcement agencies around the country to identify seemingly anyone with dark skin and a beard as an Islamic terrorist. Guandolo is so radical that in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, he praised insurrectionists for showing restraint by not publicly executing lawmakers, most of whom he claimed are “traitors” who should be “swinging from a rope.”

But in “The Enemy Within: FBI Whistleblower,” Turning Point USA portrays Guandolo as a brave “FBI whistleblower” dedicated to exposing the “undiscussed network of jihadists and communists that have worked together to undermine America at its root for decades.”

During the documentary, Guandolo discussed his efforts to train local right-wing activists take over their towns, throw their mayors in jail, and ruin the lives of anyone who dares to oppose them. As part of this effort, Guandolo said that sheriffs and average citizens must work together to physically prevent the FBI or federal government from operating in their towns and to drive uncooperative companies out of business.

“Just recently in Texas, FBI raids a guy’s house, saying he was somehow involved in Jan. 6 and all this nonsense. The local sheriff does nothing,” Guandologriped. “And in response to citizens asking the sheriff, ‘Why didn’t you intervene?’ He’s like, ‘Well, it’s out of my hands. It’s a federal matter.’ The answer is it’s your frickin’ county, it’s your jurisdiction, it’s your responsibility! The fact that you’re unprofessional—and the fact that you’re too scared or cowardly to do your duty—that’s the problem. Citizens have to hold their local officials culpable.”

“Let’s look at what that looks like in reality,” Guandolo continued. “When the FBI shows up at a citizen’s home, whether they’re given a head’s up or [not]—now, if they’re given a head’s up, the sheriff immediately calls local FBI and says, ‘No, you’re not doing that. Before you do anything in my county, I want to see it. And if you show up without notifying me, I’m going to put 20 deputies in front of this guy’s house, and you’re not going in. And we will physically block you because it’s wrong. And we’ll call citizens that we work with in the community, and we’ll have 100 or 200 of them out there because what you’re doing is wrong, and I’m not going to tolerate it. And by the way, I’m the law in this county, not you.'”

“What you’re doing is unjust, and so we’re not going to allow it in our county,” Guandolo added, “You can do that with the banks that are doing financing of these groups. ‘Hey, you want to finance communist China through [Black Lives Matter]? Then your bank will shut down in our county. We’re shutting this branch down, so if you want to operate, then you need to shut this off. You’ve got two hours.’ And there are a lot of ways to do it, a lot of ways to make people unwelcome. And if that makes people listening or viewing what we’re doing right here uncomfortable, then all I would ask is, that’s fine that you’re uncomfortable, get out of the way because there’s a war on, and we don’t need you in the middle if you’re not sure what’s actually going on." [vid]

guandolo echoes talking points put forth by extremists like Richard Mack, the founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which teaches that “the power of the sheriff even supersedes the powers of the president” and urges local law enforcement to resist federal authority. This false idea that the sheriff holds supreme authority has increased in popularity among right-wing activists who would like to see sheriffs conduct more audits of the 2020 presidential election and be more involved in future elections.

This film—and Turning Point USA’s heroic portrayal of the extremist Guandolo—is noteworthy for another reason: It shows just how far to the right the youth organization has become.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/constitutional-sheriff-richard-mack-to-meet-with-illinois-gubernatorial-candidate-gary-rabine/

rww 12 21

constitutional Sheriff’ Richard Mack Endorses Mark Finchem:{, Oath Keeper, QAnon Promoter, and Stop the Steal Activist, for Arizona Secretary of Stat:(style="font-weight:400"):}:e

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arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem announced last week that he has been endorsed by ‘Constitutional sheriff’ Richard Mack. Finchem is a state representative, promoter of QAnon and stolen election conspiracy theories, and a member of the Oath Keepers militia group who was present at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. He was previously endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

Mack, a former Oath Keepers board member and a supporter of the Bundy family’s armed standoff with federal officials, founded the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which teaches law enforcement officials that “the power of the sheriff even supersedes the powers of the president.” He urges county sheriffs to resist “tyranny” from state and federal governments; during the COVID-19 pandemic, he has told sheriffs to refuse to enforce state public health measures like mask requirements. A recent report by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism warned that CSPOA’s trainings spread anti-government extremism among law enforcement officers.

Right Wing Watch reported this year that Mack is expanding the CSPOA by having county governments as well as individual law enforcement officers join the organization.

Finchem’s website includes a link to a recent appearance on the far-right One America News network in which he talked about the bogus “audit” of Maricopa County votes and claimed, “When we keep digging, we keep uncovering things that are these anomalies which—they turn into evidence, which become proof, which we refer to the attorney general’s office.”

In January, Finchem described the violence at the Capitol as “What happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud.” A week after the Capitol insurrection, Finchem claimed that social media deplatforming is “something very similar” to what German Nazis, Pol Pot, and Mao did, warning, “When you silence speech, and you silence thought, the next step is eliminating people.”

Shortly before this year’s elections in Virginia, Finchem spoke ata campaign rally for Virginia Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin.

In 2019, the Phoenix New Times described Finchem as a “fringe lawmaker” who described the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville as “a PSYOP to impugn those of us who stand for the rule of law and civil rights.” During the Obama administration, Finchem claimed that the president was “taking every opportunity to install his ideological, totalitarian dictatorship.”

Arizona’s current secretary of state, Democrat Katie Hobbs, has received death threats and harassment from Trump supporters. She and other election officials targeted by Trump and his allies have told CNN they live in fear of retaliation for not backing Trump’s stolen-election claims. Hobbs is running for governor.

The Associated Press has reported that two other Arizona state legislators running to be the GOP nominee for secretary of state have proposed new restrictions on voting and a bill allowing state legislators to disregard voters and choose their own Electoral College electors.

Some right-wing donors aligned with Trump are focusing on electing Trump allies to oversee future elections. Trump has also endorsed secretary of state candidates in Michigan and Georgia and a proponent of debunked stolen election claims for Michigan attorney general.

Tags: Donald Trump Mark Finchem Richard Mack Arizona audit Election 2020 Election 2022 Election 2024 Misinformation Stop the Steal Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association CSPOA Republican Party

==

no grfx

https://www.**adl.**org/resources/reports/the-constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association-cspoa-and-richard-mack

Introduction

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) is a large anti-government extremist group whose primary purpose it is to spread anti-government propaganda to, and recruit from, law enforcement personnel, especially county sheriffs and sheriff’s deputies. The group was founded in 2011 by Richard Mack, a former sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, who has used CSPOA as a vehicle to gain stature and influence within both the far right and the mainstream right.  Although the Oath Keepers, another anti-government extremist group that recruits from law enforcement, have garnered more media attention in recent years, the CSPOA has arguably had more success infiltrating law enforcement, including at the executive level.

Mack and CSPOA’s primary argument is the false claim that the powers of the county sheriff supersede those of any other federal, state or local authorities, as long as the intent is to protect American citizens from enemies foreign or domestic.  County sheriffs may therefore refuse to enforce—and can even actively oppose—any federal, state or other governmental measure (law, regulation, tax, court order, etc.) that they deem unconstitutional.  This notion—which has no basis in American law—was borrowed from the anti-government extremist sovereign citizen movement (CSPOA’s staff has included people with ties to that movement).  Mack has also claimed—again, falsely—that the county sheriff has the power to call out the “militia” to support him in his opposition to tyranny.

The Emergence of Richard Mack

Richard Mack is the founder and leader of CSPOA, and the organization would likely not exist long without him.  Mack, however, was a “celebrity” within the far-right long before he launched CSPOA.

The Utah native began his law enforcement career as a police officer in Provo, Utah.  Mack later moved to Arizona, where he was elected sheriff of sparsely populated Graham County in 1988 (serving two terms, both as a Democrat).  His rise to prominence began in early 1994 when he sued the federal government over the constitutionality of the Brady Law, gun control legislation that established a waiting period for people who wished to purchase handguns, among other things.  Mack, backed by the NRA (which named him officer of the year in 1994), embarked on a public campaign against the Brady Law, giving seemingly countless interviews in the press and on the air across the country.  Several years later, the Supreme Court overturned key portions of the Brady Law, cementing Mack’s status as a defender of gun ownership.

At home, voters were less impressed with Mack, who lost a primary bid for a third term by a 3-1 margin, ending Mack’s law enforcement career by 1997. To make ends meet, Mack worked as a car salesman and, briefly, as a “consultant” for the American Institute for Research, a Utah-based company led by tax protester Albert E. Carter, until Carter was raided by the FBI during a fraud investigation (in 2004, Carter pleaded guilty to tax evasion and mail fraud for operating what was essentially a Ponzi scheme).

As Mack’s celebrity grew, he had more opportunities to express his views, many of which were extremist.  One of Mack’s earliest influences was W. Cleon Skousen, the far right-wing conspiracy theorist and promoter of divinely inspired limited government who influenced many anti-government extremists over the decades, primarily in Western states.  Mack has even taught at the Heritage Academy charter school in Arizona, a school founded by an acolyte of Skousen.

Mack’s ideological orientation has primarily been far right-wing and anti-government in nature, with many of his views adopted from or influenced by the anti-government “patriot” movement (an umbrella movement that includes the militia movement, the sovereign citizen movement, and the tax protest movement).  From the tax protest movement, Mack has claimed that the 16th Amendment (which authorized an income tax) was never lawfully ratified, and he adopted his expansive views on the powers of the county sheriff from the sovereign citizen movement. However, he may have been most influenced by the militia movement’s hostility towards the federal government.  In 1994, Mack claimed he took an oath to defend the U.S. from all enemies, foreign and domestic, “and it appears that our own Washington D.C. bureaucracy has become one of the domestic enemies.” In March 1995, Mack urged an audience not to give up their guns because they were the best weapon against government tyranny and the “New World Order."

Mack was an early, vocal supporter of the militia movement, which emerged in the mid-1990s, claiming to have formed a militia of his own in Graham County (at different times, he called it a “militia” and a “posse,”) and urging people not to demonize militia groups. Even the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995 failed to sway him. “[The bombing] no more changes my opinion of the militias than the O. J. Simpson trial changes my opinion of retired black professional football players,” he told a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter a month after the bombing. A 1996 Christian Science Monitor story quoted Mack, referring to the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff, as saying, “I don’t know of any militias that have shot a young boy in the back or a woman in the face who was holding a baby,”  After militia members were arrested in Arizona on weapons charges in 1996, Mack told the Inquirer that, “What I see in most militias is the type of courage to stand for freedom as exemplified by the Chinese students in Tiananmen Square.”

Borrowing from militia movement conspiracy theories, Mack has argued that “power-hungry government officials backed by people with hidden agendas” are engaged in a plot to “control and enslave Americans.”  In his 2014 book Are You a David?, Mack claimed that the federal government has reached a “zenith of corruption, abuse, greed, deceit and debt” and that “criminals in government parade around as heroes while attacking Americans.” On numerous occasions, Mack has stated that the federal government is the greatest threat to Americans.

After he lost his race for sheriff’s office in 1996, Mack spent a number of years running unsuccessfully for a variety of offices in several states. He moved to Utah in 1998 to run for sheriff in Utah County, but lost the Republican primary.  In 2004, he announced his run for the governor of Utah (as a Libertarian) on a militia shortwave radio show.  His bid went nowhere, as did a 2006 bid to become a U.S. Senator from Utah.  In 2011, Mack announced to an audience at the extremistJohn Birch Society in Texas that he planned to run for Congress. As late as 2018, back in Arizona, Mack ran for Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, but came in eighth in the Republican primary with 1.42% of the vote.

Mack’s Public Speaking Crusade - Including White Supremacist Venues

For the past 25-plus years, Richard Mack has been an indefatigable public speaker, constantly crisscrossing the country in search of audiences.  Clean-cut, with an appealing speaking voice, Mack has addressed groups small and large, typically using the story of his Brady Law victory as a way to attack the federal government or, more recently, to help introduce his views about county sheriffs.

Initially, many of Mack’s speaking engagements and personal appearances were connected to either the NRA or to the John Birch Society. Soon, Mack was speaking regularly to every imaginable type of conservative or right-wing audience, mainstream or extreme.  Beginning in 2009-2010, Mack became a regular at Tea Party events around the country.  At one point in the early 2010s he estimated he had spoken with about 70 Tea Party groups over the previous two years, which was likely no exaggeration.

In 2012, when living in Texas, Mack spoke at local events such as the Tax Day Tea Party Rally in Texarkana, the Boerne (TX) Tea Party Candidate Forum, a Constitutional Study Group in Bergheim, Libertyfest West in Odessa, a 9/12 Meet Greet in Kerrville, and to audiences at the John Birch Society in Houston as well as the North Shore Republicans in Lago Vista. This was in addition to events in Alabama, Nevada and Indiana, among other places.

Mack’s incessant need for an audience means he has spoken to or shared the stage with a variety of other extremists, including people associated with the militia and sovereign citizen movements.  His associations have also included white supremacists and antisemites.  Though Mack has condemned white supremacy, claiming it has no place in a free society, he does seem to be willing to make exceptions as long as doing so provides him with a microphone. According to the Coalition for Human Dignity, Mack was a keynote speaker at a 1995 conference hosted by the white supremacist America’s Promise Ministries in Prescott, Arizona.  In 2012, Mack appeared as a guest on the Political Cesspool radio program hosted by white supremacist James Edwards.  In 2015, Mack spoke at an event funded by America’s Foundation, a Mississippi organization created by white supremacist Richard Barrett.  Two years later, in April 2017, Mack appeared on another white supremacist radio program, “By Yahweh’s Design,” in an episode titled “Meet Richard Mack.”

Mack’s willingness to overlook racism and antisemitism is evident in his most recent speaking campaign —a planned series of 84 events over 111 days in 2021. “Arise USA! The Resurrection Tour” features a variety of right-wing and conspiratorial speakers, highlighting Mack and fellow organizer Robert David Steele.  Steele, who claims to be a former CIA agent, is a prominent QAnon conspiracy theorist as well as an outspoken antisemite.

Steele, outed by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights as a “prolific purveyor of antisemitism,” has claimed that “virtually all Jews” are “complicit in the Zionist global plan to use open orders and multiculturalism” to eradicate opposition to “Zionist hegemony” and the subservience of all others. In 2017, Steele chatted with former Klan leader David Duke on the latter’s website about “his [Steele’s] activities in the struggle against Zionist supremacy.”  The United States, Steele told an Iranian newspaper in 2019, “must eradicate the Zionist pest from our homeland.”

Although the Arise USA! Tour was announced with great fanfare, attendance (and revenue) from early events was underwhelming, and the tour had to be scaled back significantly.

Richard Mack and Indoctrinating Law Enforcement

Although anti-government extremists tend to be hostile to law enforcement—and have assaulted or even killed a number of law enforcement officers over the years—they have also exhibited a longstanding interest in sharing their ideas with that community, especially local law enforcement, based on the premise that sympathetic law enforcement officers would not enforce unpopular laws, such as income tax laws or gun regulations.

In the 1990s, the most prominent police recruiter within the “patriot” movement was former Phoenix police officer Jack McLamb, founder of the groupPolice Against the New World Order and publisher of the related Aid & Abet magazine. As McLamb became less active with age and infirmity (he died in 2014), a successor arose in 2009, when Stewart Rhodes, an attorney and former Army officer, started The Oath Keepers. This new group had the particular goal of spreading militia ideology to current and former military personnel, first responders and police officers.  The Oath Keepers soon became one of the largest groups associated with the militia movement.

Richard Mack was one of the founding members of The Oath Keepers, served on its board and actively promoted the group. For Rhodes—who has no law enforcement background himself—Mack was an ideal spokesperson, and the Oath Keepers featured him as often as they could.

His involvement with the Oath Keepers seems to have reenergized Mack as well.  In 2009, Mack published his pamphlet, “County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope,” which promoted his thesis that the county sheriff was the “last line of defense” for the preservation of liberty, that the sheriff had the power to oppose any perceived “tyranny” (including a federal or state law) in their jurisdiction and that the sheriff even has the power to call out the militia to support their efforts.As many people recognized, Mack’s argument was not original but was borrowed wholesale from the Posse Comitatus, a violent anti-government extremist group active in the 1970s-80s that eventually evolved into the sovereign citizen movement.

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From 2009-2011, Mack promoted his county sheriff thesis at Oath Keepers events and anywhere else he could find an audience.  Eventually, Mack decided to start his own organization and use his stature as a former sheriff to reach other sheriffs; he founded the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) in 2011.

Mack and CSPOA

With CSPOA at his disposal, Mack no longer needed Rhodes and the Oath Keepers (he eventually parted ways with them, departing from the board).  CSPOA would be very Mack-centric, although Mack did bring on board Rick Dalton as his right-hand man.  Dalton, a retired Mesa, Arizona, police officer, previously served as a key figure in Jack McLamb’s Police Against the New World Order.

Like the Oath Keepers, CSPOA would be open to anybody (the cost of yearly membership is currently $99), but unlike the Oath Keepers, it had a narrow focus: the office of the county sheriff.  There are around 3100 sheriffs in the United States, and they became Mack’s key audience and target.  When a California anti-immigrant group held an early fundraiserfor CSPOA in March 2011, it declared that Mack “is working tirelessly to educate Sheriffs nationwide to understand their Oath of Office and enforce the Constitutionally protected rights of the people they serve.”

Mack reached out to sheriffs via mailers and surveys, as well as individually.  When Mack held a speaking event, he invited nearby sheriffs to attend.  Mack was also vocal in praising sheriffs who took actions he approved of, calling them “constitutional sheriffs.”  Soon, CSPOA began handing out the “Constitutional Sheriff of the Year” award; winners have included controversial Wisconsin sheriff David Clarke, Jr., who described Black Lives Matter as a hate group and claimed they would join with the terrorist group ISIS to destroy American society, as well as Nick Finch, a Florida sheriff who unlawfully released a man arrested for a firearms felony and was suspended by the governor.  A Washington state sheriff, Bob Songer, received the award for refusing to enforce a state gun control initiative.

It didn’t take long before some sheriffs responded favorably to Mack’s entreaties, joining CSPOA, showing up for or even speaking at his events, or referring to themselves as “constitutional sheriffs” and repeating or paraphrasing Mack’ claims about the powers of the sheriff.  A number of sheriffs, especially in Western states, already had a long history of right-wing activism or opposition to the federal government.  These included Glenn Palmer, the long-time sheriff of Grant County, Oregon, who vocally supported Ammon Bundy and his band of anti-government extremists who seized control of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016, meeting with them and calling them “patriots.”  (Palmer’s support of the Bundy extremists may have cost him his next election).  Another prominent CSPOA supporter was Dar Leaf, sheriff of Barry County, Michigan.  In 2020, Leaf appeared onstage at a protest with militia members who later would be charged with plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan.  After their arrest, he suggested the plotters might have been trying to make a citizen’s arrest of the governor.

A few Eastern state sheriffs --- where the powers of the sheriff had been significantly curtailed -- also joined Mack’s group.

ADL has identified dozens of sheriffs who have joined CSPOA or otherwise associated themselves with the group (this includes some who joined while sheriff but no longer hold the position), as well as a handful of police officers and a few state and local elected officials.  It is remarkable that serving, high-ranking law enforcement officers would so readily link themselves to an extremist group.

The broader influence of the CSPOA is even more notable; a number of sheriffs across the country now refer to themselves as “constitutional sheriffs” even while leaving open the question of whether they have any formal ties to CSPOA.  CSPOA has moreover inspired many people across the country—sometimes with no law enforcement experience at all—to run for the office of sheriff.  For example, after the sheriff of Idaho’s Ada County resigned in 2021, several candidates stepped forward for consideration by county commissioners who had the responsibility of selecting a replacement sheriff to serve for the remainder of the term. These candidates, included Doug Traubel, author of a book called Red Badge: A Veteran Peace Officer’s Commentary on the Marxist Subversion of American Law Enforcement & Culture.  Traubel claimed that “Islam is the culture of death” and that “Jews” were to blame for the creation of the Soviet Union and “led the Bolshevik revolution.”  Traubel openly identified himself with the “constitutional sheriffs.”  He was not selected.

Several years ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center attempted to find out how many sheriffs actually supported Mack, and reached out to 500 or so sheriffs whom Mack had publicly praised.  Reportedly, 50-60 were willing to confirm their support.  Based on that, as well as other sheriffs who had public ties or who had made statements, the SPLC estimated that “probably…several hundred sheriffs” were supportive of Mack.

Mack has claimed that some of his national CSPOA events have been attended by more than 100 sheriffs and that several hundred sheriffs are members.  The organization Political Research Associates has noted that nearly a quarter (7 of 30) of the people who make up the leadership of the National Sheriffs Association Board of Directors and Executive Committee had ties to CSPOA.

What is clear is that over the past 10 years, Richard Mack has succeeded in spreading his extremist ideas to a substantial minority of sheriff’s offices in the United States.  This has been possible in large part because Mack has successfully framed his sheriff concepts as an antidote to gun control measures.  Many of the people who have adopted the “constitutional sheriff” position have done so because of their views on firearms.

Mack has also exhibited considerable ability to exploit any current situation to promote his views.  In 2020-2021, Mack helped engineer a considerable—and successful— CSPOA pivot from guns to the coronavirus, promoting the idea of “constitutional sheriffs” protecting citizens from the tyranny of lockdowns, mask-wearing and other virus containment measures.  Numerous sheriffs have come forward to oppose stay-at-home orders or similar decrees, and right-wing media, including Fox News, have given many of them prominent platforms.  Many (though not all) of these sheriffs have ties to CSPOA, but even those who do not help spread the notion of “sheriff’s resistance,” which indirectly but substantially benefits CSPOA.

County Membership

The general growth of “sheriff’s resistance” may have played a role in one of the latest CSPOA developments: the rise of “memberships” linked not to individuals (sheriffs or otherwise) – but rather to entire counties.

In May 2021, Mack announced that Nevada’s Lander County was the first “CSPOA County.”  According to Mack, Lander county manager Bert Ramos reached out to CSPOA and asked to be listed as a member county, marking the first time that an entire governmental entity had aligned itself with CSPOA.  According to Ramos, the county commissioners voted 4-1 to join CSPOA.  A local official confirmed to ADL that the county—or, rather, its taxpayers—had paid CSPOA a $2,500 membership fee.

In June 2021, county commissioners in Elko County, Nevada, approved a measure linking their county to CSPOA. This was celebrated by an “Arise USA” tour event at which Mack was the main speaker and Robert David Steele provided his own thoughts on “Traitors, Wall Street criminals and satanic pedophiles.”

The Arise USA! website reported in July that Lyon County, Nevada, had similarly become a “constitutional county” and that “in Washington [state] the sheriff [Brad Rogers] has declared Klickitat County to be a Constitutional County against the opposition of the Commissioners loyal to the deep state.”

Most recently, in August 2021, Clay County, Nebraska, Board member L. Wayne Johnson received a proposed resolution from CSPOA that would have Clay County join the group. Johnson allegedly “considered, but ultimately rejected” the resolution to join.  However, he did say he would introduce a different resolution that “includes many of the beliefs of [CSPOA],” including its contention that sheriffs can reject enforcement of federal and state laws.

'Training' Law Enforcement

The most disturbing tactic used by Mack (and CSPOA) are efforts to use “trainings” as a way to indoctrinate law enforcement officers into the ideology of anti-government extremist movement. This ploy plays into Mack’s strengths as a speaker and exploits his background in law enforcement, as well as his role in overturning the Brady Law.  Mack’s trainings are often described as teaching “Constitutional principles.”

Mack’s efforts to secure law enforcement audiences predate CSPOA itself.  In 2010, for example, Mack circulated an online petition to convince the Sheriff’s Association of Texas to let him present at their 132nd Annual Training Conference.  That same year, he issued an “open invitation” to all law enforcement officers to attend his “Sheriff Mack Seminar” in Maine, where he divided his presentation into two sessions, one for law enforcement only and the other for the general public.

Mack intended from the beginning that a big part of CSPOA’s agenda would be training law enforcement. He fundraised on the idea of sponsoring a “National Training Program” and covering the travel costs for sheriffs around the country to attend his seminars. CSPOA’s first big event was its first national convention, held in Las Vegas in January 2012 and dubbed “No Sheriff Left Behind.”  Mack subsequently claimed that between 115-120 sheriffs appeared at the event, a figure that is impossible to confirm.

Over the years, Mack continued CSPOA’s outreach efforts to law enforcement, alerting local sheriffs whenever he was presenting in their area and typically offering them free access to his events.  In 2016, Mack toyed with the idea of offering “certification training,” in which law enforcement officers would come to a two-day seminar, get “certified,” then return to their states and offer that training locally.  That same year, he claimed to have trained more than 400 sheriffs.

A typical CSPOA training might be like one held at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia,in September 2020.  Dubbed a “Free Constitutional Training Seminar for all Sheriffs, Peace Officers and Public Servants,” it featured Mack, former Indiana sheriff Brad Rogers, and “constitutional attorney” Michael Peroutka (best known for running for president in 2004 on the far right Constitution Party ticket, and for having been a member of the racist neo-Confederate group League of the South). 

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In a video advertising the training, Mack asked, “How many of you have been sick and tired of this mask stuff?  And how many of you are tired of being pushed around and victimized by our own government officials? Can you believe this is all happening?”  Mack urged viewers to ask their own sheriffs to attend, and to offer them financial assistance to do so.

In 2021, Mack and CSPOA organized three trainings—one in Montana and two in Texas—that were actually officially certified by POST (“Peace Officer Standards and Training”) officials in those states, thus qualifying law enforcement attendees at these extremist events for continuing education credits. The idea behind POST certification of law enforcement trainings is to maintain minimum standards of quality, objectivity and relevance for programs designed for law enforcement.

In late February 2021, CSPOA held a two-day training in The Woodlands north of Houston. CSPOA billed “The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope” as an official training event of the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Training (TCOLE, the Texas equivalent of POST), for which attendees could get educational credit.  The event was cohosted by CSPOA and the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office. During the event, “constitutional attorney” KrisAnne Hall, a frequent Mack collaborator, reportedly told law enforcement attendees that state and county laws are superior to federal law and that the county sheriff is the most powerful elected official in the country.  According to a reporter with the New American, the publication of the right-wing extremist John Birch Society, which covered the event, Hall also explained to the audience that it is a sheriff’s duty to ignore federal gun laws.  It is not clear how many sheriffs or other law enforcement officers attended, but nearly 40 people posed for photographs afterwards.

In June 2021, the Montana Department of Justice announced a four-hour POST-certified “Constitutional Training” event by Mack in Flathead County later that month.  The announcement openly proclaimed that Mack asserts sheriffs can refuse to enforce federal laws they claim are unconstitutional.  After news got out, the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office—which had sponsored the event—cancelled it because of alleged staffing limitations.  However, the course remains POST-certified, and theoretically Mack could offer it again.  An ADL inquiry subsequently revealed that state officials had not been provided with lesson plans before they certified it.  Mack told a local newspaper that he had hosted state-approved law enforcement trainings in 10 different states.

Advertisement for Richard Mack’s “Constitutional Training” course in Kalispell, Montana, June 2021.

CSPOA returned to Texas in July 2021 for two additional “The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope” training events for “sheriffs, peace officers and elected officials.” Held back-to-back in Burnet and Crockett, Texas, with the assistance of the Burnet County Sheriff’s Department and the Houston County Sheriff’s Department, these events were billed as official TCOLE training opportunities.  A flier for the trainings informed attendees that they would, among other things, learn “Why sheriffs should not enforce Covid-19 lockdowns, restrictions and mask wearing decrees & legislation,” and why “Sheriffs should also prevent others from forcing citizens to submit to unlawful Covid-19 restrictions.”

As was the case in Montana, it is not clear that TCOLE took any precautions to ensure that Mack’s “trainings” were suitable for law enforcement, that they taught accurate law and policy, were taught by people with appropriate qualifications and credentials or were in any way different from Mack’s typical extremist events.

Collectively, these events represent one of the most successful attempts in recent decades by anti-government extremists to infiltrate law enforcement, even securing the official imprimaturs and approvals of the states of Montana and Texas.  It is almost a certainty that Mack will continue his efforts to acquire official approvals from more states for his “trainings” of law enforcement officers—events that are not professional trainings at all but rather delivery platforms for potentially dangerous anti-government propaganda.

Policy Recommendations

The tactics used by Richard Mack and CSPOA to spread anti-government extremist propaganda to law enforcement officials and to recruit them into that cause are troubling, especially because Mack can boast of some success.

Particularly problematic are his attempts to pass off extremist propaganda presentations as trainings for law enforcement and to get official sanction for them from state-level Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) agencies.  His successes in Texas and Montana raise concerns for agencies around the country.

ADL recommends that states:

Review training procedures for law enforcement.  States should review training curricula to ensure that trainings serve a legitimate and specific law enforcement purpose, teach principles that are in accord with current federal and state law and judicial rulings, and do not attempt to spread partisan or ideological viewpoints. Agencies should also consider vetting outside entities offering such trainings to ensure they are not connected to or part of an extremist-related group and specifically to ensure they are not connected to an extremist group seeking to infiltrate or propagandize law enforcement. Agencies should establish a process for external review to verify training complies with these values.  Agencies should keep careful records of training and be responsive to concerns about trainings.  Training methods that do not comply with these principles must be immediately halted.

Review policies and procedures for addressing law enforcement affiliations with extremist movements.  State and local law enforcement agencies should ensure that officers do not promote (including via tattoos, vehicle decals, and clothing patches) extremist groups or movements that jeopardize community security.  Agencies should consider implementing policies and procedures to better prevent extremists from being hired as law enforcement officers. This may include additional background evaluation to ensure potential recruits are not engaging in extremist activity, promoting extremist ideologies or are members of an extremist group or cause. Implementation of these recommendations should be conducted in a manner that is consistent with the U.S. Constitution and applicable laws.

ADL urges federal officials to:

Ensure adequate budgets to assist states with needed training.Throughout the appropriations process, Members of Congress should provide resources for training opportunities for law enforcement to recognize and combat extremism.

All officials must:

Speak out against hate and raise awareness of extremist propaganda.Americans nationwide must be better aware of extremist indicators and propaganda, some of which may not be obviously extremist in nature for people with no background knowledge.  Further, hearing officials echo the need for hope over hate, and justice and fair treatment over discrimination, can help build momentum in communities to reject hateful rhetoric.

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https://www.adl.org › resources › report › constitutional...

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Line In The Sand | Southern Poverty Law Center

https://www.splcenter.org › intelligence-report › line-sand

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Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association – CSPOA

https://cspoa.org

Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. CSPOA. 011 322 44 56sales@yoursite.com. Home · About · Sheriff Mack · Our Leadership · Statement of ...

About · ‎Info · ‎Become a Member · ‎Events

Sheriff Mack

https://cspoa.org › about › sheriff-mack

Author, speaker and former Sheriff Richard Mack has served in a wide variety of roles over the course of his nearly twenty year career in law enforcement, ...

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https://cspoa.org › about › our-leadership

Author/speaker and former sheriff Richard Mack has served in a wide variety of roles over the course of his nearly twenty year career in law enforcement, which ...