November 4, 2024 • 27 mins
Robert sits down with Cloee Cooper of Political Research Associates to talk about her new podcast, The Insurgents, which looks into the movement of "constitutional" sheriffs working against democracy.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All Zone media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back to it could happen here, a podcast about
it happening here, and that it that is on everyone's
minds right now. This will be dropping two or three
days before the twenty twenty four election, possibly two or
three days before everyone's life changes substantially. We have no
way of knowing. I'm not optimistic or pessimistic. I have
(00:26):
no idea what's going to happen. But one thing that
everyone ought to be aware of, whether or not Trump wins,
is kind of, to put it bluntly, the man has shooters.
And some of those shooters are literal shooters in that
they are local sheriff's departments, people who call themselves constitutional sheriffs.
This is an organization that's really got off the ground
(00:49):
in twenty twelve, and for more than a decade has
been making inroads with elected Republican leaders, with Republican influencers,
with groups like the Oath Keepers, and these are guys who,
in brief belief, the sheriff is the only is You
can kind of get two versions of this, but generally
either the sheriff is the only legitimate law enforcement authority
in the country, or the sheriff is the highest legitimate
(01:11):
law enforcement heard. I've heard it both ways in the country,
and kind of the reason for this basically is a
lot of people in rural areas that are more conservative
do not want to have to listen to or follow
the laws made by people in cities. And more to
the point, they believe that the country has been taken
off of a good track by dangerous liberal communist types,
(01:34):
and you know, they want the ability to use force
against you know, migrants, against the undocumented, against people they
see as criminals, against left wing protesters, and this is
kind of a way for them to argue that they
have a right to do it without any restrictions. Now,
the whole story is much deeper than that, and to
talk about what I think is one of the most
important subjects to be discussing right now, because you know,
(01:58):
people laugh a lot about life, the gravy seals or
whatever like, you know, all these different kind of out
of shape militia dudes, the kind of silly fumbling that
we saw a lot at January sixth, you know, which
I think is a mistake, just because January sixth was
still quite dangerous. But when we're talking about these guys,
these are not just like random yeho's. These are people
(02:18):
who have the force of law behind them. They're armed,
they're organized, and they're quite dangerous. And to talk about
how dangerous they are and where they came from, I
want to bring on a wonderful journalist, investigative reporter and
PRA research director Chloe Cooper, who has co executive produced
a podcast on the Constitutional Sheriff's movement called The Insurgents,
(02:41):
which is a co production of Political Research Associates and
Quintero Productions. Chloe, I think I got that all right? Right?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
That was awesome?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yes, y, thank you, thank you. Yeah, So let's talk
about this. Where do these guys? I gave a little
brief overview, but like where do these guys come from?
And you know, what do we see from them and
the lead up to this election? Like what are they?
What are they going to do? Do you think?
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:05):
I mean I loved the overview that you just gave.
I think that was such a great way.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
To approach this all.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
So, the leader of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers
Association is this guy named former Sheriff Mac And he
was a sheriff in Arizona. But one little important detail
to note is that he actually kind of got his
bearings before that in Nevada, and he was courted by
(03:34):
someone who was basically in very close company with the
John Birch Society.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Always comes back to them, I know.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
He actually becomes a sheriff partially because of some of
the ideas that come out of the John Birch Society
and some of this kind of like emerging trend that
in some cases is actually like skeptical of the federal government,
skeptical of state governments. Yeah, and then they start to
build out with sheriffs in different parts of the country.
(04:04):
At times, I would say the network has really ebbed
and flowed. But a couple of things that have been
important to note, like throughout the six years of researching
this network of sheriffs, that I think is really important,
especially in advance of the elections. One is that sheriffs
who are aligned with this have really embraced this idea
(04:25):
that you can deputize anybody. Yeah, so in some cases
you have oath keepers and other militias going to the
sheriff to say, hey, you want to deputize me, But
in other cases we've actually followed sheriffs who are going
into churches and saying, we're deputizing all of you.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Great sheriffs in Virginia when.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
The state passed a law that was like a law
for some gun restrictions, saying don't worry, people were actually
going to deputize you.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, that way you can have whatever gun you want
and carry it anywhere. Yes, yeah, and all.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
So what we started to see is that during the
former Trump administration, he was really actually courting sheriffs around
the country, and I think he started to see networks
like CSPOA as like part of his ground troops. And
so I think that there is a potential danger in
sheriffs that are part of this formal network called the
(05:20):
CSPOA or other sheriffs, because there are hundreds more that
just have like aligned with their way of thinking about things,
just playing this role of deputizing more people and creating
this kind of idea of like a super citizen or
people who are kind of aligned with a far right
way of seeing the world and then getting deputies to
(05:41):
be part of the kind of ground troops for that.
So that's like one thing, and then in addition to that,
there is also CSPOA itself teamed up with this group
called True the Vote, which has mostly since been discredited,
but it's been one of the loudest groups in the
country that has been spreading this idea that the twenty
(06:02):
twenty election was stolen and has been actually working with
county sheriffs to try to investigate voter fraud at the
local level, but in some cases also working with sheriffs
to align with vigilante groups on the border, for example,
to intimidate people from actually voting. And so there's kind of,
(06:22):
i would say, like a multi pronged series of potential
risks and dangers that could play out, particularly from this
network in the coming weeks. One other quick thing I'll
note is that one of the very latest things that
we saw, and this actually came out of a close
kind of colleague in the movement, Devin Burkhardt, who works
(06:45):
at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights,
is that he came across a plan that the Constitutional
Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association put out in Florida, and
the plan is to essentially resurrect kind of sovereign citizens
groups in Florida, militia's citizen militias in collaboration with sheriffs
(07:08):
to do kind of old school style like intimidation of
election clerks of people involved in the election process, and
they plan to try to hold tribunals if, for example,
the certification of election goes in the direction they disagree with.
And now, as a hardcore leftist, you may find like,
what do you actually think about voting and whether that
(07:29):
actually changes things and all of that, And I'm like,
I've had those, you know, thought bubbles in my brain
for a long time also, But I think what we have,
what I've started to see is that the constitutional sheriffs
to me represent, and also the groups of people who
have aligned with them are actual not just white nationalists,
but people who are neo Confederates. And I think of
(07:49):
it more of like a neo confederacy, and that what
we could see is something like sheriffs actually coming in
confrontation with potentially even police and mayor and governors and
them representing a different kind of politic, a different type
of way of seeing society. And one person also talked
about how the constitutional what are they really referring to?
(08:11):
Are they referring to?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
You know, what is it? The organic constitution?
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Essentially before slavery was abolished, before women had the right
to vote, before the you know, Native Americans had the
right to vote. And so if that's the case, that
that is actually the kind of constitution that they are
upholding and representing, then they are actually been quite successful
in building out different alliances around the country within a
(08:39):
somewhat prominent law enforcement institution that has very little accountability.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah. And I so this is where I kind of
wind up in conflict with both liberals and a lot
of leftists. Is I think that the leftists who say
like there's no point in voting are wrong for the
same reason like I think people who say there's no
reason for civilians to be armed. I don't happen to
(09:07):
agree with that, and I don't happen to agree with
it because I think if somebody who wants to kill
you has a weapon and you have the ability to
either match that weapon or take it from them, then
that's probably what you should do for the sake of
your own survival. And handing over complete control of the state,
the military, and the police apparatus to the far right
is handing them the most powerful weapon anyone has ever made.
(09:28):
And I just don't think that's wise.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Now.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
At the same token, the thing that kind of liberals
will bring up a lot, which is that like, just vote,
just get out and vote. Well, we've been doing that
and Democrats have overwhelmingly outperformed conservatives in elections this century,
and it hasn't been enough. And it hasn't been enough
in part because these people don't care about the law.
You know, there's a moment in your podcast where I like,
(09:53):
you have an expert on who's kind of talking about
the sheriff deputizing you know, seventy people or whatever in
the small town and being like, well, he's not actually
allowed to do that, Like, you know, the actual letter
of the law does not give him the right to
be doing this. He's misinterpreting the constitution. But the reality
of the situation is that, like, he's allowed to do
(10:14):
whatever he can get enough people with guns to back
him in doing And that's honestly, the root of all
politics is how much force can you bring to bear,
you know, in order to support the reality you want
to support, right, Like, that is how it all works.
And the bet the right is making with all of
these different anti democratic strategies they're trying is that no
(10:37):
matter what they do, and no matter how far against
the Constitution, against the rule of law they take things,
they will have the force to support their version of reality.
And I don't know, I don't know how we thread
this needle. Right. The easiest thing is like, well, maybe
if Kamala has a really resounding victory, there just won't
(10:58):
be much for them to fight on, right, and they'll
kind of back down. But even if she wins in
twenty twenty four, which I think is the better of
the options that we've got, these people aren't going away.
And in fact, I think you are going to see
challenges at local levels. I think it's not impossible that
we wind up with like an anti pope style situation
with the presidency, whereas like Trump holds his own inauguration
(11:21):
and a bunch of state and local leaders say like, no,
we're not recognizing the Harris administration. Donald Trump is our president. Like,
there's a lot of weird shit that could wind up
as the result of this, And I just don't see
us getting out of this purely through electoral methods. And
I don't know what. I don't know how else we
handle it, right, Because you also get into this situation
(11:43):
of like, Okay, well we're going to send in the
police to crack down on these sheriffs that are breaking
the law. Well, what if the police don't want to
do it. What if the police are more supportive of
these sheriffs departments than they are of you know, they're
elected leaders in the state or at the federal level.
You know, what if the f b I as has
happened in the past, What if the Feds are unwilling
(12:04):
to go up against a bunch of arm heavily armed
quote unquote patriots, you know, like we saw in you know,
some of the Bundy shit from about a decade ago, right, Like,
what if what if the people who are supposed to
handle this for the citizenry in a situation that abides
by the law abrogate their responsibility because they're scared you
(12:24):
know who backs us up? Then?
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Wow, Okay, you just put a lot out there.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
Sorry, Like I wanted to respond about a minute.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Oh one more.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I apologist. That was my that was my bed.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
That was so great, I think Okay, a couple a
couple of thoughts. One is that I think that far
right movements are very much mobilizing within the government right now,
and or you could say maybe fascism is trying to
mobilize within the government. Absolutely, and so I think you
have I think we have to grapple with that really seriously.
(12:57):
And so like in terms of anti fascist strategies, I
don't know what is what could that actually look like
right now, but you have to grapple with the reality
that many far right movements have made serious, serious headway
into not just former president, but into state legislators, into
the judicial system, into sheriff's departments, and so we are
(13:24):
seeing a major fissure right now. So I don't know
how to respond completely to some of the questions around
around electoral politics, but I think those are really important
questions that you're posing. And then just to go pivot
back to my wheelhouse, which is the right and the
far right and some of their strategies. One of the
(13:44):
things that you touched on is something that a number
of different far right strategies have been practicing over the years,
and it is about this idea of both nullification or interposition.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Is what they call it.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
So these constitutional sheriffs, one of the tactics that they
have used over the years is to get sheriffs around
the country to not enforce state laws, right, and so
you had a whole wave of sheriffs around the country
supporting sanctuaries for the Second Amendment. Second Amendment sanctuaries. Okay,
so they said in their own county, we're not going
(14:24):
to enforce gun restriction laws. And again, think about that, however,
you will all good, but they're saying we're not going
to afford us at the county level.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Then you had all these shriffs around the country being like,
we're not going to enforce lockdown ers, we're not going
to enforce mask mandates.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
What are they practicing. They're practicing the muscle of exactly
what you just talked.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
About, right, right, Yeah, I think that's a great way
to look at it too.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Yeah, independent of what's happening at the federal government, independent
of who wins right now, there is like a confederated
situation happening in the country, and these sheriffs and also
others have been very much in those So it's not
just kind of the militias that will back these sheriffs
(15:04):
that are interested in that type of strategy. There's the
whole like all these different movements that come out of
the Christian reconstructionists all talk about interposition, so the idea
of getting sheriffs other elected officials within the local magistrate
to prop up and kind of protect your politics, regardless
of the state or federal And so now we have
(15:25):
this interesting moment where you've had in recent history, you know,
a former president that actually aligned with some of those politics,
and then you have a bunch of state legislators that
align and so I think understanding some of the strategies
that's important. It's important to understand that you may have
sheriffs that are backing this, and they may not always
align with the police, and they may not always align
(15:46):
with the governor, and so it's going to be a
little different than what we may often think of as
like systemic white supremacy, where all the state and law
enforcement are lock and step together. I think looking at
the Civil War, as you've done so many different times,
is actually really important, Like how does this reflect patterns
that are more similar actually to you know, the Confederacy
(16:07):
against the North or those or you know, these types
of other moments in US history.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I'm gonna throw to ads and then I'll come back. So, yeah, everybody,
here's here's some maths. We're back. I wanted to ask,
are there cases you can think of of like some
of these guys, these constitutional sheriffs who have been voted
(16:35):
out and like forced out of office and had kind
of these some of these like policies that they've been
pushing reverse, Like do we have do we have any
kind of case studies of times sheriffs went, you know,
hard into this ideology and actually lost power as a
result of it.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
So actually in episode four it touches on it briefly,
but it's a really interesting and kind of rather both
in some ways inspiring but also disturbing.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Case study to some degree.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
There was a sheriff in North Carolina, Sheriff Jim Pendergraph
of Mecklenburg County, and he was really inspired by the
former sheriff Joe Orpio in Arizona. And he is one
of the people who really champions this program called two
eighty seven G which allows sheriffs to basically deputize their
office as ice federal ice agents and work with ICE.
(17:29):
So he pilots that in Mecklenburg County and then as
basically picked up by ICE and kind of helps try
to spread it all throughout the South. Something pretty historic
and incredible happened in some ways in twenty eighteen, where
you had black organizers, immigrant rights organizers pushed for this
whole campaign to oust him and a number of other
close by kind of real white supremacist sheriffs in North Carolina,
(17:54):
and they were successful, and there was a sheriff that
ran and a number of black sheriffs were elected in
the state, and some of the sheriffs ran on not
complying with ice and knock up and ending this program
called the twenty seven g Agreement, and seemed like this
historic moment, this historic win in the immediate aftermath of that,
as opposed to in moments where you have sheriff saying
(18:18):
we're not going to enforce the lockdown order and essentially,
besides some reporters reporting on it, nothing happens. Instead, what
happened is that within a few months of this sheriff
ending the twenty seven g Agreement, the federal government comes
in and issues pretty massive ice raids through the county
and actually ends up locking up over one hundred different people,
(18:42):
many of whom got deported.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Pretty soon after that, you had a.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Number of other sheriffs in the state, including this one
constitutional sheriff who also had aligned with another large anti
immigrant network called the Federation for American Immigration Reform, essentially
organizing in the state for the state to push back
and push an entire state wide mandate that all sheriffs
comply with ICE. So that's not really an uplifting story.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, actually not quite.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
I think what it demonstrates, in a tough way, is
more about this kind of like when sheriffs claim all
of this autonomy at the local level, which they seem
to actually in many cases be able to practice kind
of quite well, you know, when they say they want
to enforce the state wide gutten restrictions or mask mandates. Again,
(19:29):
from what I understand, and I've been in touch with
some of the like leading constitutional lawyers who are trying
to look into it further.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah, almost nothing happens. But then if you have let's say,
a sheriff.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
In this case, you know, not ending an agreement with ICE,
there's a pretty serious and significant backlash. There has also
though been you know, there was an amazing campaign to
eventually get sheriff, your former sheriff, your or PYO out
that took like a ton of organizing by immigrant rights
organizers in Arizona, and that was pretty incredible and sustained,
(20:04):
and there's been a lot of good stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Written about it.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
So it's not it's not not the case that people
have built campaigns and have been able to unseat their sheriff.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and that's that's good to know,
because like, I much prefer the like slow disassembling of
this in a world in which they don't just get
full power and start, you know, going after people with
the wrong signs on their front yards, than any other
option here. It just it seems like it's one of
(20:34):
those situations where the deck is very much stacked in
their favor, right in part because of how long I
think this problem has been ignored, Like it's really just
now I'm so glad that y'all's podcast is out because
I still don't think there's nearly enough attention on like
what these sheriffs are doing, because this really is it's
(20:55):
so fundamentally anti democratic in a way that is also
has a great deal of legitimacy in the eyes and
ears of at least a lot of the people living
in these areas, right, Like, this is not just some Yahoo,
declaring himself, you know, a militia. It's not like the
State of Jefferson movement saying like We're totally going to
(21:15):
secede from California. These are guys with real power. So
I guess kind of where I'd like to close by
is asking do you see a shift in rhetoric from
these people from like twenty twenty to twenty twenty four, like,
because I feel like right now the rhetoric is much
(21:36):
more like aggressively anti like the enemy within, whereas you know,
in twenty twenty it was much more focused on gun
rights and going after migrants. But I think you would
have a better better sense of that than I do.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
So one thing is that immediately following twenty twenty, there
was some effort on the part of CSPOA to start
to slightly distance themselves from the Oath Keepers.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah, CSPO the Oathkeepers.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
I mean the former Sheriff mac that was the founder
of the CSPOA was on the board of the Oath Keepers,
and Stuart Rhodes, who's been charged with seditious conspiracy for
his role planning J six, has been working closely with
CSPOA for the entire time that CSPOA for the most
part has been around, so they were working really, really
really closely together. So there was a little bit of
(22:25):
a shift after j six where CSPOA tried to distance
themselves from the oath Keepers. But I would say that
the other thing that you touched on is also true.
As opposed to focusing so much on kind of nullification
of any sort of creating you know, Second Amendment sanctuaries
or those types of things, they've really leaned hard into
(22:49):
investigating election fraud and kind of stop this deal style rhetoric.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
And they've really leaned hard, in a very frightening way
into more who are like really harsh and horrible anti
immigrant rhetoric. And so, you know, back literally at their
twenty twenty four spring CSPOA convening, they're talking about the
great Replacement theory. They're talking about doing every single thing
in their powers to make sure that there is not
election fraud. They're talking about, you know, making sure that
(23:18):
I don't want to use the terms here, but that
undocument people don't vote in the elections and those types
of things. And then what was really frightening in this
plan that I spoke about briefly in Florida that the
state director of CSPOA released is that they are actually
embracing more far right views overtly in that plan than
(23:39):
they have in any other time actually since they were formed.
So they're explicitly quoting. For any of your nerds out
here that follow this stuff, this guy Matthew Truhella, and
he openly advocated for political violence and was one of
the people who actually justified violence against abortion providers in
the nineteen nineties. They quote him numerous times when talking
(24:02):
about setting up citizen militias to actually essentially target election
clerks in the event that they are not happy with
how the elections turn out. Yeah, so there is a shift,
I would say, in like, in multiple directions that some
of which are very very much just in line with
Trump and the Trump campaign to some degree, and some
(24:24):
of which are already kind of, you know, plans for
a different type of insurgence at the local level, and
the event that things don't go in their.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Direction, yeah, I'm going to throw us to ads once more,
and then we will come back and kind of close
ourselves out. So everybody have an ad and we're back.
(24:54):
So quote, Yeah, just kind of in closing, what are
you kind of keeping your ear to the ground on
as we near election day? Like, what are kind of
your do you have any particular sort of red lines
that you're keeping an eye out for from these people.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
I am looking closely at Florida and whether some of
the plans that they've actually laid out in Florida might happen.
I'm also keeping a close ear to battleground states where
it seems like a number of these militias are kind
of activated aligned with some sheriff's departments, and I want
(25:32):
to particularly see if there's any type of cases that
kind of show up in terms of either voter intimidation
or those types of things. And it's just been dawning
on me more and more that a number of the
people who are in the CSPA network are actually in
battleground states, and I just wonder to what degree that's
(25:53):
a coincidence or not. I think I'm just trying to
kind of get a sense of how also some of
the framing from these sheriffs continue to shift and whether
they actually become activated, whether they're polsees or citizen militias
that become kind of mobilized as they did to some
(26:14):
degree in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Well, that's what I will be keeping an eye on too.
Thank you, Thank you so much for coming on. Thank
you for putting together this podcast series. Everyone listened to
The Insurgents Sheriffs co produced by Political Researches, Soviets, Political
Research Associates and Quintero Productions. Again, that's The Insurgents Sheriffs.
(26:37):
You can find it wherever podcasts are found. Thank you
for coming on. Everybody check this out and hopefully we
will have a drop of the podcast and the Bastards
feed so people can listen in on that too. Thank
you so much, Chloe, Thank you so much for having me,
and thank you listeners.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
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Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back to it could happen here, a podcast about
it happening here, and that it that is on everyone's
minds right now. This will be dropping two or three
days before the twenty twenty four election, possibly two or
three days before everyone's life changes substantially. We have no
way of knowing. I'm not optimistic or pessimistic. I have
(00:26):
no idea what's going to happen. But one thing that
everyone ought to be aware of, whether or not Trump wins,
is kind of, to put it bluntly, the man has shooters.
And some of those shooters are literal shooters in that
they are local sheriff's departments, people who call themselves constitutional sheriffs.
This is an organization that's really got off the ground
(00:49):
in twenty twelve, and for more than a decade has
been making inroads with elected Republican leaders, with Republican influencers,
with groups like the Oath Keepers, and these are guys who,
in brief belief, the sheriff is the only is You
can kind of get two versions of this, but generally
either the sheriff is the only legitimate law enforcement authority
in the country, or the sheriff is the highest legitimate
(01:11):
law enforcement heard. I've heard it both ways in the country,
and kind of the reason for this basically is a
lot of people in rural areas that are more conservative
do not want to have to listen to or follow
the laws made by people in cities. And more to
the point, they believe that the country has been taken
off of a good track by dangerous liberal communist types,
(01:34):
and you know, they want the ability to use force
against you know, migrants, against the undocumented, against people they
see as criminals, against left wing protesters, and this is
kind of a way for them to argue that they
have a right to do it without any restrictions. Now,
the whole story is much deeper than that, and to
talk about what I think is one of the most
important subjects to be discussing right now, because you know,
(01:58):
people laugh a lot about life, the gravy seals or
whatever like, you know, all these different kind of out
of shape militia dudes, the kind of silly fumbling that
we saw a lot at January sixth, you know, which
I think is a mistake, just because January sixth was
still quite dangerous. But when we're talking about these guys,
these are not just like random yeho's. These are people
(02:18):
who have the force of law behind them. They're armed,
they're organized, and they're quite dangerous. And to talk about
how dangerous they are and where they came from, I
want to bring on a wonderful journalist, investigative reporter and
PRA research director Chloe Cooper, who has co executive produced
a podcast on the Constitutional Sheriff's movement called The Insurgents,
(02:41):
which is a co production of Political Research Associates and
Quintero Productions. Chloe, I think I got that all right? Right?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
That was awesome?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yes, y, thank you, thank you. Yeah, So let's talk
about this. Where do these guys? I gave a little
brief overview, but like where do these guys come from?
And you know, what do we see from them and
the lead up to this election? Like what are they?
What are they going to do? Do you think?
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:05):
I mean I loved the overview that you just gave.
I think that was such a great way.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
To approach this all.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
So, the leader of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers
Association is this guy named former Sheriff Mac And he
was a sheriff in Arizona. But one little important detail
to note is that he actually kind of got his
bearings before that in Nevada, and he was courted by
(03:34):
someone who was basically in very close company with the
John Birch Society.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Always comes back to them, I know.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
He actually becomes a sheriff partially because of some of
the ideas that come out of the John Birch Society
and some of this kind of like emerging trend that
in some cases is actually like skeptical of the federal government,
skeptical of state governments. Yeah, and then they start to
build out with sheriffs in different parts of the country.
(04:04):
At times, I would say the network has really ebbed
and flowed. But a couple of things that have been
important to note, like throughout the six years of researching
this network of sheriffs, that I think is really important,
especially in advance of the elections. One is that sheriffs
who are aligned with this have really embraced this idea
(04:25):
that you can deputize anybody. Yeah, so in some cases
you have oath keepers and other militias going to the
sheriff to say, hey, you want to deputize me, But
in other cases we've actually followed sheriffs who are going
into churches and saying, we're deputizing all of you.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Great sheriffs in Virginia when.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
The state passed a law that was like a law
for some gun restrictions, saying don't worry, people were actually
going to deputize you.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, that way you can have whatever gun you want
and carry it anywhere. Yes, yeah, and all.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
So what we started to see is that during the
former Trump administration, he was really actually courting sheriffs around
the country, and I think he started to see networks
like CSPOA as like part of his ground troops. And
so I think that there is a potential danger in
sheriffs that are part of this formal network called the
(05:20):
CSPOA or other sheriffs, because there are hundreds more that
just have like aligned with their way of thinking about things,
just playing this role of deputizing more people and creating
this kind of idea of like a super citizen or
people who are kind of aligned with a far right
way of seeing the world and then getting deputies to
(05:41):
be part of the kind of ground troops for that.
So that's like one thing, and then in addition to that,
there is also CSPOA itself teamed up with this group
called True the Vote, which has mostly since been discredited,
but it's been one of the loudest groups in the
country that has been spreading this idea that the twenty
(06:02):
twenty election was stolen and has been actually working with
county sheriffs to try to investigate voter fraud at the
local level, but in some cases also working with sheriffs
to align with vigilante groups on the border, for example,
to intimidate people from actually voting. And so there's kind of,
(06:22):
i would say, like a multi pronged series of potential
risks and dangers that could play out, particularly from this
network in the coming weeks. One other quick thing I'll
note is that one of the very latest things that
we saw, and this actually came out of a close
kind of colleague in the movement, Devin Burkhardt, who works
(06:45):
at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights,
is that he came across a plan that the Constitutional
Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association put out in Florida, and
the plan is to essentially resurrect kind of sovereign citizens
groups in Florida, militia's citizen militias in collaboration with sheriffs
(07:08):
to do kind of old school style like intimidation of
election clerks of people involved in the election process, and
they plan to try to hold tribunals if, for example,
the certification of election goes in the direction they disagree with.
And now, as a hardcore leftist, you may find like,
what do you actually think about voting and whether that
(07:29):
actually changes things and all of that, And I'm like,
I've had those, you know, thought bubbles in my brain
for a long time also, But I think what we have,
what I've started to see is that the constitutional sheriffs
to me represent, and also the groups of people who
have aligned with them are actual not just white nationalists,
but people who are neo Confederates. And I think of
(07:49):
it more of like a neo confederacy, and that what
we could see is something like sheriffs actually coming in
confrontation with potentially even police and mayor and governors and
them representing a different kind of politic, a different type
of way of seeing society. And one person also talked
about how the constitutional what are they really referring to?
(08:11):
Are they referring to?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
You know, what is it? The organic constitution?
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Essentially before slavery was abolished, before women had the right
to vote, before the you know, Native Americans had the
right to vote. And so if that's the case, that
that is actually the kind of constitution that they are
upholding and representing, then they are actually been quite successful
in building out different alliances around the country within a
(08:39):
somewhat prominent law enforcement institution that has very little accountability.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah. And I so this is where I kind of
wind up in conflict with both liberals and a lot
of leftists. Is I think that the leftists who say
like there's no point in voting are wrong for the
same reason like I think people who say there's no
reason for civilians to be armed. I don't happen to
(09:07):
agree with that, and I don't happen to agree with
it because I think if somebody who wants to kill
you has a weapon and you have the ability to
either match that weapon or take it from them, then
that's probably what you should do for the sake of
your own survival. And handing over complete control of the state,
the military, and the police apparatus to the far right
is handing them the most powerful weapon anyone has ever made.
(09:28):
And I just don't think that's wise.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Now.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
At the same token, the thing that kind of liberals
will bring up a lot, which is that like, just vote,
just get out and vote. Well, we've been doing that
and Democrats have overwhelmingly outperformed conservatives in elections this century,
and it hasn't been enough. And it hasn't been enough
in part because these people don't care about the law.
You know, there's a moment in your podcast where I like,
(09:53):
you have an expert on who's kind of talking about
the sheriff deputizing you know, seventy people or whatever in
the small town and being like, well, he's not actually
allowed to do that, Like, you know, the actual letter
of the law does not give him the right to
be doing this. He's misinterpreting the constitution. But the reality
of the situation is that, like, he's allowed to do
(10:14):
whatever he can get enough people with guns to back
him in doing And that's honestly, the root of all
politics is how much force can you bring to bear,
you know, in order to support the reality you want
to support, right, Like, that is how it all works.
And the bet the right is making with all of
these different anti democratic strategies they're trying is that no
(10:37):
matter what they do, and no matter how far against
the Constitution, against the rule of law they take things,
they will have the force to support their version of reality.
And I don't know, I don't know how we thread
this needle. Right. The easiest thing is like, well, maybe
if Kamala has a really resounding victory, there just won't
(10:58):
be much for them to fight on, right, and they'll
kind of back down. But even if she wins in
twenty twenty four, which I think is the better of
the options that we've got, these people aren't going away.
And in fact, I think you are going to see
challenges at local levels. I think it's not impossible that
we wind up with like an anti pope style situation
with the presidency, whereas like Trump holds his own inauguration
(11:21):
and a bunch of state and local leaders say like, no,
we're not recognizing the Harris administration. Donald Trump is our president. Like,
there's a lot of weird shit that could wind up
as the result of this, And I just don't see
us getting out of this purely through electoral methods. And
I don't know what. I don't know how else we
handle it, right, Because you also get into this situation
(11:43):
of like, Okay, well we're going to send in the
police to crack down on these sheriffs that are breaking
the law. Well, what if the police don't want to
do it. What if the police are more supportive of
these sheriffs departments than they are of you know, they're
elected leaders in the state or at the federal level.
You know, what if the f b I as has
happened in the past, What if the Feds are unwilling
(12:04):
to go up against a bunch of arm heavily armed
quote unquote patriots, you know, like we saw in you know,
some of the Bundy shit from about a decade ago, right, Like,
what if what if the people who are supposed to
handle this for the citizenry in a situation that abides
by the law abrogate their responsibility because they're scared you
(12:24):
know who backs us up? Then?
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Wow, Okay, you just put a lot out there.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
Sorry, Like I wanted to respond about a minute.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Oh one more.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I apologist. That was my that was my bed.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
That was so great, I think Okay, a couple a
couple of thoughts. One is that I think that far
right movements are very much mobilizing within the government right now,
and or you could say maybe fascism is trying to
mobilize within the government. Absolutely, and so I think you
have I think we have to grapple with that really seriously.
(12:57):
And so like in terms of anti fascist strategies, I
don't know what is what could that actually look like
right now, but you have to grapple with the reality
that many far right movements have made serious, serious headway
into not just former president, but into state legislators, into
the judicial system, into sheriff's departments, and so we are
(13:24):
seeing a major fissure right now. So I don't know
how to respond completely to some of the questions around
around electoral politics, but I think those are really important
questions that you're posing. And then just to go pivot
back to my wheelhouse, which is the right and the
far right and some of their strategies. One of the
(13:44):
things that you touched on is something that a number
of different far right strategies have been practicing over the years,
and it is about this idea of both nullification or interposition.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Is what they call it.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
So these constitutional sheriffs, one of the tactics that they
have used over the years is to get sheriffs around
the country to not enforce state laws, right, and so
you had a whole wave of sheriffs around the country
supporting sanctuaries for the Second Amendment. Second Amendment sanctuaries. Okay,
so they said in their own county, we're not going
(14:24):
to enforce gun restriction laws. And again, think about that, however,
you will all good, but they're saying we're not going
to afford us at the county level.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Then you had all these shriffs around the country being like,
we're not going to enforce lockdown ers, we're not going
to enforce mask mandates.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
What are they practicing. They're practicing the muscle of exactly
what you just talked.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
About, right, right, Yeah, I think that's a great way
to look at it too.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Yeah, independent of what's happening at the federal government, independent
of who wins right now, there is like a confederated
situation happening in the country, and these sheriffs and also
others have been very much in those So it's not
just kind of the militias that will back these sheriffs
(15:04):
that are interested in that type of strategy. There's the
whole like all these different movements that come out of
the Christian reconstructionists all talk about interposition, so the idea
of getting sheriffs other elected officials within the local magistrate
to prop up and kind of protect your politics, regardless
of the state or federal And so now we have
(15:25):
this interesting moment where you've had in recent history, you know,
a former president that actually aligned with some of those politics,
and then you have a bunch of state legislators that
align and so I think understanding some of the strategies
that's important. It's important to understand that you may have
sheriffs that are backing this, and they may not always
align with the police, and they may not always align
(15:46):
with the governor, and so it's going to be a
little different than what we may often think of as
like systemic white supremacy, where all the state and law
enforcement are lock and step together. I think looking at
the Civil War, as you've done so many different times,
is actually really important, Like how does this reflect patterns
that are more similar actually to you know, the Confederacy
(16:07):
against the North or those or you know, these types
of other moments in US history.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I'm gonna throw to ads and then I'll come back. So, yeah, everybody,
here's here's some maths. We're back. I wanted to ask,
are there cases you can think of of like some
of these guys, these constitutional sheriffs who have been voted
(16:35):
out and like forced out of office and had kind
of these some of these like policies that they've been
pushing reverse, Like do we have do we have any
kind of case studies of times sheriffs went, you know,
hard into this ideology and actually lost power as a
result of it.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
So actually in episode four it touches on it briefly,
but it's a really interesting and kind of rather both
in some ways inspiring but also disturbing.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Case study to some degree.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
There was a sheriff in North Carolina, Sheriff Jim Pendergraph
of Mecklenburg County, and he was really inspired by the
former sheriff Joe Orpio in Arizona. And he is one
of the people who really champions this program called two
eighty seven G which allows sheriffs to basically deputize their
office as ice federal ice agents and work with ICE.
(17:29):
So he pilots that in Mecklenburg County and then as
basically picked up by ICE and kind of helps try
to spread it all throughout the South. Something pretty historic
and incredible happened in some ways in twenty eighteen, where
you had black organizers, immigrant rights organizers pushed for this
whole campaign to oust him and a number of other
close by kind of real white supremacist sheriffs in North Carolina,
(17:54):
and they were successful, and there was a sheriff that
ran and a number of black sheriffs were elected in
the state, and some of the sheriffs ran on not
complying with ice and knock up and ending this program
called the twenty seven g Agreement, and seemed like this
historic moment, this historic win in the immediate aftermath of that,
as opposed to in moments where you have sheriff saying
(18:18):
we're not going to enforce the lockdown order and essentially,
besides some reporters reporting on it, nothing happens. Instead, what
happened is that within a few months of this sheriff
ending the twenty seven g Agreement, the federal government comes
in and issues pretty massive ice raids through the county
and actually ends up locking up over one hundred different people,
(18:42):
many of whom got deported.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Pretty soon after that, you had a.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Number of other sheriffs in the state, including this one
constitutional sheriff who also had aligned with another large anti
immigrant network called the Federation for American Immigration Reform, essentially
organizing in the state for the state to push back
and push an entire state wide mandate that all sheriffs
comply with ICE. So that's not really an uplifting story.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, actually not quite.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
I think what it demonstrates, in a tough way, is
more about this kind of like when sheriffs claim all
of this autonomy at the local level, which they seem
to actually in many cases be able to practice kind
of quite well, you know, when they say they want
to enforce the state wide gutten restrictions or mask mandates. Again,
(19:29):
from what I understand, and I've been in touch with
some of the like leading constitutional lawyers who are trying
to look into it further.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah, almost nothing happens. But then if you have let's say,
a sheriff.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
In this case, you know, not ending an agreement with ICE,
there's a pretty serious and significant backlash. There has also
though been you know, there was an amazing campaign to
eventually get sheriff, your former sheriff, your or PYO out
that took like a ton of organizing by immigrant rights
organizers in Arizona, and that was pretty incredible and sustained,
(20:04):
and there's been a lot of good stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Written about it.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
So it's not it's not not the case that people
have built campaigns and have been able to unseat their sheriff.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and that's that's good to know,
because like, I much prefer the like slow disassembling of
this in a world in which they don't just get
full power and start, you know, going after people with
the wrong signs on their front yards, than any other
option here. It just it seems like it's one of
(20:34):
those situations where the deck is very much stacked in
their favor, right in part because of how long I
think this problem has been ignored, Like it's really just
now I'm so glad that y'all's podcast is out because
I still don't think there's nearly enough attention on like
what these sheriffs are doing, because this really is it's
(20:55):
so fundamentally anti democratic in a way that is also
has a great deal of legitimacy in the eyes and
ears of at least a lot of the people living
in these areas, right, Like, this is not just some Yahoo,
declaring himself, you know, a militia. It's not like the
State of Jefferson movement saying like We're totally going to
(21:15):
secede from California. These are guys with real power. So
I guess kind of where I'd like to close by
is asking do you see a shift in rhetoric from
these people from like twenty twenty to twenty twenty four, like,
because I feel like right now the rhetoric is much
(21:36):
more like aggressively anti like the enemy within, whereas you know,
in twenty twenty it was much more focused on gun
rights and going after migrants. But I think you would
have a better better sense of that than I do.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
So one thing is that immediately following twenty twenty, there
was some effort on the part of CSPOA to start
to slightly distance themselves from the Oath Keepers.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah, CSPO the Oathkeepers.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
I mean the former Sheriff mac that was the founder
of the CSPOA was on the board of the Oath Keepers,
and Stuart Rhodes, who's been charged with seditious conspiracy for
his role planning J six, has been working closely with
CSPOA for the entire time that CSPOA for the most
part has been around, so they were working really, really
really closely together. So there was a little bit of
(22:25):
a shift after j six where CSPOA tried to distance
themselves from the oath Keepers. But I would say that
the other thing that you touched on is also true.
As opposed to focusing so much on kind of nullification
of any sort of creating you know, Second Amendment sanctuaries
or those types of things, they've really leaned hard into
(22:49):
investigating election fraud and kind of stop this deal style rhetoric.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
And they've really leaned hard, in a very frightening way
into more who are like really harsh and horrible anti
immigrant rhetoric. And so, you know, back literally at their
twenty twenty four spring CSPOA convening, they're talking about the
great Replacement theory. They're talking about doing every single thing
in their powers to make sure that there is not
election fraud. They're talking about, you know, making sure that
(23:18):
I don't want to use the terms here, but that
undocument people don't vote in the elections and those types
of things. And then what was really frightening in this
plan that I spoke about briefly in Florida that the
state director of CSPOA released is that they are actually
embracing more far right views overtly in that plan than
(23:39):
they have in any other time actually since they were formed.
So they're explicitly quoting. For any of your nerds out
here that follow this stuff, this guy Matthew Truhella, and
he openly advocated for political violence and was one of
the people who actually justified violence against abortion providers in
the nineteen nineties. They quote him numerous times when talking
(24:02):
about setting up citizen militias to actually essentially target election
clerks in the event that they are not happy with
how the elections turn out. Yeah, so there is a shift,
I would say, in like, in multiple directions that some
of which are very very much just in line with
Trump and the Trump campaign to some degree, and some
(24:24):
of which are already kind of, you know, plans for
a different type of insurgence at the local level, and
the event that things don't go in their.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Direction, yeah, I'm going to throw us to ads once more,
and then we will come back and kind of close
ourselves out. So everybody have an ad and we're back.
(24:54):
So quote, Yeah, just kind of in closing, what are
you kind of keeping your ear to the ground on
as we near election day? Like, what are kind of
your do you have any particular sort of red lines
that you're keeping an eye out for from these people.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
I am looking closely at Florida and whether some of
the plans that they've actually laid out in Florida might happen.
I'm also keeping a close ear to battleground states where
it seems like a number of these militias are kind
of activated aligned with some sheriff's departments, and I want
(25:32):
to particularly see if there's any type of cases that
kind of show up in terms of either voter intimidation
or those types of things. And it's just been dawning
on me more and more that a number of the
people who are in the CSPA network are actually in
battleground states, and I just wonder to what degree that's
(25:53):
a coincidence or not. I think I'm just trying to
kind of get a sense of how also some of
the framing from these sheriffs continue to shift and whether
they actually become activated, whether they're polsees or citizen militias
that become kind of mobilized as they did to some
(26:14):
degree in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Well, that's what I will be keeping an eye on too.
Thank you, Thank you so much for coming on. Thank
you for putting together this podcast series. Everyone listened to
The Insurgents Sheriffs co produced by Political Researches, Soviets, Political
Research Associates and Quintero Productions. Again, that's The Insurgents Sheriffs.
(26:37):
You can find it wherever podcasts are found. Thank you
for coming on. Everybody check this out and hopefully we
will have a drop of the podcast and the Bastards
feed so people can listen in on that too. Thank
you so much, Chloe, Thank you so much for having me,
and thank you listeners.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cools Media.
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