Trump's Constitutional Sheriffs

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 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

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, 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, 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 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, which is a co production of Political Research Associates and Quintero Productions. Chloe, I think I got that all right? Right?

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

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.

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 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

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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? Are they referring to?

reason for civilians to be armed. I don't happen to 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.

And I just don't think that's wise.

You know, there's a moment in your podcast where I like, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 know who backs us up? Then?

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

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 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.

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.

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 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 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 against the North or those or you know, these types of other moments in US history.

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 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.

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, 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 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, many of whom got deported.

option here. It just it seems like it's one of 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 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

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 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.

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 investigating election fraud and kind of stop this deal style rhetoric.

election fraud. They're talking about, you know, making sure that 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 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 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 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.

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

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 degree in twenty twenty.

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.