Far-right sheriffs gather to hear how they can fight the federal government: report
A meeting of county sheriffs, some of whom came from as far away as Pennsylvania, was held in North Carolina to hear why the law enforcement agents should refuse to follow the federal government, reported local news site The Assembly.
Richard Mack, the founder and president of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, told the crowd that, despite a refusal to follow the feds, they should follow the "Bill of Rights" and fight back against those who don't.
Mack's group believes that the county sheriffs are “the last line of defense standing between the overreaching government and your Constitutionally guaranteed rights.”
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“Doesn’t matter where the threat comes from,” he said. “No one is allowed to violate the Bill of Rights.”
The event was hosted and paid for by a local group called Citizens for a Better America. The report explains that its website says its mission is “to actively defend our liberties and uphold our rights according to our Constitution."
Sheriff Dustin Smith was part of the movement to bring Mack to speak. Rallying the crowd before Mack's appearance, Smith spoke out against the authority of the feds to order a lockdown during COVID, which former President Donald Trump put in place on March 16, 2020.
“We need to make sure that we stand together,” he told the crowd, to applause. “We were elected by the people, for the people. That’s our job … We lived through 2020. We all know what that was like. That will never happen again!”
The Assembly reported that Mack's tenure as sheriff closed with a 1994 lawsuit that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mack challenged "part of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act which requires a 5-day waiting period before selling a gun to a unlicensed buyer.
"The suit, which had the backing of the National Rifle Association, eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing the majority 5-to-4 opinion that struck down portions of the act," the Assembly reported.
In his opinion, Scalia wrote: “Federal Government may not compel the States to enact or administer a federal regulatory program."
Mack claims that this ruling means a sheriff has the constitutional right to interpret the law as they see fit and are not beholden to any state or federal laws. The Assembly said cited legal experts challenging this opinion.
Mack was known for giving speeches to Tea Party members and had a book written about him by Idaho white supremacist Randy Weaver, who waged his own war against U.S. Marshals attempting to arrest him for arms dealing at Ruby Ridge in 1992.
Mack's group also began working with the Oath Keepers in the early 2000s.
“The Oath Keepers and I were a marriage that was made in heaven,” Mack said in 2009. Since then, Mack has withdrawn from the group.
While Mack had bragged for over a month that "over 100 people" were paying to see him speak, only a few actual sheriffs attended. The report cited a room full of laughs about Hunter Biden and gas stoves. Pamphlets outlined how to obtain freeze-dried emergency rations in the event of an apocalypse or another natural disaster.
The report said that the group was formed after the fall of another organization known as Posse Comitatus which was started in the 1970s by William Potter Gale, who wanted to hold "treason trials." A group leader killed two federal marshals and a deputy sheriff in Arkansas in 1983, which killed the movement along with it.
Under Mack, the group is less overtly racist and anti-Semitic, but still projects the need for sheriffs to carry out their own interpretation of the law to uphold the Constitution.
“We shouldn’t be enforcing laws that aren’t lawful,” he says. “We shouldn’t be enforcing laws that are unjust.”
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