"Constitutional sheriffs"

"The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association has nine Minnesota events planned in October. They’ll be led by Sheriff Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who is also a founder of an extremist group that played a role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. 

Mack gained notoriety after he was part of a lawsuit that successfully overturned a provision of the Brady Law in the 1990s.

Since then, Mack founded the constitutional sheriffs group and has traveled the country, recruiting law enforcement officers — particularly sheriffs and deputies — to join his movement. Their central tenet, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League, is that the county sheriff is the ultimate legal authority and can refuse to enforce any law they consider unconstitutional. This idea has no basis in law and aligns with so-called sovereign citizens , an anti-government extremist movement that believes they are sovereign from the U.S.

The Oath Keepers recruit law enforcement and have gotten more media attention, but the constitutional sheriffs group has “arguably had more success infiltrating law enforcement,” according to the ADL. 

Mack’s group believes county sheriffs’ powers exceed those of any other authorities when they’re protecting Americans from foreign or domestic enemies. Mack has claimed sheriffs have the power to call out the militia to support them — the same logic employed by the Posse Comitatus, which the ADL calls a loosely organized, far-right, violent anti-government group that sprang out of the West Coast around 1970, peaked in the early 1980s and evolved into the sovereign citizen movement. 

The Posse Comitatus also believed county government reigned supreme and sheriffs could nullify laws. One of their members, Gordon Kahl, was involved in two fatal shootouts with law enforcement in 1983, one in North Dakota and later in Arkansas, where he was killed.

Mack refers to his supporters as his posse.

The constitutional sheriffs’ group has honored as a “sheriff of the year” 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. 

More at the link.