Robert Evans and Cody Johnson dissect the chaotic history of American border militias, tracing the rise of Chris Simcox from a polished Minuteman leader to a 2013 rapist serving 19.5 years. They expose Shauna Ford's fabricated assassination claims, her promotion despite childhood felonies, and her 2009 Arivaca murder that earned her a death sentence while the FBI allegedly ignored warnings. The hosts connect these failures to modern groups like the United Constitutional Patriots, led by convicted felon Larry Hopkins, whose viral migrant detentions finally triggered an arrest in April 2019, highlighting systemic law enforcement negligence. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Catching Up After CPAC00:09:50
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Bob Pippman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
Coming up the seasonal Math and Magic, CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario.
People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments that happen when you're in the shower.
Or it's really like a stone sculpture.
You're constantly just chipping away and refining.
Take to interactive CEO Strauss Salnik and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Saturday, May 2nd, country's biggest stars will be in Austin, Texas.
At our 2026 iHeart Country Festival, presented by Capital One.
Tickets are on sale now.
Get yours before they sell out at Ticketmaster.com.
That's Ticketmaster.com.
This is Amy Roebuck, alongside TJ Holmes from the Amy and TJ podcast.
And there is so much news, information, commentary coming at you all day and from all over the place.
What's fact, what's fake, and sometimes what the F.
So let's cut the crap, okay?
Follow the Amy and TJ podcast, a one-stop news and pop culture shop to get you caught up and on with your day.
And listen to Amy and TJ on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
What's patrolling my borders?
I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards.
This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast.
We'll tell you bad people, talk about them.
Katie Stowell, Cody Johnson, how you guys doing?
Still great.
Quick answer to your question.
Racists are patrolling your borders.
Yes, they are.
Whether or not they're in Border Patrol actually.
Doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
Pretty much.
Racists.
From the top down.
Boy, you know, sure seems like 2020 is going to be the worst year of everyone's life.
The worst year ever?
Can't you?
The worst year ever.
I could agree more, but I'll just agree.
I'll just agree with you completely.
What if we, what if we're spitballing here?
What if we produced a weekly podcast through the entirety of the election talking about the stuff people are leaving out, going to places other people don't go?
Like to the conventions.
Yeah, avoiding mentioning the president so much.
Talking about policies.
Policies.
Important things.
People left behind.
Maybe injecting methamphetamine into our butts and going to CPAC.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
What if we did that?
It would be a dream country.
You think we should do that?
I think we should do it.
Yeah, on the spot.
Sure.
Okay, cool.
You know what I love doing and what's super professional is holding pitch meetings like this at the start of my show.
That's where the magic happens.
That is where the magic happens.
That's how it does, you know.
And we're actually legally forbidden from talking, not on microphones, to each other.
Right, right.
This is the only place we can have this happen.
I've had mine implanted.
Yep.
Which very cool move.
Everything's recording.
Check out our other podcast, just catching up with each other as friends.
Catching up when we have to record.
My nighttime sleeping snore sounds is really taking off.
I think the Cody and I discuss our sciatica episode.
It was a real, it's real good.
I've got some good stretches for you guys.
Okay.
That's the title of another episode.
Well, I guess we're doing that.
Is that our soft way of saying we're going to do that?
We're going to do a weekly podcast about the election about the world.
It's called the worst year of everyone's life.
Yeah.
Get ready, guys.
This is going to happen.
Check it out.
Check it out a little bit later this year.
Not even particularly close to now, but like sometime in August.
So-ish, we look forward to it.
Sometime in Q3-ish.
Yeah.
Maybe Q4.
Sharing the worst year of everybody's life with you.
Hooray.
That sounds great.
You know what else sounds great is our products?
Shirley crippling.
Oh, I was going to say the Shirley crippling addictions that we will inculcate covering this nightmare of an election.
Or are they going to be worse than my already existing addictions?
They have to be.
I've already checked myself into rehab for December 2020.
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
And I've already started asking random guys under bridges if they have Adderall.
So this is where.
Oh, I've got Adderall.
Oh, fantastic.
Oh, man.
We are so on the ball.
Look at this.
Look at this team.
You know what?
And I've been stockpiling Benzedrine inhalers.
You just pop those things out, drop them in your water, and that's 70s speed right there.
Professional.
Yep.
Doing it right.
CPAC.
Sophie, you're giving me some sort of hand signal.
What's that?
I think it means scooping up.
Name more drugs.
Oh, we have a show to do that people tuned in wanting to hear more about the racists of the border.
I guess we could read the show.
Fine.
I guess we can read the show.
Fine.
Fine.
Chris Simcox was the first person to tap effectively into a very particular chunk of the American conservative consciousness.
People had tried to run volunteer border militias before, and there had been militias for decades, but no one had managed to make that sort of behavior go mainstream because all the prior leaders of those sorts of movements had been insane people, outright Nazis, or insane outright Nazis.
Chris Simcox was a clean-cut, all-American-looking guy.
He helped the militia movement go mainstream.
Here's the nation.
Koot.
Thank you, Cody.
As the Republican Party has fractured over immigration, Simcox has become a hero of the Build-A-Wall Deport-A-Mall faction of the GOP.
Earlier this year, he shed his camouflage fatigues for a suit and tie as a featured panelist at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., the nation's largest gathering of conservative political activists.
An increasing portion of his time is spent at fundraisers and forums far away from the border he once swore to defend by any means necessary.
Chris had enough charisma to be able to effectively work a crowd.
That Nation article recounts a speech he gave during a Republican Party fundraiser at Wild Bills, a nightclub in Atlanta.
I want you to remember as I read this that it happened all the way back in 2006.
The odor of pulled pork spread a mighty tang as members of Georgians for Immigration Reduction hawked t-shirts bearing the image of a snarling bald eagle above the slogan, Ill eagles foul up my country.
One fucking guessed how foul this spells.
Oh, wow.
I desperately want one of those shirts.
I will wear it every day.
That's what I'll wear to CPAC.
I'm sure we have the internet.
You have to wear that to CPAC.
Oh, my God.
I will wear it for the four days before CPAC, so it's like filthy.
And then we'll shoot methamphetamine into our butts and go to CPAC.
It's going to be amazing.
Oh, I'm going to have so many lanyards by then.
I'm so excited.
That's so good.
That's all Cody can talk about.
I'm excited about all the lanyards.
The crowd warmed up for Simcox by listening to the Wright brothers, a country rock duo Bill Dad's Sean Annani show put to music.
That's their billing?
That's what they do?
Be their naturalist.
I'm not even filtering.
What?
That's not a description.
I'm looking them up.
I'm not even through the paragraph, and there's tears in my eyes.
We're still talking about the Wright brothers.
Good.
One donned a black sombrero with gold tassels and dedicated a song called The Illegals to Chris Simcox.
The not-so-catchy chorus?
Tell me why do we allow the illegals?
After all, they're illegal.
So why do we allow the illegals to keep on coming in?
Oh, you can't rhyme illegal with illegal.
Oh, that's so bad.
Oh, my gosh.
Sean Hannity show put in music.
What an insane thing.
That's so perfect.
Because like, it's so bad in so many ways.
Because, like, obviously the message is like, well, that's not good.
That's Sean Hannity's show.
But then, like, rhyming illegals with illegals, it's so inelegant.
It's like, oh, yeah.
The other aspect of Sean Hannity is that he's really dumb and inelegant.
They're really embracing it.
It's fucking incredible.
Oh, amazing.
As the music faded, Simcox strolled onto stage to raucous cheers.
America's top vigilante spoke slowly and with a hint of condescension, almost as if addressing a room full of five-year-olds.
When you put people in lawn chairs on the border, an amazing thing happens, Simcox said.
No one comes across.
As he spoke, giant screens behind him displayed ghostly night vision images of immigrants marching through the desert, water jugs piled beneath a mesquite tree, and the decomposing corpses of desert crossers.
What?
What?
What's the fudge?
Sounds like he's a cool guy.
Very.
Cool dude.
It sounds like he is a guy.
Yeah.
You see all those videos of migrants crossing the border and they go to the Border Patrol and they're dying, dehydrated, and then you see the Border Patrol agents take jugs of water and pour them out in front of the sounds like something nice people do.
Okay.
Cool people.
Okay.
I just wanted to make sure you...
Navy Drunk in Seattle00:04:15
Okay.
Yeah, I mean, we should at some point do an episode on the terrible things the Border Patrol is doing.
The actual portals.
There's a lot to talk about with the Vigilante.
Stay focused.
Stay focused, guys.
They just sound similar.
You're fucking head on us, devil, Cody.
Similar, are you?
I'm sure.
Jesus.
Okay, okay.
Jesus Christ.
Now, as the early aughts rolled along, Chris Simcox became more controversial within his group.
Many accused him of taking donations to finance his own lifestyle.
He earned the nickname The Little Prince for, allegedly, being a complete prick and control freak.
For being a little French boy and a little fancy boy.
He was a fancy boy.
Fancy Lord.
It was just the La Petit Prance.
Yeah, little Lord Fururoy.
Yeah.
Oh, nice.
Well, not really, actually.
It's a little force.
Mediocre.
We'll make a t-shirt out of it.
Obviously.
Yeah, of course.
We'll make a t-shirt.
But I'm not going to throw the bagels over that.
I understand.
Which, right now, since I mentioned them, I don't know if you've heard of Chekhov's gun, but this is Chekov's bagels.
Yeah, as a result, the Minutemen splintered more and more.
This was not entirely a bad thing.
More than 50 different groups eventually formed all around the U.S., and for years they held regular border patrolling events.
Most of these were on the U.S.-Mexico border, but Chris's Minuteman chapter did send a few guys up to the Canadian border to sit in lawn chairs and watch for dastardly Canadian infiltrators.
I think the only people they caught were Americans trying to sneak into Canada.
At its peak, the Minuteman Project had more than 12,000 members, and that was just in the main official group.
Gilchrist and Simcox remained the primary faces of the movement, but starting in 2006, they began to share the stage with someone else, a 41-year-old woman named Shauna Ford.
Okay.
Y'all heard of Shauna Ford?
No.
You're fucking about to.
Is she a Ford or is she just a person named Ford?
No, no, she's not at all related to the motor company.
It's spelled different too.
There's an E at the end.
Oh.
Ford's first operation was actually one of the watches on the U.S.-Canada border, which was close to her home at the time, Bellingham, Washington.
After the watch, she wound up at a party at the home of Bob Damaron, the Washington state Minuteman leader.
While everyone was eating dinner, she was caught alone in the Damarant's bedroom, looking through a dresser for pain pills.
She was kicked out of the house, but allowed to remain in the group.
This was because Shauna was kind of a superstar Minuteman or woman or whatever term you want to use.
A minute person.
She showed up at every event, and she was the kind of person who just sort of dominated any conversation she was in in such a way that within a few weeks, she'd become one of the most prominent members of the group.
She was especially active on the Minutemen email list, The Line.
According to The Herald, a local Washingtonian news source, quote, In a lengthy August 20th, 2006 email, she described being attacked by a group of men.
She said they were Mexicans outside of a Seattle Starbucks.
The men were enraged after seeing signs against immigration piled inside her car.
Ford wrote about finding herself face to face with a pair of dark brown eyes filled with pure hate.
One man, she wrote, wanted to rape me or kill me, probably both.
Just before the confrontation got physical, though, Ford said she was saved by a group of U.S. Army soldiers in full uniform who happened to be in the area.
Did everybody clap?
I'm sure they all clapped.
I'll say in a little bit of defense to her, I have seen a lot of U.S. Army soldiers in full uniform in, well, U.S. Navy, in Seattle during Fleet Week, but they were all so drunk they couldn't stand and trying to fuck everything that moved as Marines and Navy personnel do.
So she maybe like got her signals crossed and like misinterpreted what they were showing up for.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, this is all a lie.
I mean, there's clearly a lie.
I mean, I feel like, yeah.
I'm going to guess like Seattle's racial makeup being what it is.
Like any group of Hispanics in that like city are probably like members of the U.S. military who are basically excited.
As you were saying that, I was like, I bet someone with brown eyes, one person, saw her sign and was like, hey, man, that's not cool.
I bet she was shouting about it.
And someone was like, that's you're a bad person.
And then a bunch of horny sailors came up and was like, anybody here to fuck you?
You know, that's the grain of truth I got from that.
Yeah.
Is uh literally anything bothering you right now?
I know what I'll make you feel better.
Because I'm drunk as fuck and it's fleet week.
Oh, it's a fun time.
Joining the Navy Later00:04:15
Oh, it's time for ads also.
Maybe ads for the Navy.
That was the Sean Hannity of Transitions to Ads.
Anyway, it's ads time.
Join the Navy.
Get drunk in Seattle.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, oh my god, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
He related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share, stay with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Moda.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
Just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really start making money.
It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating Wall Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
If I'm outside with my parents and they see all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what?
Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
They believe everything, but at first it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food.
They cannot feed their kids.
They do not have homes.
Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
Bureaucratic Problems on Border00:12:48
Listen to Eating Wall Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
We're back!
We were just talking off mic about cool political ideals we have that you could hear about on the hypothetical podcast that's definitely coming.
If we definitely probably are going to for sure do that.
Yeah, well, we'll definitely most likely absolutely be talking about what we just talked about.
Yep.
And you guys can tune in then.
Yeah, it was weird that it wasn't recorded.
It was weird that it wasn't recorded.
Let's talk about Shauna Ford some more.
Awesome.
Ford was a teen.
Yeah.
Shauna became quickly the Minuteman's de facto spokeswoman, regularly talking to press on behalf of the organization.
This did not go over super well with all of the actual leadership of the group who felt that Shauna was basically just shouting her way into power.
Gilchrist, Simcox, and the organization's other leadership got together and voted to fire her.
Bob Dameron was instructed to actually do the deed in November of 2006 after she finished participating in a local television town council discussion on illegal immigration.
D'Ameron later recalled, I told her I was told to fire her.
I also told her I couldn't do it.
Shaken, Ford drove home, or she tried to, but she rammed a guardrail in her Honda Civic and was taken to the hospital with minor injuries.
This much we can confirm.
The Washington State Patrol said she crashed when a truck, which was obeying all of the rules of the road, pulled in front of her.
The state patrol seems to put the blame on her for driving like a shithead.
But in Ford's recitation of events, the truck drivers ran her off the road, and of course, they were Mexicans.
Yeah, she's a person that can't take responsibility for themselves.
It's cool, especially when they become part of a heavily armed militia.
That's the best thing.
Those are the best kinds of responsible people.
Was she trying to end it all?
I don't know.
I think she was trying to have a minor car accident so she could claim Mexicans were trying to murder her.
Yeah.
Is there any way to confirm or deny that those drivers were Mexican?
No, none at all.
Yeah.
I'll deny it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm going to say driving 40 or 50,000 miles a year as I do, especially up in the Pacific Northwest.
I don't see a lot of truck drivers who aren't old white dudes.
But she seems to run into them all.
Yeah, she does seem to run into them all.
This attempt on her life was enough to delay Ford's firing.
In January 2007, she took the opportunity to approach Chris Simcox directly.
She told him that her state's Minuteman group leaders were shitty and disorganized.
She said she could do better, and she had a whole plan laid out for how to fix things.
Simcox promoted her to a state-level leadership position.
Shauna took to leadership like a dog takes to a fajita that fell on the floor.
She quickly came up with new stories of assassination attempts against her, including the claim that she had been shot in the arm during another attack by dastardly villains of vaguely Hispanic origin.
She told anyone who'd listened that she fully expected to die for the cause.
All this impressed Jim Gilchrist.
In early 2008, he made her the Minuteman Project's Border Patrol Coordinator.
She moved to Arizona and started her own independent Minuteman group called Minutemen Against American Defense when she was kicked out of the original Minuteman group shortly after moving down to Arizona for being a crazy person.
Gilchrist sent her volunteers, though, calling her one tough lady, and soon she had around 20 armed volunteers at her beckon call in her own personal little Minuteman militia.
Ford began to claim that she'd started an undercover operation to infiltrate drug dealers on the border.
Gilchrist started to worry that she was going to get murdered, which seems to have been her goal.
Throughout 2008, Shauna Ford took to calling Kathy Dameron, Bob's wife, at all hours of the day and night, claiming that her life was in danger and shadowy figures were hunting her.
Shauna would regularly cut the call suddenly, just to make things seem even scarier.
I'm going to say real quick, she seems like a toxic friend that you don't want to have in your life.
She's not a real energy drain.
I think people would be well served to just cut that tie.
Move on.
Anyway, that's some editorializing.
In November 2008, Ford emailed Kathy photos of drugs and money she claimed to have found at an Arizona stash house.
The photos solidified her reputation to other Minutemen.
Shauna Ford was out there fighting the real war on the border.
This image was buoyed when her ex-husband was shot by an intruder in their Everett, Arizona home that December.
The case is still unsolved.
And the next week, Shauna went to the police and claimed that a Latino gang had raped her.
That case was eventually dropped due to a lack of evidence.
In January, Ford called Kathy and, in mid-call, claimed to have suddenly been shot.
Kathy did not hear any gunfire over the line.
Why is so much gun violence in these?
So much fake gun violence.
Oh my God.
Like, what happened to her husband's lived?
Yeah, yeah, he's fine.
He was fine.
Maybe he lived.
Did she shoot her husband?
I don't know.
He shot himself.
It seems like something.
Maybe she shot her husband and they called the cops.
I mean, home invasions do happen, but like, yeah, just given everything else, it seems like it might have been literally made everything else up.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So that phone call, which was super sketchy, and the fact that Shauna stole Kathy's pain pills whenever she visited, made the Dameron slowly stop trusting her.
Damaron sounds like a pill she would take.
Yeah, it does.
I mean, Demeral is fucking awesome.
Here's how Kathy relates Shauna reacting when she got caught pill-handed.
She said, I've been busted, haven't I?
I said, yes, you have.
She said, I'm sorry, mom.
I said, not good enough.
I'm sorry, mom?
Yeah, I think that was like her nickname where she was being trying to act like a kid.
I'm disturbed by this relationship.
You're about to be disturbed her.
In February 2008, the Herald published an article revealing that Shauna had a history of childhood felonies.
They went to Jim Gilchrist for comment.
His initial response was actually pretty reasonable, saying he respected her for turning her life around.
And then he said this.
She is no whiner.
She is a stoic struggler who has chosen to put country, community, and yearning for a civilized society ahead of avarice and self-glorifying ego.
In 2009, stoic struggler Shauna Ford cooked up a plan.
She had identified someone she believed to be a drug dealer in Aravaca, a small border town.
Shauna reasoned that this monster was getting drugs from Mexico.
If she robbed him and took his drugs and money, she could use them to fund the expansion of her border militia.
Solid galaxy brain plan right there.
And she could use the drugs.
She could probably take the drugs.
Because she'd ran out of her friend's pills.
You know what stops drug dealers?
Robbing them.
That's the one thing that's friendly.
And then they're like, ah, I'm out.
I'm done.
That's it.
We've all seen breaking bad ones.
Oh, my God.
In mid-May, Shauna traveled to Colorado to recruit a few good men to help her carry out this scheme.
Here's how Tucson.com describes what happened next.
At that meeting in a truck stop near Denver, Ford drew a map.
It wasn't specific, pointing to an individual house, but it gave a generic impression of the area she meant to hit.
Ron Widow and Robert Copley, two of the men she was recruiting, kept the map and handed it over to Chris Anderson, an FBI agent in Colorado, for whom they were acting as informants.
This is where the bureaucratic problems happened.
Anderson said he passed the information to the FBI in Phoenix.
The FBI in Phoenix apparently did nothing.
Eventually, it even destroyed the map.
On May 30th, 2009, Shauna Ford and two of her militiamen showed up after midnight at the home of Raul Flores, Gina Gonzalez, and their nine-year-old daughter, Brisinia.
Shauna and her men posed as border patrol officers.
They accused Flores of harboring illegal immigrants and told him his house was surrounded.
Flores let them in, thinking they were cops.
Shauna believed that Raul was a drug dealer, so she started combing his home for drugs and cash.
There was only one problem.
Raul was not a drug smuggler.
His house had nothing valuable in it.
So Shauna and her men stole Gina's jewelry.
Then they executed Raul Flores with a gunshot to the chest.
They shot his wife next, three times, and, while she begged for her life, they blew nine-year-old Brasinia's head off.
Now, Gina survived the gunshots and played dead until Shauna and her men left.
Then she got up, called 911, and grabbed her husband's shotgun.
For some reason, Shauna and her people re-entered, probably planning to search another part of the house for drugs.
Gina opened fire, wounding one of the gunmen and causing them all to run like the gutless shitstains they were.
Cool.
Wow, that really upsets me.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's the only logical extent of what these people are doing.
Yeah.
Oh, we didn't find what we need.
I'm going to kill you.
Yeah, the big bar in Aravaca, like the center of this little town, like has signs that specifically say no militia, like no border patrol, like fake people are allowed in the bar.
Like we don't want any of this fucking bullshit anymore.
It's like there's a, for all the stuff we talked about, there's like a logical progression.
And it's like the people they claim to be protecting who live on the border actually despise all the people doing this because they just bring trouble and they're like undisciplined, violent nuts.
Yeah.
Shauna and her compatriots were all convicted of murder.
Shauna was sentenced to death in 2011.
Gina also sued the FBI for having clear evidence that Shauna Ford planned to violently attack people and doing nothing with it.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that she had no grounds to sue for this.
According to Tucson.com, the argument that really stuck was that under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the federal government can't be sued over the exercise or performance or failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty.
The decision of whether or not to notify local law enforcement was a discretionary act, she said in her decision.
They're not required to let law enforcement know that someone's planning a violent break-in of a house in their area.
So they can't be a policy.
Yes, sounds like a terrible policy.
Yeah, what if they were allowed to do that?
What if they were required to tell local law enforcement when a nun with the militia is talking about attacking people's homes and drawing maps of where she plans to hit?
I don't have the names of these, the current militia situation going on, the names of people, so I'm talking generally, but the leader.
Oh, we'll get to that.
We'll get to that.
Okay, I'll save it then.
But it ties in with this.
Sorry.
That's okay.
Okay.
It's okay.
In 2010, the year before Shauna's trial, Chris Simcox ran for Senate.
Here's a little picture of Chris Simcox.
Get the fuck out of here, Chris Simcox.
I trust that guy.
You trust him, yeah.
He was attacked from the right for his seemingly moderate views on illegal immigrants.
Chris had started to support adding in new pathways for citizenship to make immigration easier for people fleeing desperate circumstances with whom he claimed to sympathize.
He was also attacked for the MCDC's financial irregularities, chief among them the fact that hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions of dollars, had probably been funneled directly into his pocket in spite of the fact that he officially drew no salary.
Weirdly, what wasn't a huge issue was that, as early as 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center had reported that Simcox's first ex-wife had accused him of trying to sexually molest their 14-year-old daughter.
Not long after that, his second ex-wife accused him of violent abusive behavior.
She testified in court that he once took a knife from the kitchen and threatened to kill himself.
When he was angry, he broke furniture, car windows.
He banged his head against the wall repeatedly and punched things.
Simcox repeatedly, vehemently, denied all allegations.
He continued to do so right up until the moment.
In June of 2013, he was arrested on multiple counts of molesting and raping several of his own daughters.
Here's the Phoenix New Times: Quote: Two of the daughters who took the stand are under the age of 10.
Both are his children with ex-wife Alina Simcox.
One of them alleges sexual abuse.
The third daughter is an adult, his child from a previous marriage, who alleges that Simcox molested her on three separate occasions when she was young.
I'm so angry.
Cool dude, Chris Simcox!
Patriot!
Yeah.
Yep.
This is a part where I don't.
I don't know what to say.
Yeah, what does that just say?
It's so upsetting.
It's so gross.
Yeah, I'm not going to go into detail about what Chris did other than to say that this border patrol and clean-shaven conservative patriot repeatedly sexually assaulted his own daughters.
In 2016, he was sentenced to 19 and a half years in prison.
Should have been 40.
Should have been 40.
With Shauna convicted of murder and Chris convicted of serial child molestation, Jim Kilchrist was left as the only Minuteman leader not in prison for committing numerous horrific crimes.
And he's still active.
A 2016 Vice article caught up with Gilchrist.
He told them he takes credit for the conservative obsession with border control that metastasized into the presidency of Donald Trump and his wall.
Jim also resurrected the Minutemen back in 2014 after his co-founder was arrested for being a pedophile.
So the Minutemen are still a presence in American political discourse.
That said, time has largely moved past them.
And we're going to talk about what time has moved on towards.
Yes, but first we're going to talk about products.
What else though?
Services.
And you know what?
I forgot to do this, but I'm going to act on my anger over the crimes of Chris Simcox and Shauna Ford by tossing a bagel.
Good on you for moving those groups.
I'm not even going to look at where I toss it, so this could be real bad.
No, they just came right back.
It was almost perfect.
That was a blind throw.
You proud of me, Sophie?
Psychopaths and Rape Trees00:13:34
Sophie's proud of me.
You know what else is proud of me?
The sponsors of this show.
Products!
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
Oh my god, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
They said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share each day with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really started making money.
It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating Wall Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
If I'm outside with my parents and they see all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what?
Today now, obviously, it's like 100% they believe everything, but at first it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food.
They cannot feed their kids.
They do not have homes.
Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
Listen to Eating Wall Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
We're back!
Whoa!
We were having a conversation, then I interrupted it by saying we're back.
It was getting too tight.
It was real abrupt.
An act of cruelty to our engineer, Daniel, who's done nothing but be helpful to me.
And Bash Taylor Swift.
Bash Taylor Swift.
So I have these bagels and I've been tossing them.
We have these soundboards on the wall that act to bounce sound around somehow.
I don't understand what they're for.
I've been tossing them mostly, which is why it's been bouncing back to me, which makes sense.
But we also have on the end of this recording studio, for reasons that are inexplicable to me, a glass door leading out to a porch, which is not standard in most recording studios.
I'm going to try chucking them as hard as I can at the glass door just to see what happens.
Please don't.
No, it's happening, Sophie.
I'm sorry.
Oh!
Oh!
Satisfying sound.
That was a good sound.
This is going to be great on the podcast.
Content.
Sophie, you look at the business.
They love him around here.
He can do what he wants.
Oh, God.
I guess the people who built that, like, soundproof that porch sealed it with toxic chemicals and didn't let it off.
I just want to make sure you don't open that door.
One thing we're not allowed to do is throw bagels at that door.
The door to the walled-off porch in our recording studio is filled with poison.
This is such a great studio.
Yeah, it keeps on your toes.
I don't understand the problem.
I might throw them again.
Yeah.
What do you mean, might?
Well, you know, Anderson, fear is the mind killer, the little death that causes me to throw bagels.
I think that's how it was written in that.
Yeah, that's the right?
Yeah.
That's how it goes.
Big bagel fan, Frank Herbert.
Okay, so.
Bagel art code.
Right.
Yes, we'll keep on to this afterwards.
So, as I said, time has moved past the Minutemen, but their influence echoes in much of what's going on right now at the border.
In May of 2018, Michael Meyer, founder of a militia called Veterans on Patrol, posted a video of himself walking through a homeless encampment in Tucson.
Like Chris Simcox, Michael gave the government an ultimatum.
They had until noon tomorrow to investigate the site.
According to BuzzFeed, quote, he then turned the camera around towards a tree with straps attached to it, declaring, this is a rape tree.
Meyer painted a grim picture.
The straps on the tree were not used to secure parts of a makeshift homeless encampment.
Instead, they were restraints for holding children in place while they were sexually abused by cartel members, he claimed.
The space dug into the ground was in fact a prison cell for the children, and various other items of trash and debris at the site proved to Meyer that sick shit had been going on there.
This is a child sex trafficking camp that no one wants to talk about, that no one wants to do anything about, he said.
What is it?
Where does he get his information?
Well, I'm about to get into where to get his information.
The video quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views, and Meyer's claims were even repeated by a number of local news stations.
Infowars and other similar conspiracy outlets were happy to run with the tale, and it quickly got woven into the broader Pizzagate QAnon family of conspiracies.
But the idea of rape trees did not start with Meyer.
Here's a video: child murderer Shauna Ford posted in 2009.
Yeah.
Sean Fo.
There's a coyote who uses this very specific trail.
This is his territory.
He brings his people through here, and they'll pick out who they want out of the group.
They'll bring them to a separate location.
They will rape them.
They will rip their underwear off and take their bras off.
They make them leave them behind and then they throw them on trees.
It's a trophy.
Women do not leave their garments laying around.
Most women, come on, girls, we all know that we tuck them and put them away somewhere.
We're not just going to throw them out.
It doesn't matter if you're out in the middle of the wilderness or not.
Women tend to be very modest with their undergarments.
So what a traditional layup site is, is backpacks, clothing changes, just all kinds of items.
Here, no backpacks, no mail items, nothing that's a traditional layup.
So this is a genuine rape tree and a genuine rape spot.
Rape trees.
Are rape trees historically a thing?
No, no.
I mean, outside of True Detective season one.
Her evidence is that women tend to be modest?
Yeah.
That's your evidence that's in the tree.
That's their child murderer and disciple of a pedophile.
I take my bra off and leave it places whenever I can.
Ditto.
Unbelievable.
These weirdos.
These fucking crazy things.
I think the word you're looking for is psychopaths.
These patients.
Thank you, Katie.
This is such a bizarre cross-section of this obsession with there's like a kid sex cult going on.
Also, it's the immigrant thing, but also it's like a kid's sex.
And also, the government is in on it.
And I'm going to molest my own kids.
Also, Miss Moon kids.
I'm probably going to be a child murder.
I'm going to murder a bunch of people.
But like these people.
These people.
It's sick cults of sex with.
Shauna Ford, who ordered the execution-style murder of a nine-year-old worried about rape trees.
Yeah.
According to Harold Shapiro, author of a book about vigilante border patrols, quote, for the Minutemen, the rape trees are a powerful symbol of the Mexican male's immorality and simultaneously imbue their own actions with valor.
By patrolling the border, the volunteers are not just defending America, but women, and not just American women, but all women, even the ones who are illegal.
Until they shoot them in the house.
Until they try to execute them.
But because she's a badass, she fends them off with a shotgun, which is terrible.
It's the worst thing that can possibly happen.
And then, like, they can't even do the suit that she tried to bring.
No, to her.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Unbelievably infuriating and terrible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In October of 2017, the FBI public access line received reports of militia activity in Flora Vista, New Mexico.
According to a government complaint, which I initially found shared by activist Emily Gorchinski on Twitter, quote, In October 2017, the FBI Public Access Line, PAL, received reports of alleged militia extremist activity in Flora Vista, New Mexico.
Information was conveyed relating to a group that called itself the United Constitutional Patriots, located at Lakeside Ranch Trailer Park in Flora Vista, New Mexico.
The United Constitutional Patriots was led by their so-called commander, Larry Hopkins, who also went by the alias of Johnny Horton Jr.
Information was also conveyed that the group had its base at Hopkins' residence, was supported by approximately 20 members, and was armed with AK-47 rifles and other firearms.
Witnesses reported seeing members of the United Constitutional Patriots bearing firearms at Hopkins' residence.
Hopskins also allegedly made the statement that the United Constitutional Patriots were training to assassinate George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama because of these individuals' support of Antifa.
Yeah.
Cool.
This story kills me.
Now, when you find evidence that a convicted felon lives in a house with multiple firearms.
A convicted felon that impersonated just like the people who murdered that nine-year-old and that innocent man.
When you hear about that, that these people illegally have guns and are planning to murder a former president, a former secretary of state, a random private person, and presumably some Antifa people, what would you guess law enforcement would do?
Nothing, literally nothing.
I think in this situation, they'd walk away for a couple years or a year and a half, some change, and then come back last week and arrest him because they posted some videos online and everybody got upset.
Yeah, kind of like how they threw away that map to where Shauna Ford was trying to rob and murder people.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
The FBI just kind of moved on with their lives and forgot about it.
I cannot believe that.
Left this felon with weapons and stuff.
So but it comes back to this thing.
So the FBI doesn't necessarily have to report this to law enforcement.
It's at their discretion.
It's at their discretion.
But this was okay, because something that I'd read is like he was like, no, no, these guns, they all belong to my common-law wife.
Yeah, he did say that.
So that's okay.
That makes okay.
Okay, then let's make that a law.
You just can't have guns in the house.
Yeah, if you're a convicted felon who pretends to be a police officer and is now a vigilante.
So they saw the videos were getting traction and they...
Yeah, almost two years later in April of 2019, pictures and video went viral of a group of heavily armed American militiamen with AR-15s, body armor, and skull print balaclavas stopping a group of 200 migrants at the border and holding them until police arrived.
These men were part of United Constitutional Patriots.
Their leader was Larry Hopkins.
Hopkins claimed that they had detained 5,600 people in the last two months.
The video of their arrests went viral, and it seems to have finally prompted the FBI to do something about Larry Hopkins and his illegal guns.
They arrested him a few days later, after the video went viral.
This is his mugshot, and it's look at that.
Oh, yeah.
Look at that.
Look at that mugshot.
It's so beautiful.
It's quite, quite the mugshot.
We talked about it briefly on the podcast this week, and I just didn't know how to describe it.
He looks like a convicted felon who would probably murder and rape people.
He's like some sort of like washed up country singer.
Looks like he's at a grocery store at 10 a.m. in Vegas.
Larry Hopkins Arrested00:07:05
Yeah, okay, that's a really good coach.
He looks like.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
But his eyes will never open for more than that ever again.
No, he looks like who you would cast if you needed someone to play a drunk 70-year-old Elvis.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a bad picture.
It's a down-is-luck Elvis impersonator.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And they chose the nicest picture.
Yeah, and they chose a good one.
Yeah.
For the press photo.
So Larry is at least behind bars for a little while.
But less than a week before the recording of this episode, something else happened.
Behind the barsters.
By the way.
Thank you.
Sorry.
Russell Pierce, a former member of the Arizona State Senate, spoke at a patriotism over socialism rally in Gilbert, Arizona.
He shared the stage with Laura Loomer and spoke about the border crisis, noting that it may take the shedding of blood to keep this republic.
And I, for one, am willing to do whatever it takes.
In their coverage of his remarks, Fox News noted, it was not clear what Pierce, now an employee at the Maricopa County Treasurer, was speaking about.
Was it not?
I think I may have an idea.
He's talking about doing what Shauna Ford did.
Although Laura Loomer, come on, bottom of the barrel.
Do an episode on her.
Fucking.
No, she doesn't.
She doesn't deserve it.
It doesn't deserve it.
Only enemies will deserve it.
I mean, Simcox definitely is a bastard, so Shauna Ford.
I said this before you started recording, but I do appreciate a female bastard.
Thank you.
Because, like I said before the recording that you guys weren't here for, I do think it's sexist, our knee-jerk reaction, like, or our thought that, like, oh, women are better than men.
No, women can suck.
Women can suck too.
Women can suck balls.
Yeah.
They can also suck.
I mean, that's not bad or not necessarily.
It's a moral position.
Yeah, that's neutral.
Sometimes I was using it in a way.
It's a neutral good.
That has nothing to do with sex.
Yeah.
I was not.
Yeah, I see that.
I can't look at one pump once.
Right in there.
Tossing bagels, you know.
Yeah.
Oh, oh, I get it now.
Do you get it?
I thought it was purely about coffee, mate.
No.
One.
I could see why you'd think that.
I get it.
You probably have to cut this out.
One stroke, one come.
I get it now.
No, we can say come on the show.
Okay, good.
I mean, I'm hoping to get on to Come Town.
I still don't know what Come Town is.
Never going to listen to an episode.
Great title.
And the Comeboys.
That's funny.
That makes me giggle.
Don't know what it is.
Don't plan to listen.
Don't need to know.
What I do plan to do is toss these bagels one last time.
Now, where, not Sophie, but where do the people who aren't Sophie want me to toss this that I haven't yet?
Sophie.
Sophie?
No, I'm not going to throw it.
Oh, the roof.
That's a good idea.
Because anything can happen if you're talking on the roof.
There's drinks, there's computers.
Oh, this is good.
The roof is made of glass, by the way.
Oh, it was good.
Oh, they fell behind me.
I was hoping it was going to do some damage, but the next person that walks on that glass ceiling.
There is a glass ceiling.
Yeah, there's a glass ceiling.
And it freaks me out.
There's a glass ceiling above the poison room in our recording studio.
This is where I want to be when the big one hits.
Right between the glass ceiling and the poison room.
Yeah.
I can't believe all of that's true and none of it's a joke.
You're going to need to tweet some pictures of all of these places so people understand what we're talking about.
There's a poison room.
Oh, just don't open it.
Don't find that out.
Don't find out.
So, you guys want to plug your pluggables?
Yeah, we got a podcast called Even More News.
You got a podcast?
We do.
Even more news.
Even more news.
And my name's Katie Stoll on Twitter and in life.
Cody, take it away.
We also have a video series on YouTube called Some More News.
And that Twitter account is Some More News.
And my Twitter account is Dr. Mr. Cody.
That's D-R-M-I-S-T-E-R.
Okay.
C-O-D-Y.
D-Y.
And I forget my name, but this podcast has a Twitter and an Instagram at BastardsPod.
It has a website behindthebastards.com.
I don't think there's anything else to plug.
Sophie's not saying I should plug anything else.
Well, there's this show that we're doing.
Daniel is gesturing to his shirt.
You can buy Daniel's shirt if you find him on Twitter.
He'll sell anything.
PayPals and all.
Cash apps.
Anything.
Anything.
You can also buy shirts on tpublic.com buying the bastards.
Is there anything else?
Sophie has a dog named Anderson, who you probably cannot buy.
Probably not.
Yeah.
But you could approach her about buying the dog if you approach us on Twitter because she runs the Twitter because I am not allowed to run the Twitter and should under no circumstances.
Yeah, no, we don't need you doing that.
We don't need you being tweeted, hey, can I buy that dog?
And you saying yes.
Yes.
Selling Sophie's dog.
Well, that's the episode.
Go.
What?
What are you?
What are you looking at?
What's it could happen here?
What could happen here?
Oh, I have a podcast.
Yeah.
I have a podcast in a dream of exasperating Sophie by pretending I'm not going to mention it to make her frustrated because I'm just a piece of shit.
Just a bad person.
It's working.
Cody's enjoying it.
That's the audience I play for.
All right.
Play me out, Daniel.
Bam!
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
Coming up this season on Math and Magic, CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario.
People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments that happen when you're in the shower.
Where it's really like a stone sculpture.
You're constantly just chipping away and refining.
Take-to interactive CEO Strauss Salnick and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
It's financial literacy month, and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum-Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
Chipping Away at Ideas00:00:34
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they failed.
Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Saturday, May 2nd, country's biggest stars will be in Austin, Texas at our 2026 iHeart Country Festival presented by Capital One.
Tickets are on sale now.
Get yours before they sell out at ticketmaster.com.