Fear And Sheriffs In Las Vegas feat. David Gilbert (E276)
So-called “Constitutional Sheriffs” fancy themselves as the real life version of Judge Dredd: the ultimate arbiters of the law according to their interpretation of the Constitution. Recently the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) held a conference in Las Vegas. Among the speakers were regular features of the podcast disgraced former General Michael Flynn, convicted former County Clerk Tina Peters, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Our guest WIRED reporter David Gilbert attended the conference, and he told us all about what he saw at this gathering of conspiracists and pseudolaw enthusiasts.
REFERENCES
WIRED: Far-Right Sheriffs Want a Citizen Army to Stop ‘Illegal Immigrant’ Voters
https://www.wired.com/story/constitutional-sheriffs-election-deniers-immigrants-voting/
WIRED: No, a Shadowy Figure Is Not Buying Tents for Columbia Student Protesters
https://www.wired.com/story/conspiracy-tents-student-protests-gaza/
David Gilbert on Twitter
https://twitter.com/daithaigilbert
NBC News: A sheriff, a felon and a conspiracy theorist walk into a hotel. They're there for the same conference.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/constitutional-sheriffs-las-vegas-conference-rcna147487
MassLive: Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson calls cancellation of ICE contract a ‘politically motivated attack’
https://www.masslive.com/politics/2021/06/bristol-county-sheriff-thomas-hodgson-calls-cancellation-of-ice-contract-a-politically-motivated-attack.html
Politico: The Troubling Sheriffs’ Movement That Joe Arpaio Supports
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/01/joe-arpaio-pardon-sheriffs-movement-215566/
American Oversight: The Constitutional Sheriffs Movement and Its Threat to Democracy
https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/the-constitutional-sheriffs-movement-and-its-threat-to-democracy
NBC News: Former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters sentenced to home detention and community service in obstruction case
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/former-colorado-county-clerk-tina-peters-sentenced-home-detention-comm-rcna79085
CBS News: Mike Lindell's MyPillow evicted from Minnesota warehouse after lawsuit claimed it was $200K behind on rent
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/lawsuit-mypillow-eviction-mike-lindell-minnesota/
Welcome to the QAA Podcast, episode 276, Fear and Sheriffs, in Las Vegas, featuring David Gilbert.
As always, we're your hosts, Jake Rakitansky.
And Travis View.
What happens when you combine law enforcement power, delusions of having even more power, and conspiracy theories?
You get the Constitutional Sheriffs.
Constitutional Sheriffs are a group of law enforcement officials who believe that the county sheriff has the ultimate authority to interpret and enforce the Constitution, often placing this local interpretation above federal or state laws.
They assert that their duty includes protecting citizens from what they perceive as unconstitutional federal mandates and other laws.
This concept is promoted by groups like the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, or the CSPOA, founded by former sheriff Richard Mack.
Proponents of this movement argue that the sheriff, as an elected official directly answerable to the local populace, has a sovereign duty to act as a check on other government layers.
Critics, however, see the movement as a potential threat to the rule of law, arguing that it could lead to a selective enforcement of laws based on individual sheriffs' interpretation of the Constitution.
This, they warn, might undermine established legal precedents and disrupt the uniform application of justice across different jurisdictions.
The CSPOA claims on its website that, quote, the Constitution makes it clear that the power of the sheriff even supersedes the powers of the president, a theory that legal scholars say has no grounding in law.
What doesn't help their cause is that people who self-identify as constitutional sheriffs often promote baseless conspiracy theories or associate with conspiracy theorists.
This was seen at the recent CSPOA conference in Las Vegas.
There, attendees paid $49 for a day that included 11 hours of lectures, breakfast, a boxed lunch, and a pizza party.
I hope they got ice cream afterwards.
The lectures were full of conspiracy theories, including those related to immigration, elections, and vaccines.
One of the individuals in attendance of the conference was our guest today, David Gilbert.
He is a reporter for Wired, and we previously spoke to him about the group Moms for Liberty.
His latest report for Wired, which we will link to in the show notes, is headlined, Far-Right Sheriffs Want a Citizen Army to Stop Illegal Immigrant Voters.
David, thank you so much for speaking with us again today.
Glad to be here, guys.
So, yeah, you went, um, as the unusual assignment here in Vegas, but, uh, according to your own, uh, understanding, like, what are the constitutional sheriffs?
Because when I was reading up on them, it seems like they're, they, they really see themselves as the real-life version of Judge Dredd, right?
They, they get to decide the law.
Yeah, I think that's in the kind of ultimate ideal of how they see themselves is that they are the final arbiter of what the constitution or how to interpret the constitution.
They are the ones who stand between the people and the all powerful federal government or state agencies.
They're the ones who are standing up for the little people effectively and they'll do anything or they're willing to put their lives on the line to protect their people.
Yeah, I mean, that sounds like pretty bad because you know, what we think they would say in response to the, you know, the arguments like, you know, there are other people involved in the legal system, like judges who like oversee the application of law.
Yeah, they don't seem to have a very high opinion of anyone other than sheriffs.
And they don't really have a high opinion of most sheriffs, because when you talk to constitutional sheriffs,
they see, you know, other sheriffs who are not part of their movement as weak or, you know, just kowtowing to the
government and just in it for the money or whatever else it is.
So I think they just want to be kind of seen as kind of this old fashioned view of what a sheriff is,
where they are the ones who will stand up to the invaders or whoever it is that is coming into your town to take your
cattle.
Because actually a couple of the sheriffs who I spoke to in Vegas spoke about people coming in to take away their
cattle.
It was kind of a real throwback to what a sheriff maybe used to do a lot rather than what they're doing now.
But yeah, they seem to very much have this old fashioned view of what a lawman should be.
Well yeah, anytime I imagine like a group of sheriffs that are kind of like the last line of defense between, you know, the people and the law.
I mean, I imagine like some kind of Kevin Costner.
Yeah.
You know, like Western movie and you know what you just said about, you know, being very concerned over cattle being taken.
Yeah, it seems like these guys want to go back to the days of saloons, gunfights outside of those saloons, hanging cattle thieves, you know, which I To them I say Red Dead Redemption 2 exists.
You can go and live that life without sort of endangering or spreading harmful propaganda.
Yeah I don't know if you saw but in the latest season of Fargo Jon Hamm is He isn't kind of named as a constitutional sheriff, but he is very much acting like a constitutional sheriff where he, you know, rebuffs any attempt by the FBI to try and stop him doing just whatever he wants.
Yeah.
Yeah, I recently watched, actually, coincidentally recently watched High Noon with Gary Cooper, in which he plays a sheriff who futilely tries to rustle up a posse to fend off a criminal who's coming to town.
And, you know, it has a very romantic view of the sheriff who's like driven by duty and, you know, who is like the last really line of defense between, you know, these innocent, weak, spineless, basically, townspeople and armed criminals.
I think they seem to view themselves as the Gary Coopers, you know?
That's absolutely their view of themselves.
Unfortunately, the reality of it is that there weren't many Gary Coopers in Las Vegas last week.
Which is funny, too, because if I'm thinking about the, you know, the quote-unquote weak, you know, spineless sheriffs that they probably refer to, I'm thinking of the guys in, you know, part of the LAPD who drive around in the big SUVs with the, you know, the automatic rifle up front and the body armor and all of this stuff.
Essentially look like military mercenaries, but these are the weak guys.
They don't have a duster.
They don't have a six-shooter.
They don't have a length of rope, you know, attached to their waist.
Yeah, yeah.
So the CSPOA was founded by Richard Mack, who is a former sheriff.
I actually, I previously encountered him in Pennsylvania when I went to the Rod of Iron Festival that's run by that spin-off of the Moonies cult.
But what can you tell me about his background?
So he was a former sheriff and he was actually I was I read his book on the plane over to Vegas.
He sent me one of his books before I went and it just kind of outlines how he became kind of disillusioned with law enforcement because he was involved in all he was asked to do was get more speeding tickets and more speeding tickets and he felt like this was kind of You know, being against the citizens that he was meant to protect and he felt that this isn't what law enforcement should be.
So he quit and he became a sheriff and he eventually, I think it was in Graham County that he became a sheriff for about a decade or so in the late 80s and early 90s.
And he was he was kind of heavily involved as well with the NRA around the time, I think.
And then he, what kind of brought him to national attention was He was a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Clinton administration over the Brady Handgun Act, the Brady Act.
And he won that, which he will tell you at every single opportunity that he gets, because the Supreme Court ruled that the provisions in the Brady Act were unconstitutional.
So he kind of, after he finished being a sheriff, he, I think it was in, he was one of the founding members of the Oat Keepers, which people may have heard of the kind of militia group.
And he was a board member on the Oat Keepers for up until very, very recently.
And then in 2011, he founded the CSPOA to kind of I suppose, similar kind of idea to the O'Keepers, but to, I suppose, I don't want to say, maybe radicalize the sheriffs, the 3,000 or so sheriffs that are in the country, because he felt that sheriffs were no longer doing what they should be doing, in his view, that they weren't following the constitution, they weren't, you know, protecting the citizens, they were instead just doing what the government was telling them to do.
And over the years, he's kind of said how many people are involved in the CSPOA, I think in In 2017, he said the number was 4,500 people paying subs.
That's not sheriffs.
That's just people who are members who are paying a monthly subscription.
And then I think in 2021, he said 300 of the 3,000 sheriffs in the U.S.
were members of the CSPOA, which is a pretty big figure, but it has been disputed by experts that that is not that high.
And certainly in Vegas last week, there were nowhere near 300 sheriffs.
There were maybe three sheriffs who were in Las Vegas last week, uh, serving
sheriffs.
And so it's, when I asked him straight out, you know, what the membership
numbers and how many sheriffs are involved, he, he won't, he won't say
he, he just kind of fudges the answer and says, he'll get back to you.
And he never does.
The thing that's sort of ironic to me is that, you know, in my daily life, you
know, driving around Los Angeles, the only time I ever, ever wish that there
was a police officer around is when some guy in like a BMW, you know, whips
by my car on the freeway at like 115 miles per hour, you know, it's like
the only time I'm like, where are the fucking police?
Like, as these guys are weaving in and out of traffic, you know, barely
dodging, you know, the cars in front and behind them.
And it's so funny that he's like, no, all they wanted me to do was
like, give, give more speeding tickets.
I'm like, yes, that's where we need you.
That's where we need you.
We don't need you, like, upending, you know, people's, like, homeless camps.
We need you on these freeways, stopping these goddamn Teslas, stopping these BMWs.
Like, these are the real criminals that I witness in my day-to-day life.
Another really interesting story from the book was that when he was a police officer, he went undercover as part of the kind of so-called war on drugs.
So he went undercover as a drug user.
Oh, whoa.
I don't know what he was like as a younger man, but I could not imagine how he would be any good at that.
But he did it for a full year and he was married with kids at the time and I think that was the final straw and he kind of came away with that saying that the war on drugs as well as speeding the war on drugs is a bad thing which you know he's probably right about.
Sure, yeah.
But he just again felt that the government were, you know, penalizing the people, you know, when they caught someone weed or whatever, that that was, that shouldn't be happening, that they should be targeting the kind of, the more, the organized crime or whatever.
So that was another reason why he gave up being a police officer and moved to being a sheriff instead.
He was like, I don't want to give out these speeding tickets.
I don't want to, you know, put somebody in jail for smoking a joint.
He's like, I want to be a part of a posse where we go around, we go around with shotguns and we're riding on horses.
And like, yeah, we're, you know, we ride into town in front of the saloon.
Like that's what I want to be doing.
You know, yeah, that's what another one of the situations where he seems like he did accurately identify ways in which law enforcement is abused in order to, you know, keep people in line, but his solution just was not any better.
This is why we got to like change names of stuff.
Like if everybody if the word sheriff connotates like, you know, a dusty mustache and and you know, like, you know, a flat brim hat and you know, a Smith and Wesson like then let's call them something different now because if If you use the terminology that elicits the view of this thing that no longer exists, yeah, of course you're gonna have people like this guy who are like, nah, nah, nah, like, what I'm doing doesn't match the title, it doesn't match what I've seen in the movies or what I know the history of this occupation to be.
I've got a quote here that I saved from the book if you'd like to hear it.
Yeah, for sure.
Go for it.
This is from his time reflecting on being undercover in the drug squad.
It was something I so thoroughly hated that it defied description.
I never used drugs growing up and only tasted beer a couple of times.
And I hated that too.
Now I had to live in the bars, drink, smoke, and act like the biggest partying drug eater ever was.
Something totally foreign to my conservative Mormon upbringing.
So yeah, you can see why he would be maybe disillusioned after spending a year as the world's biggest druggie.
Sounds like he was in danger of having a good time.
Yeah, I did watch him speak once and it was like if I was, you know, a member of the underground and I laid eyes on that guy, I would be immediately suspicious of him.
I'll say that.
He didn't seem like a lifelong degenerate.
So, you know, the content of the conference itself.
Very long day, it seemed like.
Very long day.
Only some of it, a small portion of it, concerned subject matter you think would be relevant to people who call themselves constitutional sheriffs, which is about federal overreach and that kind of stuff like that.
A big chunk of it was dedicated to batshit conspiracy theories.
There's really no other way to put it, it seemed like.
And some of them are, you know, genuinely dangerous conspiracy theories.
One of the speakers was the highly energetic conservative political commentator and conspiracy theorist Wayne Allen Root.
So he promoted the false claim that the presidential election of 2020 was decided due to illegal votes from immigrants.
I said the election was stolen in six battleground states that would have given Trump a landslide win instead of a landslide electoral loss.
Those six states were decided by the votes of illegal aliens who came in through our open border.
He was, he woke people up when, because most of the speakers before him were pretty dull.
If nothing else, he had energy.
Yeah, I think I think it was maybe the only he does a radio show.
I think he was the only broadcasting professional who was on that stage.
So he certainly stood apart from the other perhaps more sedate, like, you know, sheriffs and other people.
You know, way down on route, he also promoted like the Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory, which is the claim that the that the basically the white population of the United States is being systematically replaced By immigrants and this, you know, it's usually implied or sometimes stated in other variations is theory that this is part of a mastermind plot by some sort of Jewish cabal.
And that was really concerning to me, because when people ask me, well, like, what's the most dangerous conspiracy theory it is, you know, it has to be great replacement conspiracy theory.
theory because this one has inspired multiple mass shootings on multiple countries. People
get extremely radicalized when they believe this. I mean, did you hear a lot of like great
replacement stuff at this conference? Oh yeah, it permeated pretty much everything
that they were talking about. It was kind of, you know, just this underlying factor
in most of the speeches that there was kind of little offhand references, even if they're
not talking about, you know, the threat of immigrants coming in to vote for Biden. They
were talking about.
They just randomly, like during this speech, he just randomly shouted about Chinese people way down in route and not in reference to anything that he was actually talking about.
And the next speaker was a member of the Constitutional Sheriffs who was American Chinese.
And he was meant to be saying a prayer before lunch, but he actually just stood up and had to say, I just want to say that not all Chinese Americans are the problem.
And he had to try and explain it in such a way that wasn't as if he was attacking Wayne Allyn Root.
And It was just really horrible to listen to because he was obviously kind of upset by what was said, but he couldn't really express it.
So I went and I asked him afterwards, you know, outside, you know, were you upset about that?
You know, why did you make that comment?
And he goes, Oh, yeah, I just wanted to point out that all Chinese Americans, you know, that lots of Chinese people are here legally and blah, blah, blah.
And then I said, well, you know, could this guy's rhetoric, you know, could it cause real problems?
And he said, well, maybe, but the real problem is the Biden administration and just went on on a big rant about the Biden administration.
So even, even him, even he couldn't last longer than a couple of sentences of being kind of, you know, trying to balance the anti-immigrant rhetoric and the great replacement stuff that was coming out.
Well, it's interesting because we've talked in the past about how a lot of these like right-wing extremist groups are, you know, folding in other cultures, you know, as long as you sort of toe the party line and you have similar ideologies, you know, Proud Boys and some of these militia groups, stuff like the Boog Boys, you know, they're, you know, they contain, even though the ideology I think is rooted in white supremacism, you know, they contain people from other cultures.
And I know Julian has sort of talked about this in the past, but like, There's always worry about a tipping point when, you know, these groups get into power and shed, you know, the members of their group that don't necessarily look like the, you know, sort of, they don't match up looks wise or culturally with the ideology, and they will be shed.
And this seems like kind of an interesting intersection of that moment where here you have somebody who is a Chinese American who has to sit on stage, you know, in fact, he's speaking next.
and you know the guy before him is spouting this like you know really sort of like racist rhetoric and like it's a good example of of that of of what happens when you have these kind of right-wing groups that that include people from other cultures and all of a sudden like you know they still can't hide their own sort of racism and and supremacism and yeah how does that feel and and and how do these people within these groups sort of deal with that and I think it's it totally fascinating that you know within seconds he was pivoting to no no well you know Yes, this was a pretty offensive and yeah, I definitely had to speak up about it.
But really, it's it's Joe Biden.
That's the that's that's what we should focus on.
And it's like, well, OK, cool.
You're still towing the party line then, I guess.
Yeah, it's he just like by speaking up and just and all he said was, I just want to point out that not all Chinese people are, you know, illegal immigrants and lots of them are here like me who are legal immigrants.
But that's it.
That's as far as he could go.
He could not bring himself to say, yes, what he was saying is dangerous.
Cause he even said, yeah, that's a really interesting point, but no, it's Biden.
He's like, I know we all heard them clap really loud and cheer after he said that thing.
And then I had to go like, that's gotta be super weird to be like, okay, yeah, I'm going up.
All right.
I'm going to do my prayer and we're all going to get this box lunch.
Really excited about that.
And then it's like, Oh, what's this guy saying?
Oh boy, and they're all cheering, huh?
Like, I'm feeling a little, uh, you know, cause there's a reason, like you said, there was a reason that he went up and felt like he had to say something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's really sad.
Like you mentioned there are only a handful of like real sheriffs who came up and spoke and one of them was a man who goes by the name Bob Songer and he is a CSPOA board member and the sheriff of a county in Washington State and apparently he he talked about he passed around the guy for building a posse Yeah, he looks like he's he's just he's tiny.
He's about five foot and he's looks like he's about 120.
He's just like a really nice old grandpa who is also a constitutional sheriff, but he He was actually quite funny.
His speech was quite funny.
He was kind of making jokes about hanging people or media claims that he and some other people involved with him were hanging people and it just it went down really well with his audience.
Me and the other journalists were kind of left a bit not really sure what he was talking about but He was a good speaker, but he's in a really small county and of, I think about 5,000 people.
So it's not a, it's not a huge county, but he has a posse, his own posse of 150 people in that county, which is a big percentage of the county.
Yeah.
I think that's beyond a posse.
I mean, if movies have taught me one thing, posse is like six to 10 guys.
Maybe they need to come up with a better word for us.
Their branding isn't good enough here.
Yeah, and I was just doing podcast bits and joking about these guys wanting to travel around with like lengths of rope and like a posse in front of a saloon.
And now it's actually, no, that's, that is what they want.
And in fact, he's got one and it's not six guys.
It's 150 guys.
That's not a posse.
That's a clan.
All right.
Well, I feel like at some point it becomes an officially sanctioned militia more than the posse, you know?
Yeah, yeah, sure.
But he, in fairness, he did say that he didn't require them to all have guns at all times.
It was up to them.
So, you know, guns are optional.
Very progressive of them.
The new age, the 2024 posse, six shooters optional, but you got to have the rope and you got to have a horse.
Or a property potentially with a sturdy tree on it.
Yeah.
So yeah, he was he was he when after his speech, he announced that if anyone wanted to know how he amassed a posse of 150 people, he had a guide updated in January 2024 that he was handing out.
He had some paper copies that he was giving people, but he also had a thumb drive that he was going around saying, you can just copy these.
So I got the thumb drive off him and I copied them and they're Yeah, they're just like, they're very well formatted.
They have like, I think it's the policies document is 32 pages long.
And it goes into everything about courtesy, public interactions, disciplinary actions, grievances, gambling, use of intoxicants, harassment.
How to communicate via radio.
Like it's, it's very, very detailed on how you run your posse.
And then there's an application form.
And then there's, he's, he's a document that what does it mean to be a posse deputy and like how you decide who is good or what, what are the right, who are the right people to put into your posse.
So basically it's a, it's a starter guide for anyone who wants to create their own posse.
By any chance, is the is the thumb drive in the shape of a cowboy hat?
I was really disappointed that it wasn't.
I was hoping for a gun.
Because I do like when these guys turn their thumb drives into something like a hat, a big hat, MAGA hat, cowboy hat.
I mean, you know, there's a lot there's a lot that you can do in terms of thumb drive customization nowadays.
But yeah, a little disappointing that it's not a big duster or bucket hat or, you know, you know, anything that would resemble the sort of lifestyle that they are hoping to lead.
So if you, if you do make it through the application process, you will be invited to a posse meeting.
You'll be sworn in as a posse deputy.
You'll be issued with a posse shirt, a badge and a posse hat.
So, you know, there are benefits to being in the posse.
Yeah.
They give you the hat.
You don't have to supply your own hat.
No, they give you the hat.
Oh, wow.
And what kind of hat?
Is it like a, you know, like one of those LAPD hats, but it just says like posse on it?
Or is it like a, you know, a special kind of, um, I can't think of the name of like the tombstone hats, but you guys know what I'm talking about.
10 gallon hats.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
I don't know, I'm afraid.
He was wearing one of those tombstone hats going around, but I think you're going to have to go undercover, Jake, to try and become a part of this posse.
No, that's what you do, not me.
My undercover days, no, long gone.
I would be sniffed out by that crowd.
In a hot minute, I would ask one question about Kevin Costner and they would know for sure that I wasn't on their side.
I would be escorted out.
Travis would somehow remain because he's got a beautiful long mane of hair, nice beard going on, probably some kind of gingham shirt.
Yeah, me?
No.
No, no, no.
Yeah, I mean, you know what?
I bet I could assemble a posse.
I would target underemployed young men and retirees, people who have a lot of time on their hands, feeling aimless.
Because if there's one thing we learned from QAnon, there are just lots of people who feel aimless and crave purpose, crave to be part of something bigger, so much that they become a They become part of this online military LARP.
All of a sudden, they're digital soldiers who are fighting this great war.
Now, this is the same principle, but instead of like being an online military LARP, it's an IRL Old West LARP.
Same principle.
All of a sudden, you're not just, you know, a guy who's struggling to get a job.
You're not just a guy who's retired anymore.
You're part of a posse.
And they've been trying to get off the internet like since the early days.
I mean, remember at that Q conference we went to in Tampa, Travis, you got handed a pamphlet that was encouraging you to get, you know, get off the computer and join a militia.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That, but that is a very interesting, was that guide eagerly received whether like you mentioned there are only a couple of real sheriffs there.
Yeah.
I think most sheriffs probably have it already, but I think he was just kind of promoting the fact that he had a really big posse.
That is a big posse, I have to say.
It's like, yeah, like 10 guys.
That's decent numbers, but 150.
Imagine the music video he could make with that size crew.
So I couldn't find a recording of this.
I don't think it was included in the FrankTV feed that I watched.
Apparently during the break, someone performed a cover of the Bob Marley song, I Shot the Sheriff, except they changed the lyrics to, I back the sheriff.
Is this true?
This is very true because I was I was away, not paying attention to the stage at this stage, I was over looking at the med beds or the hats or the t shirts or something that was, you know, there to tantalise and entertain, but I came back and And obviously I was, you know, the siren song of this guy singing, a guy called Kenneth Hall, I think is his name.
And he, um, I was chatting to Brandi Zdrozny from NBC, who is also there with me.
And we were trying to figure out what the lyrics, we couldn't really figure out what the lyrics were because they were, we knew they'd been changed.
We didn't know what they were changed to.
So she went up afterwards and she asked him, what were you actually singing?
And he confirmed that they were the lyrics.
So I can confirm that that did actually happen.
Yeah, you can do a lot when you change one word of a song.
You know, imagine, I imagine at another conference, they're going to be singing, you know, good boys, good boys, what you gonna do?
Yeah, you know, I think I think the problem they run into was that there's not a lot of pro law enforcement songs, popular songs that are pro law enforcement.
So they have to work with what they got, you know, not so they have to sing, you know, respect the police or something.
But yeah, it did happen and no, no one was paying attention to him except for Brandi.
What did he do for the, but I didn't shoot the deputy lyric?
It was like, I back the sheriff and I also back the deputy or like, uh, the deputy is weak, spineless, not one of us.
Like, no, I think I also back the deputy sounds very familiar.
I think, I think that might be it.
I get it.
I'm getting flashbacks when you sing it like that.
Also in attendance, perhaps unsurprising, was the former General Michael Flynn.
He was there to promote his movie Flynn, which is a documentary which portrays Flynn as this brave truth-teller who faces unjust persecution by the deep state.
Of course, this is just total self-promotion nonsense.
He was fired from his position as National Security Advisor after lying to the FBI about the content of his call with a Russian diplomat.
So, Flynn had this very rambling speech, which I listened to, and he opened with a tirade against the media.
Where's all the media that's snaking around here?
You can come right up here.
Get all the media right up here.
All the fake news media that are out there, because there's some.
There's one right here.
Come on, okay?
I mean, be careful, because they're all snaking around.
I just noticed a couple of them.
They wear their little microphones in their pockets, and they're looking for you to say something really nasty about somebody or something, so they can go back and report it on whatever major news network they have, okay?
We're in a different period of time, and some of them, they won't identify themselves.
That's really terrible.
When the media is afraid to identify themselves in a conference like this.
Oh, it's not the fact that, you know, journalists have been, like, harassed and even assaulted when trying to cover right-wing events?
Yeah, oh, of course, yeah, they're gonna come right out in the open and tell you.
Also, by the way, Mike Flynn's jacket looks like it is made out of a sleeping bag.
I mean, this is how he opened his talk, just boiling with rage at the media in the room.
Straight into it, yeah.
There was no preamble.
It was just, and he was just looking straight, there was only three of us there, and he was just looking straight at us and just shouting at us.
It was just really like it was funny because when he had come in first there was a photographer there with NBC and he had been taking photos of Flynn and Flynn asked him who he was with and he said NBC and Flynn just started shouting at him and screaming at him and that kind of I think that's what set him off and he just continued when he got onto the stage and I don't know who he's while he was talking about what you know he was saying about hiding microphones in his pocket I don't know what that's about.
I think he might be just be paranoia, just general paranoia.
I feel like being recorded.
He was, he was super, super paranoid.
He would not like, no matter who was coming up to him, his two bodyguards who were with him all the time were constantly putting themselves in the way of anyone who was around.
And the guy, his main bodyguard while he was on stage was just constantly back and forth, like the Terminator scanning the room for potential threats.
So, yeah, I mean, the incident as it was reported by Bradney Zendrosny on NBC News is that Flynn identified the NBC News photographer, and then Flynn asked who he worked for, and then the photographer identified himself, and then Flynn got mad and yelled, you're a liar.
And then he went on stage about how these reporters aren't identifying themselves.
This is, this is like incoherent.
You would think that at least on a PR level that, you know, it's like obviously journalists are going to be there, they're
going to cover it, you know, like what's the harm in treating them with like, like you're killing them with
kindness, you know what I mean?
And just being like, oh yeah, well, yeah, if you're here, but this aggressive sort of like, you know, pointing them
out in the room and signaling them out and calling them snakes and all of this stuff, it's like, oh man, it's, I
mean, you're not really doing the best to get your kind of point across.
Like, theoretically, if what you have to say is so, you know, packed with truth and revelation, you would want your
message to go out to as many people as possible so that some...
You know, somebody watching NBC, you know, oh, well, maybe, maybe, you know, once they hear what I actually have to say, like, they'll get pilled, too, because they'll see it my way, or they'll see it the right way, or whatever.
So, yeah, just on a purely, sort of, like, PR level, like, I don't understand this hostility other than that it's just coded into their beliefs, and that that's part of the fun, right?
Is to go, look at all these snakes here, look at all these infiltrators, you know, they're gonna lie about us, they're gonna do this, I mean, it's Very, very much resembling something else from history that was bad.
Yeah, but I do think it's just part of his character.
It's his default position.
Like, there's no point.
I went up and I just introduced myself and I said, I'm from Wired.
Can I talk to you?
And he kind of didn't answer me, but then told his one of the PR people there to kind of get my details and said they'd maybe do an interview, but ultimately didn't do any interviews.
And The other reason maybe that he was kind of extra tense was the presence of CNN, potentially, and his family and CNN are involved in legal issues at the moment over Daniel Sullivan's report.
And one of those lawsuits in New York got thrown out yesterday, but one in Florida remains.
So I don't know.
That potentially could have kind of triggered him.
But yeah, I think I think it's just his shtick.
He just plays up to his crowd who want him to say these things about the media.
And he just does.
What was the deal with that blazer?
It had like, it was like a Hawaiian blazer that was made out of, it literally looked like the, you know, like when you unpack a sleeping bag and it's all wrinkled.
Yeah.
It was kind of iridescent.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's almost shimmery.
A very interesting choice for a guy with his kind of rhetoric.
Yeah.
Right after Michael Flynn spoke came Boone Cutler, and Boone Cutler is an author, veteran, former psychological operations team sergeant, and music video director.
Quite a resume.
He authored a book with Flynn called The Citizen's Guide to Fifth Generation Warfare.
So, during his talk, Boone Cutler claimed baselessly that immigrants who come into the United States were merely camouflaged for centralized groups that will commit terrorism.
Now, which centralized groups, you know, consistent with conspiracy theorists and how they operate, he didn't specify.
He just sort of this vague conspiracy theory.
But he also said that law enforcement, like the law enforcement in that room, should be ready for it.
This is what is coming to our country.
All these people that are showing up here are camouflage for centralized groups that are going to conduct covert operations within the United States and terrorism.
Law enforcement is going to be faced with this.
And we're out there, there's people out here especially, and the media is complicit to it, saying defund the police, defund the police, defund the police.
I say no, fund the police, don't militarize them, fund them, and one of the things you need to do to fund them is to get them training in a regular warfare.
Because this is the operational environment we are currently in.
My man, they are already funded, they are already militarized, you already have what you want.
I mean, this is quite a take that the, that the current police force is insufficiently militarized.
I mean, but this is sort of part of his, of his shtick, because he claimed, without providing any details, that he would be providing irregular warfare training to CSPOA officers ahead of the election.
That's a bizarre thing to say.
Do you know what the hell he's talking about there?
Um, I don't, so he came off stage and I heard this and I was like, I need to know more about this.
So I went over and I, as he was coming off the stage, shook his hand, introduced myself and I said, I'd love to hear more about this trailing that you're doing.
And he goes, he, he, he is part of the Flynn movie premier tour bus that's traveling the country.
So he said he had to leave immediately.
And he said, hit him up on Instagram and he would, you know, get back to me and tell me more about us.
So I've hit him up on Instagram several times and I still haven't heard from Boone about what this entails.
I then went and asked Richard Mack about what this is about, you know, what the plan is.
And he said, who?
When I asked him about Boone Cutler and I had to show him the program.
And I said this, you know, Boone, he said, you know, CSPO training partnership, it's written on the program.
And he goes, I've never heard of this guy before.
I don't know what he's talking about.
So I don't know what to tell you, but apparently it's happening, but no one seems to know anything about it.
Well, yeah, according to himself, I have to say, based upon how you describe your experiences, Richard Mack is a lot more media friendly than Michael Flynn.
Oh, absolutely.
I, we walked in and he was like, so happy to see us.
And he was like, you can go anywhere, talk to anyone, do anything you want.
You can speak on stage.
You can, you know, welcome.
My only grievance with him throughout the whole day was he kept referring to me as the UK media.
And as someone from Ireland, that deeply, deeply hurt.
Deeply offensive.
Yeah.
But you know, it's, it's, it's a little thing and I'll get over it.
Yeah, I mean, that was very weird, but I also just found his paranoid rhetoric about immigration troubling because it's not just an abstract threat.
So, sheriffs who subscribe to the constitutional sheriff ideology have been accused of mistreating immigration detainees.
For example, in 2021, the Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson in Massachusetts came under fire after an investigative report from the Massachusetts Attorney General General, accused the Sheriff's Office of violating the
civil rights of federal immigration detainees by unlawfully and deliberately using dogs and
excessive pepper spray on them while they may have been infected with COVID.
So going back earlier than that, the former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who supports
the constitutional sheriff movement, was accused of numerous types of police misconduct, including
abuse of power, misuse of funds, failure to investigate sex crimes, criminal negligence,
abuse of suspects in custody, improper clearance of cases, unlawful enforcement of immigration
laws, and election law violations.
In 2013, a federal court found that Arpaio relied on racial profiling and illegal detentions
to target Latinos.
And given that track record, there aren't a whole lot of constitutional sheriffs, but
they're like a few of them have done some bad shit.
The combination of sheriffs who fancy themselves as like the ultimate, you know, arbiters of
the law and this paranoid view that immigrants are not just here unlawfully, but rather enemy
combatants seems like a recipe for even worse abuses.
Yeah, it absolutely does.
Yeah, as you said, there wasn't many sheriffs at this thing, but one of them that was there was Dar Leaf, who is the sheriff in Barrie County in Michigan.
And I spoke to him about this kind of at length, and he agreed with Mac that immigrants coming into this country are the biggest threat to the election.
Illegal immigrants coming into this country.
And And he just described like, you know, what if a van load of people who are not from my neighborhood, you know, drove up on election day and, you know, wanted to vote?
I'm going to do something about it.
And just the way he talked about how he is thinking about threats to the election, you know, Was deeply troubling because he already has it in his mind that this is going to happen.
And if he sees someone, the way he described it is not from my neighborhood, but it just seemed like coded language for people who don't look like me.
And it just seems that he is kind of ready and waiting.
and all of his deputies will be the same, looking for people who they don't,
you know, maybe they've never seen before, but they think are from outside their neighborhood
coming into, I don't know, stuff ballots or whatever they think these people are gonna do.
So I think it could potentially lead to major issues come election day, if they'd been primed like this
to believe that there's going to be this influx of illegal migrants trying to sway the vote
in favor of Biden.
These guys are gonna be so focused on, you know, any panel van that they see driving around on election day
that they're gonna forget to vote themselves.
And, you know, it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy because these guys will be so busy watching, you know, watching the hen house that they'll forget to cast their own votes and Biden will win again.
Darlief, though, is he's just he's not sitting back.
He, by the way, is he's a sheriff who is still investigating the 2020 election.
He tried and failed to seize voting machines after the 2020 vote.
And he is his his investigation is still proceeding nearly four years later.
But he is also he's very busy.
He is also producing a guide for sheriffs across the country on how to police elections, which I'm sure is going to be very interesting reading and he's promised to send it to me once it's complete.
So, you know, if he's outlining the kind of things that he was talking about in Vegas, then that's going to be troubling.
It's interesting to me that you have these groups of people that are still so focused on the 2020 election, especially when there is another election that's, you know, basically just around the corner.
You know, I always think, you know, what's going to happen if, you know, by some chance Donald Trump wins the election and all of a sudden they're going to have to say, oh, Well, then there was no interfering in this election.
I guess all of the illegal aliens stayed out of this.
I mean, you know, once you go down this path that an election was stolen or whatever, when your guy does eventually win, if they do, all of a sudden that election, you know, wasn't tampered with.
I mean, I guess, you know, I know as well as everybody else that they'll just say, oh, well, the good guys prevailed this time.
All the work that we've been doing actually secured the safety of this election.
So we got to keep it up.
We got to continue.
Yeah, I think that's exactly what they're going to do.
They're just going to turn around and go, well, we did it.
High five, guys.
We secured the elections for everyone, even though absolutely nothing has changed realistically in the four years.
I wonder if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, if people will still be debating the 2020 election?
Or if they'll go, you know what?
We're back, baby.
Water under the bridge.
Let's focus on something new.
Although I have a feeling that there will be a group that says, oh, well, now that Trump is in office, he can prosecute the people who rigged the 2020 election.
And it'll be yet another secret sort of investigation going on behind the doors that now that Trump is back in office, he's going to finally punish those who stole the 2020 election away from him.
I mean, of course that's going to happen.
I know it will.
Yeah, because there's a group of election directors who aren't, who try to separate themselves from the bigger group as being more intellectual, the kind of like David Clements and Seth Keschel, who is actually in Vegas as well.
And these guys are kind of portray themselves as deep thinkers about elections and election interference.
And they will kind of say, Oh, yeah, okay, Trump won, but We're all about the elections.
We're not about who wins.
Because it's a massive, massive grift for them, and they're making a lot of money at the moment on Substack and on their speaking tours.
And they'll want that to continue, so they'll just keep on trucking.
Right.
This is the same ideology that they're sort of gifted by Alex Garland in Civil War, which you wrote a review about, which is that You know, the lore is that both California and Texas, you know, were so disgusted that a true fascist had taken power that they put aside their political differences and came together to join the Western forces, which is the similar thing
that these guys are, that they pretend that they believe, which is that like,
"Hey, we don't care if it's Biden or Trump. We just want the election to be fair. And hey,
if Biden won fairly and they stole the election from him, we would be equally as upset even
though we don't agree politically," which couldn't be further from the truth.
Yeah, but they got to make that money.
Yeah.
Now, listening to the talks, it seems like as the day went on, the talks, I mean,
I mean, they were all pretty bonkers, but they kept getting crazier and crazier.
Because also speaking at this conference was the former Colorado County Clerk, Tina Peters, and she was indicted for a breach of Mesa County's election system.
She's actually the first election official In the U.S.
to face criminal charges related to conspiracy theories, stolen election conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election.
She went on stage wearing a Hawaiian lei, and her primary topic wasn't related to matters of elections or even anything related to policing.
Rather, she talked about the tragic wildfires that broke out on the island of Maui in 2023.
And she repeated the baseless conspiracy theory that the fires were caused by Laser weapons.
This is the famous Jewish space lasers conspiracy theory.
And that somehow the structures that were colored blue did not catch fire, according to her.
And she said that this is why Oprah painted her roof blue.
Obviously, none of this is true.
It is just pure, I think, TikTok nonsense.
It's bullshit.
Oh my God, this is this is like a retelling of like, you know, the Ten Commandments where if you put the blood on the door, you know, the hand of death will pass over your house.
Except this time, it's a fucking space laser that's going to catch your house.
Oh, you paint your house blue and the laser of death, the laser of fire will miss your home and take out the next one.
All right, here's the clip.
This is the outside of one of the buildings.
So from what I understand by a good friend and an expert in this and weapons, there's it's a microwave.
Weapon that's in a tube of a laser so the laser so if you look at this picture They this is the inside of the building look at the outside the building inside the building it just demolished the building and look it just happens to be blue people ask they say well, you know is the Is it true that the Tommy Bahama?
Umbrellas the blue umbrellas out front that nothing happened to him.
That's true things and and And there's reports that Oprah Winfrey painted her roof blue a few days before this event.
Now, I was listening to this, I was wondering, what the hell does this have to do with the topic of the conference?
It seems like this is literally just, just bottom-of-the-barrel internet conspiracy theories.
Yeah, and it's like, that building is still destroyed inside, you know?
It's like, she's like, this building was spared.
Also, the photos that she shared were just absolutely terrible.
of it just it's totally demolished.
It's OK.
Maybe the structure was left standing, but it's not like it's not like this
area was spared somehow from destruction in any way.
Also, the photos that she shared were just absolutely terrible,
like just really bad.
Didn't know like no one at the conference knew anything about what she was talking about
because she didn't really set it up or establish what she was talking about.
She just kind of went into this ramble and then halfway through she goes, I never prepare anything when I walk up on stage.
I just, you know, I just freewheel it.
And everyone was like, mm hmm.
And it was, it was, I think it was at this point in the day, my spirit broke and I was like, I'm done.
Because it was just so completely unrelated to anything that had come before or came after it and like it was just obviously she didn't want to talk about her court case where you know and that she's facing jail time in August but you know she could have talked about elections because she was there technically on the on the schedule it was an election integrity update from Colorado was what she was meant to provide and instead she just provided this meandering ramble from Hawaii and like, just wearing those flowers under like just, oh, yeah, it was, it was amazing.
And this was this was late in the day.
This is like 10 hours today already.
Yeah.
So this is a weird, you know, left turn for this supposed constitutional sheriff conference.
Yeah, I think at this point, we just realized that this is just not going, we're not going, you know, because I think I went there initially thinking that this is going to be very, very focused on constitutional tariffs.
But we'd had Mike Flynn talking about, you know, the media for 15 minutes or whatever, and how terrible the media was.
And now we're having Tina Peters talking about space lasers.
And it was just kind of okay, this isn't going to go the way we thought it was going to go.
It's like she went to her lawyers and she was like, okay, she goes, can I talk about the election being stolen?
They're like, no, you can't talk about that.
She's like, okay, can I talk about how I'm innocent and being railroaded by the deep state?
Can I, you know, name the judge, maybe some of their family members?
They're like, no, no, you shouldn't really talk about that.
She's like, I've got a handful of pictures of burnt out buildings.
Uh, do you think that I could maybe show those?
They said, you know what?
That's okay.
So, another attendee of this conference was MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Now, I checked in on how he's doing, and he is not at his peak in life, I'll say that.
He has paid dearly for his commitment to Donald Trump and election denialism.
His business reportedly lost $100 million in revenue after it was dropped by shopping networks and retailers, had its credit limit downsized by American Express, and he had to auction off thousands of pieces of equipment.
His business is also currently facing a court-ordered eviction after Lindell failed to pay $217,000 in rent at one of his two warehouses in Minnesota.
So has he allowed the complete destruction of his life's work to stop him?
No, because he took to the stage to recount the story of how he demanded a meeting with President Trump during the final days of his presidency.
They bring me back downstairs and said, yeah, we're not going to have time to meet with you today.
And I go.
Oh yeah, you are.
I said, I'm not leaving until that man tells me I'm leaving.
Well, in the meantime, I went out backside of the White House and y'all seen that famous picture.
They had gave that envelope back and it was open and it says Marshall Law written on the envelope.
Remember that?
They took it from a Washington Post guy, took it from a quarter mile away.
Yeah, well, that started the biggest attacks that I've had at that time in history.
The media just attacked.
Box stores canceled my pillow.
You name it, it happened to my pillory shopping channels.
And in the meantime, all these attack groups, I'm going, did you know China broke into our election?
We got to get rid of the machines.
And you know, I'm just going on and on.
I mean, like for what?
He had everything.
It's just, this is, I mean, I feel like once everything's settled, I think, uh, his, his life arc, his real life arc will be really interesting.
Yeah, like I spoke to him at length after this because unlike Flynn, who, you know, is ultra angry and paranoid about the media will not talk to anyone.
Mike Lindell is the embodiment of kill them with kindness.
He's he will talk to anyone for any length of time that you want.
If you've Ever tried to call him on the phone.
He never fails to pick up.
He's, he will just talk to everyone.
And he said he's personally lost, it's cost him, the election denial stuff that he's funded is, has cost him 40 million as well as all the problems that, you know, his company has faced.
And you can just tell he's not well and he's just put it, you know, he's, but he puts a very brave face on it.
I was listening to while I was waiting to talk to him, there was a couple of people coming up and they were just talking about machines in this tiny county in the middle of nowhere, who were like, you know, just saying that this happened on this day, can you look into this?
And he is going, yeah, I look into that.
And he must just get that You know, 10, 100 times a day, but he's still out there.
He's still traveling the country doing this.
And I genuinely don't know how he is still standing because he just, the day after the CSPOA event, he was hosting another event in Las Vegas, a round table with more experts who are finally going to show us all the evidence and blah, blah, blah.
You know, the same thing he's been saying for the last four years.
And he just keeps going and keeps going and keeps going.
And I don't know how.
I think, I think he just can't, he can't figure out how to stop now because it's just been going on for too long and stopping would be just, you know, would kind of kill him, I think.
Well, and I would imagine that when your, your business has totally tanked, you know, you've become a persona non grata in, you know, this, this sort of commercial mattress community.
I don't know.
That it feels good to be around a lot of people who agree with you and when it's you know you've when it seems like he's kind of lost everything else you know maybe going to all of these places where people are coming up and and treating him as an expert and saying Hey, you know, hey, can you look into this, or can you do that thing, or I believe you, or I'm so sorry that this happened to you, and, you know, they, you know, it's not right, it's a crime what they did, you know, the deep state is out to get you.
I imagine that that's probably the only thing that feels good, because when you get home at night, and there's nobody to talk to, except maybe your family, or your creditors, or your lawyers, that that can be pretty lonely and pretty sad.
So, you know, I imagine, and I'm just sort of, you know, hypothesizing, That being around people who believe him, you know, or champion him feels good.
I mean, we see this happen to a lot of people in this space where, you know, their ideas get so crazy that all they're left with are the most kind of radical, you know, supporters.
You're sort of left with the bottom barrel of fans, and what do you do?
Well, you have to cater to those fans, you know, in a certain way, because that is potentially your only customer left.
Yeah, I agree.
I think I think like he had people come up to him saying, I just want to thank you for all that you're doing.
And you know, that's you can see, you know, he was happy to hear that.
But yeah, I genuinely think he's lonely.
Like he's just moving from one of these crazy events to another just so he can feel wanted.
Like I I don't know what his family situation is, but I can't imagine they're very happy about him blowing all the money on something that's, you know, just never going to pan out.
So, um, yeah, like I, I just, I'm fascinated by how he's still going at this point and how he still has the enthusiasm for it.
But yeah, he does.
Now you mentioned earlier that, you know, there's some, it wasn't just talks, there were some booze at this conference and someone was offering med bed sessions.
And it was a, it was an outfit called Quantum Health Global.
Now we've talked about med beds in a recent episode.
It's essentially a scam that exploits the hopes of sick people by telling them that their diseases can be cured through some hyper advanced technology that does not exist in real life.
This is another instance where I was a little bit kind of asking, what the hell does this have to do with constitutional sheriffs?
Because it seems a little out of place, except besides the fact that there's some intersection between this sort of conspiracist worldview and this belief in alternate medicine.
So, did you, David, did you enjoy one of the complimentary med bed sessions?
Uh, unfortunately I didn't.
Um, I went to try and sign up, but they were, they didn't have any slots left.
So it was a really, every time I went to the, to the boot, the two med beds that were there were, were occupied.
Um, and they were obviously the, the people who knew what they were doing had gone there early and, you know, scheduled their appointment way before me, a mere novice at this, this kind of thing.
So unfortunately I wasn't able to, um, fix my body.
So, pro tip, you know, schedule your med bed session early in the day.
Of course.
Of course it was all sold out.
Yeah.
The same, when we went to the, when we went to the alien conference in Sedona, Travis, all of the, you know, alien spiritual and aura readings and stuff, slots were just gone.
That, ice baths, I mean, anything where you get into some kind of tub, whether it's a, you know, a metaphysical one or actually just like a big Rubbermaid tub.
These things tend to sell out really quick, so yeah, maybe you gotta book the prepackage or something like that to get yourself a nice slot, and I am sorry, David, that all of your ailments will continue to afflict you.
Next time.
So, to finish this up, I want to transition to discussing the abuse of police powers of the more officially sanctioned variety, because I want to talk to you about a story you published just a few hours before we started talking today.
It concerns protests at Columbia University against Israel's genocidal war in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 people, about two-thirds of those being women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities.
This protest has inspired similar protests and encampments across the U.S., including at the University of California, Berkeley, USC, Yale, Emerson, George Washington University, University of Texas, Austin, and the University of Michigan.
This has led to a widespread crackdown in which police have arrested hundreds of protesting students.
I'm sure there will be more developments in the story by the time this episode is published.
But some people have attempted to discredit these protests through a tried-and-true conspiracy smear, which is that the protests are being aided and funded by some powerful, nefarious entity, possibly the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.
So you actually investigated this.
So the headline for the story about your examination of these claims is, no, a shadowy figure is not buying tents for Columbia student protesters.
Now, First of all, what exactly are the accusations being made and who is making these accusations?
So I suppose the accusations come from, there was the encampment at Columbia University.
There was a picture taken and if you look at these accusations, it's the same picture being used repeatedly.
And in the picture, whatever way they've captured the tents that were in the encampment, all the tents look identical and they're the same color and they're green.
You know, so this kind of led to people going, because this is kind of just what people think now in 2024 is that, hmm, that's weird.
It must be George Soros.
Or, you know, that's ultimately what they came to.
But I think what's interesting about this is that it seems, as far as I can see, that while obviously people on the
internet probably thought this, the conspiracy didn't really take hold until the Deputy
Commissioner of Operations for the NYPD just, you know, voiced this on Fox 5 New York.
I think he said, if you look at the tents, where did they all get them from?
The same place, the same person?
Somebody is behind this and we've got to find out who it is.
So like that was on Tuesday.
Then the New York mayor, Eric Adams, repeated it, said that there's a well-concerted organizing effort.
What's the goal of organizing?
You know, we need to be asking ourselves these questions.
Fox News, Bret Baier, repeated the allegations and on NewsNation's New York rep, Virginia Fox, said it's obvious that someone is funding them.
So that's how it kind of took hold on Wednesday.
Obviously, then once the internet got involved, and particularly on Twitter, on X, whatever you want to call it, the people there just kind of used that one photo and just went wild with it and began, you know, there's there's kind of within an hour or two hours of this starting to spread, the name George Soros has to appear somewhere.
That took hold.
And you know, Baselessly, with no, absolutely no evidence to back it up, claim that he was behind funding, buying tents for students so that they could hold pro-Palestinian or pro-Gaza protests on university campuses.
Yeah, these claims are based upon some really flimsy evidence, which is that they seem to all be able to afford tents and they all had similar colored tents or something like that.
Yeah.
So they were all buying the same tent.
And instead of kind of using Arkham's Razor and coming to the logical conclusion that they're students, they need to buy a tent that they don't have.
What are they going to do?
They're going to look on Amazon.
Let's see what the cheapest tent on Amazon is.
Oh, it's the tent that they're staying in right now in the encounter.
Instead of doing that, they went straight to the billionaire George Soros is funding it.
It just, yeah, it just speaks to the kind of mindset that's, you know, but as I said, it's not just people on the internet.
It's the NYPD's deputy commissioner of operations.
It's the New York mayor.
It's like these people are saying this out loud on television.
And it's just incredible that without any evidence whatsoever, they're just making these wild allegations with nothing to back it up.
Well, awful stuff.
But yeah.
Yeah, David, thank you so much for your reporting and bearing that that very, very long 13 hour day in Las Vegas for on the ground learning about what these batshit self-described constitutional sheriffs are talking about.
So yeah, so please go check out David's reporting at WIRED.
We're going to put a link in the description.
Where else can people find you, David?
Mostly on Twitter, because I hate myself.
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The state will no longer give officers training credit for attending conferences held by a conservative law enforcement group.
Jay Avila has the result of a state investigation into the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.
On Friday, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which certifies peace officers, sent this letter to the Constitutional Sheriffs Group.
It says their conferences contain political discourse, not law enforcement instruction.
And the Constitution is the supreme law of the land.
As we explained in our first report, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association holds conferences around the country discussing how to push back against federal and state laws they believe are unconstitutional.
The group was founded by former Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack.
That's our job.
It isn't to go along with bureaucrats.
It isn't to go along with government criminals.
It is to uphold and defend the Constitution and defend the American people's liberties.
It's been very rewarding.
Some Texas law enforcement officers received continuing education credit for attending the events.
After receiving a complaint in 2021, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement investigated but found the conferences met training guidelines.
Then, last year, after receiving media requests for the curriculum, T. Cole investigated a second time and determined, "...the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association material reviewed is best categorized as political discourse, which lacks sufficient instruction or information constituting any meaningful relation to a Texas law enforcement license."
Sheriff Mack did not respond to our call for his reaction.
Earlier this year, we interviewed Mack and Houston County Sheriff Randy Hargrove, who say the conferences teach that sheriffs in particular have authority to investigate election irregularities and to oppose mask mandates and gun laws.
They have the authority to stand against any laws that go against your Second Amendment.
You know, okay ACF, we're not going to let you come in and start taking everybody's guns.
