Episode 64 Hour of Decision: The Need for Constitutional Sheriffs (SEGMENT TWO)

Speaker 0: Against tyranny and corruption for Christ and constitution. The hour of decision with Lou Moore starts now. Speaker 1: Welcome back to Hour of Decision. My name is Lou Moore, and we have as a guest for the second half of our show today, Sam Bushman, who is the national operations director of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, the CSPOA. He's also the CEO of that August organization. Sam, welcome to Hour of Decision. Speaker 0: Thanks for having me, sir. I've known about you and your work for a long time, and I'm delighted to be on your show. Speaker 1: Well, I'm delighted to have you. Sam, let's get right to it here. What is a constitutional sheriff, and why should we care? Speaker 0: So let's think about it this way. You know, the supreme law of our land is the constitution. And what that means is, yes, it's a document, but it's also the bill of rights. It's also somewhat part of the declaration of independence. I know people don't typically think of it that way, but you got this body of understanding from the founding fathers. Okay? So the constitution has specific direct guidelines separated out of limited defined responsibilities for each branch of government. The separation of powers is what we call it. You got the judiciary, the executive, and the legislative. So government is divided into those three general branches. The constitution lays out what the duties are for each group, and they're meant, to carry out their duties. And they're also meant to stop anyone else from taking increased hours. So if the executive takes too much power, the president, the courts, and the legislative bodies are supposed to say, oh, no. I don't think so, president, or any of the others get out of line. Same scenario. Well, the same thing is true between the general government and the states. There's a line there. The general government had limited defined responsibilities defined in the supreme law of the land. Well, the companion contract with the people is called the state constitutions. So in Utah, there's a Utah state constitution. New York, Alabama, etcetera, same thing. And the general government has few and defined responsibilities. Everything not in the general government's purview, not specified, articulated, detailed, listed based on the tenth amendment is left to the people respectively and their representatives in the state contract. The state and the counties have the same separation, And the counties and the states also have the three branches of government, the judicial, legislative, executive. And so you see there's checks and balances everywhere. The reason that I tell you that little story before I answer your question, Lou, is because you've gotta understand that matrix, that intentional check and balance division of power vertically and horizontally to then understand that the county is, in essence, a government unto itself. Understanding, though, that, hey. It's got its responsibilities, their delegated responsibilities to the states, and to the general. So the the county sheriff is the executive branch of a given county. The legislative body is the county commissioner, county they come all kind of things, county advisers, county commission, whatever. They're the legislative body at the county level. And then the judiciary at the county level is called a DA, district's attorney. And the reason that I kinda compare it like that is because our government is mirrored from top to bottom with these section balances, these intentional separations of powers. So a constitutional sheriff is someone who understands that matrix I've just laid out, understands their role as the chief law enforcement officer nicknamed the Cleo in his county. There's nobody, executively, above the sheriff in his county. Not even Bill Clinton. Not even the president of The United States. Not because the sheriff is more powerful than the president, but because of this division, this separation of powers called jurisdictions. In the county, The sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer. So a sheriff who carries out the duties according to those guidelines and documents that I've laid out, the supreme law of the land, one who honors that and keeps an oath to those principles, to those separations of powers, is a constitutional sheriff. His primary job, to protect the citizens from even government. Speaker 1: Yeah. So what? That's that's great. And, actually, it is great, Sam. I mean, the magnificence of our system. I mean, it really is a wonder to behold if you meditate on it for a minute, but, I I kind of being crass now, but what has one of these sheriff's done for me lately? I mean, in other words, what can they do that we should care about? Speaker 0: That's a fair question. Let me tell you a story to give you an example. There was a sheriff a few years ago. He lived ironically in a place called Liberty County, Florida. And in Liberty County, Florida, this sheriff, he had one of his deputies. He was out to, dinner with his wife. And he had one of his deputies arrest a man, find a gun in the console of his car, and arrest him and say, hey. You had a concealed gun. You don't have a permit. And so the young man got thrown in jail. Well, the sheriff heard about it. And the sheriff went, my county, that's not happening. So he went down and released the citizen, gave him his gun back, and defended the second amendment, told his deputy to stand down. The sheriff, by the way, was Nick Finch, just so you know. And so Nick Finch in Liberty County, then this thing went viral in the media and everybody. Hey. Second amendment defense sheriff, great guy. Awesome. Liberty freaked. So much so that the governor of the state at the time arrested the sheriff. Now the sheriff's in jail, and the the governor's free, and, the governor's literally a tyrant. And so the Constitutional Jerison Peace Officers Association, CSPOA, myself, Richard Mack, and any others, partnered with and helped fundraise so that the sheriff could go to court. And he literally took on the governor of the state of Florida. Long story short, the sheriff won. The governor lost. The sheriff was reinstated. The sheriff was given back pay, and we had Liberty And Liberty County that day. So that's an example of what a good honest sheriff can do when it comes to the second amendment. I'll give you another story. Take this one to New Mexico. You had a sheriff who was a good honest constitutional sheriff. He understood. His job was to intercede and defend the people's rights. Well, a pastor wanted a whole church, wanted to preach the word of God, especially during COVID. Selt like it was a gathering place for safety and comfort and strength, faith in God. And the state police of New Mexico came to the pastor and said your church has to shut down. The pastor went to the sheriff and said, hey. I don't wanna shut down. I think that you know what? If this is an essential service, we're needed more than ever. The sheriff said, are you really ready to make this stand? The pastor said, of course, I am, sir. The sheriff said, I will too. So they agreed, and the church stayed open. The state police came to shut it down. The sheriff deputized members of the church and said, we're not shutting this building down. That's not happening in my county on my watch. So those are two concrete examples of the second amendment and our right to all the guarantees in the first amendment were defended by that pastor linking up with that sheriff. Those are two great examples of the point. Speaker 1: They're great examples. So, Sam, how does this relate? We hear hear this word, more than we used to. In fact, the the word nullification. And a lot of times that is applied to states dealing with unconstitutional edicts from the federal government. But, how does that apply with this matrix of local governments dealing, dealing with the state government or dealing with the federal government for that matter? Speaker 0: So let's use two examples now. Let's use that same example in New Mexico that I gave you or the example in Florida, or I'll even give you a Richard Max example. Every one of them was in incredible government overreach. And every one of those examples was the crisis of the day. Oh, it's COVID. Oh, somebody has a gut. Oh, this. Oh, that. And every time the sheriff said no, I'm gonna intercede. I'm gonna protect a citizen. You don't have authority to do that. So in the state of New Mexico, there was no law saying you had to shut down a church. Well, the constitutional sheriff knows the law. And he said, look. There's not a law. There's some bureaucrat somewhere babbling at the mouth saying that you gotta close down the church, but that isn't the law. The supreme law of the land has a first amendment in the bill of rights that says people can worship how, where, or what they bay. Furthermore, they have free speech. They have the right to peacefully assemble. They have the right. And then when the sheriff actually, went and worked with the pastor, hey. They have a right to a redress of grievance if necessary. If the state police didn't back off, they could have taken the state police to the courts. You have a right to peacefully assemble and a right, to get a redress of grievance. And so, in the case of the New Mexico sheriff and and pastor, that's the case. In Florida, hey. This gun owner was protected by the sheriff against, hey. The supreme law of the land says you have a right to keep a mirror. Is that right shall not be infringed? Well, they tried to infringe on the right. The sheriff said not on my watch. You're not. And Richard Mack's example, they tried to have sheriffs do the bidding of gun control. And sheriff Richard Mack set up and said, not on my watch, and Bill Clinton said, I'll arrest you, sheriff Mack. And Mack said, I don't think so, and they went all the way to the Supreme Court. And Bill Clinton got shut down in sheriff Mack as one of the greatest tenth amendment victories in the history of our country. Speaker 1: So I'm gonna stop you right there, Sam, because we really haven't introduced, sheriff Mack. Why don't you tell us just a little bit about the inception of the, CSPOA and, and sheriff Mack's story a little bit? Speaker 0: So sheriff Max, was an elected sheriff in Graham County, Arizona, and the government came, got all the sheriffs in Arizona in a room and said, hey. We're gonna have you guys carry out and implement the Brady bill. And a lot of sheriffs grumbled. Some sheriffs went along. Most sheriffs grumbled but eventually capitulated. Well, sheriff Mack went away from that meeting going, wait a minute. I'm not carrying out edicts from the federal government. I don't work for the federal government. They're not my boss. My boss is the people that elected me, and my jurisdiction is the county. And I'm in the state of Arizona. We have a state constitution. Yes. There's limits the general government constitution puts on the federal government, but that doesn't apply to me. And in that directive by the constitution, it gives this president plenty of power. But one of those powers is not to commandeer employees of the state or employees of a county or elected officials and make them do the federal government's bidding. So Richard Mack said, I'm gonna fight this. He was the first one on the case, sued the federal government, said, we're not doing this, and then eventually seven sheriffs altogether made it happen. But Richard was one of the first sheriffs to file, and he's the sheriff that then took that Supreme Court case win. It was the only time in history where sheriffs sued the federal government and won, and especially over the second amendment. And then Richard Nack basically came out of that publicly speaking, author of multiple books. He's written books like, are you a David, the county sheriff of America's last hope, the the proper role of law enforcement, the magic of gun control, several books that he's written all sound as csp0a.org. But I digress except to say so he spoke and he was an author, and then he came and said, hey. We've got to help train sheriffs. We need to help train the people toward the sheriff's responsibilities are so that the people can support their sheriff when they do what's right and look for another representative, another elected official if they don't do what's right. And so as to train the people, it's like a twofold mission about the responsibilities of a sheriff and how the people can work with their sheriff and then to train sheriffs about their oaths. About a lot of sheriffs are confused about this. They would when there's an edict that comes down, hey, we want you to close your business because of COVID. You know, the sheriff's like, man, do I have to obey them? Even sheriffs are good people, and many of them have taken an oath. But oftentimes, you know, when you grow up in the government schools or when you grow up in our society, you don't really realize what that means. And so sheriff Nack tells this story about how he was a just a bully traffic cop and how he eventually learned that that's wrong and to become a constitutional vanguard, constitutional protection to the people. And that's the difference between just an average cop, or an average sheriff versus a constitutional servant of the people. It's about protecting and defending, and you've got to understand the rules of the road or you've got to understand the laws to uphold them. And that's the sheriff's responsibility that he can oath to understand those laws and to uphold them against enemies, foreign and domestic. That means everyone, including government. And on that day, sadly, Bill Clinton was an enemy. Not necessarily an enemy as a person, but his policies were an enemy to what we hold dear, the supreme law of our land. And so Richard Mack Sue, he won, and then the CSPOA is an outgrowth training organization of that Supreme Court case win. Speaker 1: Very interesting. So, Sam, I you mentioned, in one of the, stories you were telling there that, the sheriff deputized a bunch of folks in this, church congregation to to help them protect their liberty. So, I think that's called a posse. Am I right about that? Is that the proper term? Speaker 0: Sheriff's posse. And so and, you know, there's different ways to consider a posse, but think about the sheriff being the leader of a posse. And a posse could be informal like that, just debutizing several citizens when needed to a full grown militia to something in between. And most sheriffs have, guidelines about how their posse works. So Bob Sanger, one of our incredible sheriffs in Washington, Tuckatuck County, Washington. His name is Bob Songer. He wrote a manual to help sheriffs all across the country develop an appropriate sheriff's posse, documenting what the responsibilities are, how it works, how people are vetted, all the details that it takes to put together a sheriff's posse, and we're encouraging sheriffs in all 3,000 plus jurisdictions to create sheriff's posse. It's a way to decrease costs for the taxpayers. It's a way for the American people to get involved. And most importantly, it's a way for the sheriff to be able to deal with anything comes that comes his way, even the prices of the day. Speaker 1: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, I also saw on your website, a certification class or a certification program that CSPOA has? What what is that about, Sam? Speaker 0: So remember, there's two general missions of the CSPOA. It's it's considered the the national posse. The CSPOA posse is what we call it, and you can join. And when you join, you help fund our organization to speak and and, you know, share the the information across the country to train and to publicly appear and and all these things. Well, the twofold mission is, one, to train sheriff. And so we go and train sheriff's departments and police officers and public officials. We have events and rallies and seminars to do that all across the country all the time. But the other one is for the American people to have some kind of a certification of, hey. Have you taken a constitutional course? Are you familiar with what sheriffs are supposed to be doing? Are you familiar with the oath of office that all public officials are supposed to take? Are you familiar with these checks and balances? And it's really a crash course to help the American people recover from the government schools. Speaker 1: It Sam, this is a fantastic program. I mean, if we're gonna protect our liberty, we're we're not gonna depend on Washington DC. Now we got a guy we got a guy back there right now that's breaking a lot of China and, is doing some things I really like. But at the end of the day, I just don't I just don't believe that Washington DC is gonna be capable long term of protecting our liberties in this country. You wanna comment on that? Speaker 0: Well, and that's exactly why the the founding fathers understood the separation of powers and jurisdictional separation where they said, hey. The general government has tremendous power in its few enumerated and defined responsibilities. The rest is left to the states and the people respectively. And so, hey. We don't expect Washington to protect us. We don't expect Washington. Washington creates a level playing field and then gets out of the way. It's your local sheriff. It's county by county that we take America back. It's sheriff's posse by sheriff's posse. And then it gets too big because it crosses state boundaries such as the deportation program the president comes involved in. Then we have sheriff's work together, And we have sheriffs work with our governors and the attorney generals, these kind of people, to take things statewide if it needs to cross the state boundary or, yeah, state boundaries or county boundaries. And so we gotta understand this jurisdictional trifecta. In any given county, you have a governor and you have the president of The United States. There are three executives that work together, and they're supposed to not argue and fight and decide who's the big guy in the block. They're supposed to respect jurisdictional boundaries and work together. And that way, where there's three in a box, hey. Somebody there hopefully will defend my rights as an individual, as a citizen. Right? And that's what we're praying for. That's what we hope for, and that's what we train for. Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a beautiful thing, Sam. So, you mentioned deportation operations, and, I think a lot of Americans and maybe some of the people listening to this program got their first introduction to, sheriff Mack and to CSPOA, on some of these talk shows that he's been on. He's been on a number of them recently talking about Speaker 0: Not over a couple Speaker 1: of hundred in a two or three Speaker 0: month period Speaker 1: of time. Yeah. No. No. Sure. I I I believe that %. So let's talk about that issue of the moment a little bit. Deportation. What where where is CSPOA? Where are, constitutional sheriffs landing today? What is their relationship shaping up to be with the Trump administration? Can you speak to that? Speaker 0: Absolutely. So sheriff Richard Mack, the founder and president of our organization, is in direct communications with Tom Holman. Tom Holman is the deportation man or the deportation czar, whatever word you wanna use. I don't like the word czars, but that's the way they're using it. So I I use that word only because I want you to compare it to things that you read. To me, he's the, renaissance man regarding, hey, legal immigration in America and versus illegal. And that's really the quintessential point it has. It has to do with race or color or anything else. And, when there's illegal people in our country, Tom Homan is gonna be working at the general level under Donald Trump. We're gonna have state governors. So in our case, it would be, you know, I don't have a lot of confidence Speaker 1: in our governor, but there you Speaker 0: go in Utah. Right? Go to Cox. And then a given sheriff. And that's what I mean is you have three people in the executive branch across all jurisdictions deportation of illegals. So as an organization, we don't endorse candidates, but we do back the constitution. Therefore, we support 100 this deportation plan, this effort. Now I agree that we need to temper justice with mercy a little bit. Right now, we're saying we're gonna get rid of the hardened criminals, the rapists, the gang members, the murderers, the, you know, these kind of people that are hostile and violent. We're gonna put them in Guantanamo Bay, or there's a lot of countries now standing up, Guatemala, El Salvador, and others that are saying we'll take these prisoners and house them for you for a lot less expensive than you can do it in The United State United States. Since they're not American citizens, we support that. We do believe in due process along the way, so there will be some justice. If you're not a violent criminal, you'll be dealt with differently than the violent criminals, but you're still subject to deportation. And so we're supporting this plan all the way, and I think that there's a a justice and a mercy plan. Justice says you gotta get the criminals away from innocent people so that they just don't suffer. That's what this is about. On a long term scale, hey. If you come to America as a little kid and you're a DACA kid and you pay taxes your whole life for you, you know, wanna get above board, we will not accept amnesty under any circumstances, but we will work out a way for you to to solve your problems and and become above board. Do you wanna leave The United States? First thing we need to say is, hey. Stop sending your money back to your family. Stop earning money here and sending it south. We're not doing that anymore. Second thing they can start to say is this. You've skipped the line, and therefore, there's a penalty. You've got a fee to pay. But if you wanna leave this country and get in line and come back properly, we can decrease that fee. And so there's all kinds of methods. And I don't know what Tom Hulman and Donald Trump are gonna do at this point in terms of all the details. I just know that the CSQA backs the plan and is partnering to help sheriffs understand, give sheriffs and the people support and training, to support the constitutional efforts of Tom Hulman and president Donald Trump. Speaker 1: Sure. Sure. So you you mentioned, Sam, there's roughly 3,000 counties in The United States. Speaker 0: How many remember the exact number. It's like 3,081 or something like that. The reason I hesitate slightly is because some states have minimal sheriffs. They're hard to call sheriffs in some ways because they're just paper pushers. They've restricted into that. There's one state, I think, where a couple of states that don't have sheriffs at all anymore. So they're trying to come after the office of sheriff, and we're trying to preserve that office. Absolutely. That's why I'm a little bit agitated on the numbers, but I know the torso tree's out. Speaker 1: Not not not not not trying to quote you if per se, just trying to get a a little bit of a perspective, a little bit of the picture here. Speaker 0: A little bit of hesitation. We know how many counties there are, but that doesn't mean there's that many sheriffs, for example. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I was trying to get at is how many counties have what you would call constitutional sheriffs that you are aware of, I mean, both in your organization and then others that you know of that that, have constitutional principles in their administration. Speaker 0: So a lot of people wanna make a constitutional sheriff a checkbox. Yes. No. True. False. I wish it worked that way, but it doesn't. So the real question you gotta ask is what is a constitutional sheriff, which is what you asked before. And in its totality, it'll be a % fidelity to the constitution. You know, cheating on your wife ten percent of the time, 90% is not good enough. So our goal is a %. That's our desire. That's our goal. That's what we strive for. But remember, that's the ideal. We live in the real, and there's a lot of sheriffs that are good people. Many of them aren't as constitutional as we would like. But in my opinion, if they're willing to to work and train and learn, that's one of the biggest keys. If they just say I'm constitutional, I don't need to learn anything, then you know full well they're not constitutional. Because if you are constitutional, you always wanna learn. You always wanna gain more knowledge and more ground. Right. They say, I'm already constitutional. I don't need to learn anything. That's a big flag they're not. So I like to use more guidelines on this sliding scale. Speaker 1: Totally. I I'm sorry to interrupt you. We're out of time, Sam. Quickly, tell people how they can get involved with CSPOA or find out more. Speaker 0: If you go to CSPOA.org, we have a lot of training materials, some free, some have a little cost to cover our costs, and you could join the posse and meet with us weekly for online guidance and instruction. CSPOA.org. Join the posse today. Speaker 1: Sam, we really appreciate your efforts as well as sheriff Max and all the people you're working with. Thank you so much for joining us today. Speaker 0: Anytime. Love to be back. Thanks, Lou.