Sheriff Mack Joins Julie Rose: Does America Have a Balance of Power Problem?

It’s no wonder then that Richard Mack’s ideas resonate with a lot of Americans right now. I have no faith in Washington DC at all. It is so corrupt. It is protect the people from that in your county. And the sheriff has that obligation. Richard Mack is the founder of a group called the Constitutional Sheriff’s and Peace Officers Association or CSPOA. Thousands of law enforcement officers have participated in his training seminars since 2012. And while most legal scholars would say Mack’s view of sheriff’s supremacy is not legitimate, up to half of sheriffs in the U.S.

agree that their authority supersedes the federal or state government in their county and say they would refuse to enforce a law they believe to be unjust. Around the time I started working on this episode, Richard Mack happened to email me about another episode of Top of Mind that he’d heard. And as I was looking into this concept of constitutional sheriffs, it prompted all sorts of new questions for me about who we trust to wield power on our behalf and why. Sheriff would not have landed on the top of my list, but Mack thinks it’s obvious.

He works for you. You pay his salary and he promised you in God’s name that he would uphold, defend, protect and reserve the United States Constitution, which guarantees that your God-given rights are protected. This is what made America. So Richard Mack really got thinking along these lines. In 1993, when Congress passed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, one of the things it did was require background checks on people buying guns. The FBI was given a couple of years to make a database that gun dealers could use to do those background checks.

But in the meantime, the Brady Bill ordered the local law enforcement agencies to do those checks. They threatened to arrest us if we didn’t comply. And Richard Mack, who was just starting his second term as the elected sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, refused. So I go and challenge it. You didn’t want to do the background checks because why? It’s gun control. No gun control is acceptable in your mind? Well, I don’t know, read the Second Amendment and then follow and obey the Second Amendment. I tell that to anybody. Government only has one role on the Second Amendment, to guarantee it, to guarantee my right to keep them bare arms.

Instead, they do just the opposite. The NRA jumped in to support Mack and a couple of other sheriffs, and their cases ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court under the name Prince versus United States. And the sheriffs won five to four. Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion that, no, the federal government could not compel a local law enforcement official to do federal tasks like background checks on gun buyers. Legal scholars generally consider the Prince ruling one of several that limit the federal government’s ability to commandeer state and local resources. But Richard Mack reads it as an absolute repudiation of federal authority over sheriffs.

I’m not a federal agent. You know, if they want to come in contract with me, because I had a contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons when I was sheriff, we kept some of their inmates. But they can’t come in and tell me what to do. Take current immigration enforcement efforts by the Trump administration, says Mack. We have sheriffs now doing it on both sides, and they’re both correct. Meaning refusing to help with deportation. We have them that have refused, and we’ve had them that have volunteered. And you think that’s correct? It is correct.

Both. It is. But here is where the constitutional piece really comes in. While Mack says sheriffs are free to ignore any federal law they consider unjust, if there’s a law that infringes on freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, they must resist. We really focus on protecting the God-given rights of all Americans. So I started it in Graham County as sheriff. We put rights above traffic tickets. And I told my deputies, if you write a ticket, you better be able to document that there is a public safety concern, not just sitting there bringing in money. And I didn’t want to be a revenue collector.

I wanted to be a public servant. And that’s what I wanted my deputies to be. Beyond traffic enforcement, what was different about the way you were either enforcing or not enforcing laws as a sheriff? DUI checkpoints. Everybody who knows and understands the Constitution should say, how is it that the Fourth Amendment says you must have probable cause before you can take action? And so you stopped doing checkpoints to check for drunk driving? No, we changed it differently. Okay. First of all, DUI checkpoints where they stop everybody is clearly unconstitutional. And there’s a couple of states that have made it illegal.

You can still have them. They must be voluntary. Put up a sign saying, your participation in this checkpoint is voluntary. Do you know people still go through? Almost everybody does. Still stops. Still goes through? Yeah. I mean, you see police sitting there. Well, if you turn around, people are afraid that, oh, that’s a sign. I’m drunk. Can the police lawfully stop you just for turning around? No, that’s not probable cause. Now, can the cop following and get a driving pattern? Yes. And then you can stop that person. But we have to follow the Constitution.

We don’t need to cut the corners in order to go after criminals. That makes us criminal. We follow the law, we uphold and defend the Constitution, and we protect civil rights. So the common threads and positions constitutional sheriffs often take are personal freedoms, property rights, and a general mistrust of government. Mack, for example, was a key supporter of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s 2014 armed standoff with law enforcement over Bundy’s refusal to pay fees to graze his cattle on public land managed by the federal government. During the pandemic, Mack’s group, the CSPOA, opposed government ordered closures and mask requirements.

We saw a sheriff in Arizona stand up against a Republican governor. He was Republican sheriff, said, I’m not enforcing these unconstitutional COVID-19 mandates. I’m not shutting people down. I’m not arresting people for not wearing a mask. God bless Sheriff Mark Lamb for doing that. Mark Lamb of Pinal County, Arizona was America’s most high-profile constitutional sheriff until leaving office in 2024. Before him, there was Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose refusal to stop racially profiling people suspected of being in the country illegally earned him a contempt of court conviction, which President Trump quickly pardoned in 2017.

The most prominent constitutional sheriff currently in office is Dar Leaf of Berry County, Michigan, who drew national criticism and praise for his efforts to investigate the 2020 election outcome. Isn’t it okay to verify our elections? People have been attacked and arrested for that. If somebody goes to him and says there was a crime committed in these elections, he has an obligation to investigate that. You are encouraging other sheriffs to embrace the view. Through the CSPOA, you do trainings where you encourage sheriffs to protect people’s rights. Okay. How does that not become them imposing their own understanding of the Constitution on the people within their jurisdiction? What would you rather have him do? Violate the Constitution, violate his oath of office, take private property away from citizens, which is clearly unlawful, and he’s just supposed to follow every—let’s just program robots.

We have AI now. Let’s program the robots. We don’t want sheriffs that can look at a situation and make his determination. Come on, you don’t want robots out there. I think that there’s an argument to be made for sheriffs enforcing the laws as they have been passed by state lawmakers or by Congress or interpreted by the Supreme Court. They should get paid by who? Big pharma and rich people. They’re voted into office, just like a sheriff is voted into office. They are? And how do they get there? They get there by lying and they get the money from all these rich people.

Who holds a corrupt sheriff accountable? The people do. You do. Go to him and say, why did you do this? Have a relationship with him. Challenge him what he does. So this is key to the constitutional sheriff’s concept. Even though voter turnout is often low in sheriff’s elections and many candidates run uncontested, it’s the fact that they are elected, whereas police chiefs are typically appointed by city officials that qualify sheriffs as the top defenders of the Constitution within their counties, says Mack. And he pretty much rejects the notion that the Constitution is subject to interpretation.

Freedom of speech. The right to peaceably assemble. The right to complain about government. And right in the first one, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. I don’t need nine people in the Supreme Court or anyone else to interpret that for me. I don’t need anyone to interpret for me, shall not be infringed. I don’t need anybody. Now, in the Eighth Amendment, it says, excessive fines are bail. Now, that might need a little interpretation of what is excessive, but I know what excessive is. Look at the traffic citations across this country.

That is excessive. We write $9 billion worth of traffic tickets every year, and it’s just an astonishing cruelty towards the people. I mean, each of these things, it’s all up for debate and disagreement. Not all of it. There’s some gray areas. I admit there’s some gray, but there are very few and far between. I don’t need anybody to tell me what the Tenth Amendment says. I sued the federal government on the Tenth Amendment. The Tenth Amendment was very clear. The powers not delegated to the United States government belong to the states or to the people.

Do you need that to be interpreted? His is a strictly literal take on the Constitution that goes beyond even the originalism embraced by the current Supreme Court’s conservative majority. Originalists aim to interpret the text of the Constitution according to how it would have been understood when it was adopted. Even the father of modern originalism, Justice Antonin Scalia, acknowledged room for interpretation of the Constitution’s text to allow, for example, some limits on the right to bear arms. But to Richard Mack, who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Constitution is not merely a political text.

It was inspired by God. The founders said they were inspired. And so it was the foundation of America. If you destroy the foundation, what happens to the rest of the edifice? It falls. Why do you think God inspired the founding fathers to grant widespread, unfettered access to guns? Because of our right to rebel against our own government. When government is out of control, the last say is the people. Declaration of Independence, I could quote you a bunch from it there. But what the founding fathers’ intent was to make sure that the people always have the final say, not government, that the people always have the final say.

And if we have to do another revolution like we did in 1776, we will always have the capability of doing so and not bowing down to those who have disarmed us. Do you worry that this view that you promote could encourage individuals to take matters into their own hands in the form of militias, in the form of—in fact, I know that you were no longer, but at one point you were a board member of the Oath Keepers, which is an anti-government militia. They were never a militia, and they’re not a militia.

And when they started talking about being a militia, I quit. So non-profit. So the concern here is that the talk that you have, all government is corrupt, the federal government can’t tell me what to do, corrupt state lawmakers can’t tell me what to do, we can’t trust any of these people. I could see where someone could hear that and say, yeah, and I’m going to take my guns and I’m going to go storm the Capitol. I’m going to go assassinate an elected leader who I think is corrupt. It’s never happened. There was absolutely— Not according to anything I’ve done or said.

Oh, you don’t feel like you’ve ever promoted— I’ve never promoted it. And anybody that comes to our meetings know that everything I say is based on a peaceful and effective solution. We’ve never advocated violence. I’ve said this over and over, because people have said, when are we going to have another revolution? And I said, do not ask me that question, because we have so much work to do in peaceful and effective manners, and that’s what we should be focusing on. Do not talk to me about committing acts of violence, and do not talk to me.

If anyone ever wanted to start what you just said, militia groups start and go and get violent, they would have to do what the founding father said, write the declaration and declare war against your own government. Is that ever a possibility again? I pray that it’s not, and I pray that we can have peaceful and effective solutions against corrupt politicians, that they’ll understand that the best way is the American way and adhere to the Constitution. I’ve seen too many innocent people put in prison—you’re worried about that—from a sheriff enforcing the Constitution, defending the Constitution, just the opposite.

I’ve seen these bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. put so many different people innocent people in prison. The IRS has made a living doing it. We need to be concerned about those types of violations, stop it, and give back to our Constitution. The solution is behind us. Thank you very much for your time, Sheriff Mack. Julie Rose, I appreciate being with you. Richard Mack is former sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, and founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. As you can imagine, Mack has many detractors who consider his ideas more likely to promote chaos or violence than peace and equality.

But I can see how, if you’re troubled by government overreach and you trust your local sheriff to have your best interest in mind, you would prefer his authority over someone in Washington or your state capital. And trust is really what it comes down to, I think. Public polling shows Democrats are most concerned today about the president being too powerful. During the Biden and Obama presidencies, though, Republicans were the more worried bunch. The same partisan pattern has long played out in public support for the Supreme Court as well. So are we really a nation committed to checks and balances if we only complain when our own team loses the upper hand? What would it take to set our personal interests and partisan preferences aside in favor of robust power sharing between the branches of government? I would love to hear your thoughts.

What questions are you still left with? What did you hear today that challenged you? Send an email to topofmind at BYU.edu or reach out on social media to continue the conversation. And make sure to subscribe to Top of Mind on your podcast app so you don’t miss an episode. And if you wouldn’t mind leaving us a good review, that’ll help other people find the show. And we love to see what listeners think about Top of Mind. Top of Mind is a BYU radio podcast. Today’s episode was produced by me with help from Isabella Sosa, Samuel Benson, and Sam Payne.

Our audio engineers are Hayden Thompson and Lauren Sandberg. I’m Julie Rose. We’ll talk soon. [tr:trw].