Summary
âž¡ The speaker discusses the role of sheriffs in the United States, grading their performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. He criticizes many for not standing up to federal government overreach, and encourages citizens to educate their local sheriffs about a Supreme Court case that affirms their independence from federal command. He also shares stories of sheriffs who have protected their communities’ rights, particularly in relation to religious freedom during lockdowns. The speaker emphasizes the importance of sheriffs upholding their oath to the Constitution, regardless of political pressure.
âž¡ The Peace Officers Association encourages everyone to join their program, where they train members to work with their local sheriff and support their community. For a small fee, members can participate in weekly webinars and learn about nationwide efforts to preserve liberty. The association believes that even a small group can make significant changes and help restore the constitution as the supreme law of the land. They emphasize that their movement is peaceful and aims to avoid violence while standing firm in their resolve.
Transcript
Take care of yourselves and your families by going to marketplace dot drstellamd.com and getting the supplies you need to remain prepared. Tell them Mike sent you. Sheriff Richard Mack. Sir, thank you very much for taking the time. I am so excited about this conversation because I think that your movement and the information that you are presenting is something that not a lot of people are presenting. And like I just said, I put myself in that category as being unaware of the length and breadth of the power of the local sheriff. Why don’t we start there? Just how powerful is that local office? Well, I wrote a book about that.
And so if anybody wants to get that, it’s called the county sheriff, America’s last hope. And every day that becomes a truer statement, especially in view of the utter corruption of Washington, DC and a lot of the corruption in the states and the counties, that really has become the destruction of America. And America is dying. Our constitution is on her deathbed, and we’ve got to do something really quickly to take it back. And the most logical person for that is the sheriff, because of his power. Now, as we were talking before the show, I became the first sheriff in american history to sue the federal government, take it all the way to the supreme court and winter, and I’ll be eternally grateful that there were six other sheriffs from across the country that joined the lawsuit, and this was pursuant to the Brady bill.
And the Brady bill was a gun control scheme or scam that for some crazy reason, and I think I know what those reasons are, but for some crazy reason, the White House and the United States Congress passed this statute that required the sheriffs of this country to enforce it for them for free. Without any negotiation, without any contract. And let me make something real clear here. I wouldn’t have done it had they paid me a million dollars a day. But still they just expected us to pay for it, for their legislation, for their movement, and we’re supposed to pay for the whole thing, do the whole thing.
And if we don’t, they would arrest us. We were subject to arrest just for telling the federal government, no, I’m not going to do that, I don’t work for you. And so therein lies the power of the sheriff because we have to focus on where he gets his power. He is very independent and he can tell the federal government no. He can tell judges no, he can tell legislatures no, I’m not going to do that. And I did it. And many sheriffs have, okay? And during Covid-19 there were over 500 sheriffs nationwide who told their states and their counties, I’m not enforcing this, I’m not the mask police, I’m not going to do this.
And some of you went further than that, but most of them just said, hey, I, I’m not the mask police. I’m not, I’m not going to pretend to be, but this is the thing, the sheriff gets his power from the power source, we the people. And he is the only elected law enforcement officer anywhere in the county and pretty much anywhere in the country. So they, they call the attorney generals of the states and of the United States, they call them the top copy. Yeah, but I don’t, I don’t view them as, as police officers or cops.
They might have some, they might have some relationship with law enforcement, which is true. Right. But I, you know, do they establish DUI enforcement efforts for the sheriffs and police departments across this country? No, they don’t have, it’s none of their business. Okay. The top law enforcement officers in the state take care of that. Okay. So I, the county attorney told me once that he was the top law enforcement officer for the county. I said, you’re a prosecutor. Yeah, we’re the law enforcement officers and, and that’s a nice check and balance system that we all are a part of and we like that.
Right. But I’m elected just like you are and I’m elected to keep the peace and to quote, to secure these rights. And what rights? Just. And I’m paraphrasing from the Declaration of Independence that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men. So the reason you have a sheriff is to protect God given liberties and your civil rights and there’s no exemption to that. It’s for all people, all races, all colors, all creeds, all nationalities. I don’t care where you’re from, and I don’t care who your daddy was. I am required, and your sheriff is required to protect your God given rights.
And does that mean that he makes arrests for rape and child abuse and shoplifting and bicycle theft and aggravated assault and murderous? Of course, that’s all part of the protection, but ultimately, his goal is to preserve the peace. He is the conservator of the peace in the county, and he is the top law enforcement officer. And as a matter of fact, in this supreme Court. In this supreme Court case. Yep. I I studied the case, and Cornell University had the best review of it, and I studied it for days, and then I put all the highlights in this little booklet.
And. And, folks, Justice Scalia wrote this decision for the majority. Anson and Scalia, yes. And this is amazing. He, in his introduction of the case, he says this, and this is so astonishing to me. It’s just so powerful. He says, uh, because there is no constitutional text speaking to this precise question. The answer to the clios. Now you got to stop and ask, what did he just say? The answer to the clio’s challenge. Well, what’s a Cleo? Chief law enforcement officer. So the sheriffs that did this lawsuit, nobody else in government did this lawsuit. Only seven sheriffs out of 3086, seven sheriffs stood up.
And I’m proud to say this, I was the first. The other sheriffs joined with me, and I’m grateful that they did it. Made the case to go all the way to the Supreme Court. And if they hadn’t been there, if Coug and Romero had not been there from Texas and Louisiana, it. Our case probably would have stopped, would have died at the 9th Circuit, where we got overturned. But they won in their circuit court in New Orleans, the Fifth Circuit, and that guaranteed us a trip to the Supreme Court. And indeed, on December of 1996, Sheriff Prince and I were at the United States Supreme Court.
And let me tell you, for this small town country bumpkin of southeast Arizona, that was awesome. It was a spiritual experience. And, and to have my two young high school children there with me just made it all that bigger and better. And I still talk with them about it frequently. And this was a miracle that we got to the Supreme Court. And even more miraculously, we wondez. June 27, 1997. The Supreme Court sided with us, telling the federal government that they exceeded their authority and that they could not tell anyone in the states what to do and that they cannot command state officers or state legislatures from the states.
They cannot tell us to do anything because, one, they have no jurisdictional or constitutional authority to tell us to do anything. And the sheriff, again, this is his power. He answers to the people, not to a bureaucrat, not to another political body, but to the people who pay my salary and who give me and grant me my authority and power. And every four years they review my job performance and say whether or not I can continue. And that is the power of the people. And look at where else the people have a lot of power. They are the final say in every civil and criminal court case in this country.
Yeah, everyone. And so the real power source here to answer your question is where does the sheriff get his power? It’s from we, the people, and we need to get back to that. So that’s the thing. So just to talk real politic here for a moment, if the state decides that they are going to lock people in their homes when another pandemic comes around the sheriff in your county, they can choose whether or not to enforce that. And it’s entirely within their right. They are not going rogue if they decide not to enforce it. Well, not just to not enforce it, but to make sure no one else does.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s his job. So tell us about the state of the nation’s sheriffs right now. What grade would you give these folks right now? Well, the ones that stood up during COVID I would give them a b, b and a, depending on the degree to which they stood. But most sheriffs right now, I would give a d plus. A lot of them know better, but there’s so many of them. That one, they’re not educated, and I, they’re not humble enough to want to be educated, but that’s where we come in. Look, I ask every one of you to get these.
They’re available on my website. And go, go take one to your sheriff and ask him. Have you ever heard of the only supreme court case in the history of America where sheriffs beat the federal government to protect the office of sheriff? In fact, the decision is known as the anti commandeering ruling that sheriffs cannot be commandeered by the federal government for federal bidding. And folks, that is huge, powerful stuff. And if your sheriff has never heard of it, then you need to make sure he does and have him read this. You need to read it first and then get a few extra and hand them to city councilmen and, and mayors and county commissioners and your county attorney.
He’s usually the last one to admit that we should all be adhering to the constitution. Some, some county attorneys have actually said that sheriffs do not have the authority to enforce and keep their oath of office to enforce the constitution, which is what we promised to do when we took our oath. He’ll say, oh, no, you can’t do that. And so, yeah, that’s, that’s the irony and idiocy of all of this. But if the sheriffs would just look at this and say, sheriff, do you have a responsibility to enforce the Supreme Court’s decisions that talked about your job, that talked about your existence, that says the federal government is not all powerful, they do not have supremacy over the states.
And all of that is in here. And one quote from Scalia at the very beginning right in this little booklet, and, folks, when you look these up, make sure you see the name, because when you get to my website and you go to shop and you see this, it’ll be hard to see. Make sure you’re looking for the flags. And it’s the only white book I have like this. And it fits right in your shirt pocket. Okay. It’s really small. It’s about the same size as the pocket constitution. See there. So anyway, but he said, quoting another Supreme Court case of New York v.
Us in 1992, he said, quote, we have held, however, that state legislatures are not subject to federal direction. Then, in the order of the court, he actually clarified that and made it even more powerful. This is so astonishing. He said, the federal government may neither issue directives requiring the states to address particular problems. Now, get this. Nor command the state’s officers or those of their political subdivisions. Then you have to ask a question. What are the political subdivisions of the state? Right, right. Counties, school boards, and cities, townships, whatever. But those are all political subdivisions of the state.
And the federal government cannot tell the state’s officers or those of their political subdivisions to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. So everything we’ve lived through for the last three or four years has been anti constitution and anti our founding. Everything. Yes. Now I could tell you a quick story. We just had a marvelous, miraculous conference in Orlando over the weekend. I got home last night. Yeah. And Sheriff Hamilton from New Mexico was on with his, with a pastor from his county, Caleb Cooper. Doctor Caleb Cooper? Yep. And. And one sheriff from Tampa arrested pastor Rodney Howard Brown, a mega church leader and a great guy.
I’ve met him. I’ve been out to his church, heard his church service. Just absolutely love this man. He’s very brash for a pastor. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more brash and blunt pastor ever, more than this guy. Absolutely loved him, though, and I still do. His church is very entertaining and informative. So he was arrested. This pastor was arrested by his sheriff out in Tampa for simply having church service. That’s it. No other crime. But that’s not a crime, and it’s protected and guaranteed. It’s the first principle of liberty guaranteed in our bill of rights.
And then, on the other hand, the tell of two sheriffs. Sheriff Hamilton was contacted by pastor Cooper, and he said, sheriff, I’m not going to close my church down because I want everyone to understand, especially the government, that they are not in charge of our church. Jesus Christ is in charge of our church, not the government. And so I want to know what you will do to protect us, myself, and our congregation from being shut down. And this is what Sheriff Hamilton said. Pastor, if it takes me having to go to jail myself, then so be it.
But I will do everything in my power to keep you open and to protect you and your parishioners. Well, guess what? This is what Sheriff Hamilton did. He deputized every single person in that church. And when the state came to shut him down, he told them, every person in there is under my authority, and they work for me, and they’ve been deputized, and they’re not shutting down by the order of the sheriff’s office. That is absolutely, you know, for people who are wondering what the consequences are of things like Dei and, you know, spending all of our time teaching our children things like that, it’s that we are no longer teaching our children things like this, what their actual rights are.
I mean, these are rights that are enshrined in the constitution, the federal government. And if you think about it, if you keep. Keep peeling back that onion, this is why they played all of these word games. My mind immediately goes back to Covid because this is the most recent thing that they put us through. But when the federal government initiated these lockdowns, they were always very careful to say, well, these are recommendations. Well, we’re not forcing anybody to do this. We didn’t force anybody to take the vaccine. We didn’t force anybody to lock down, but we just fired them if they didn’t.
Exactly. Yeah, but there were several arrests of. For not wearing masks, and they would call it, oh, disorderly conduct and whatnot. But. But go ahead, finish that. No, and then, so this is this. I mean, if we all knew this. Yeah, it would have stopped right at the very beginning. There’s no way it would have gone on for three or four years is my point. No, and it shouldn’t have. And I was, we had another speaker, Sheriff Mark Lamb from Pinal County, Arizona. Sure. And he and I are actually distantly related and on the Mac side.
And he gave an absolute, he’s really one of the best public speakers I’ve ever seen. And we had a constitutional lawyer from Arizona out there doing the same thing by the name of Shane Krauser. But Sheriff Lamb was like one of the first in the country who came out publicly. And I didn’t know he was doing this until I saw him on Fox News. And he said, look, we’re not going to shut anybody down. We’ll ask people to be careful. And my deputies will go through businesses and malls and other places and make sure people are being careful.
And we will also make sure they know that they can call on us if they need anything because we’re not shutting people down. And schools. If they want to answer to the governor’s office and shut down, well, that’s their choice. That’s their deal. But if they don’t shut down, I’ll defend them, too. But this is, this is really amazing because he’s a Republican and the governor he was standing against is a friend of his and also a Republican. And so we, we don’t care about politics and we don’t care about parties. Yeah. We care about liberty and we care about our God given liberties and our constitution.
And once you have someone swear an oath in God’s name to uphold and defend, protect and preserve our God given rights detailed and listed in, enumerated in the Constitution, then that is exactly what you should do. But what if the president tells me not to, Orlando? What if the judge tells me not to? Or what if somebody gets mad at me? Stand firm, have some guts and do what you promise to do. You know, when you take an oath to, before you testify in court, do you say, I solemnly swear, or do you say, well, I’ll tell the truth as long as my sergeant, my lieutenant, or my chief or my sheriff tell me I can, or as long as the Supreme Court says I can, then I will? You are responsible to keep your oath, no one else.
You can’t abdicate the responsibility to someone else. And so that’s why we’re really, that’s why we are called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers association. And by the way, you and everyone else on this program, everyone in America can join us. As a matter of fact, I ask that you do. Go to cspoa.org and become a member of our CSPOA posse. We train you how to work with your sheriff. We train you to become a posse member for him and you help us stay funded. Oh, you think, oh, that’s way, no, that’s going to be way too much.
It’s $11 a month or $99 a year. And we bless each other with that. And I guarantee you, you’ll love it. Every Wednesday we have a posse webinar and we do the training and we let you know what sheriffs are doing nationwide to preserve liberty. And we also tell about citizens helping their sheriffs. Look, your sheriffs can’t do this alone, but we can take America back county by county, with one good group of people supporting their good constitutional sheriff. We can do this. And folks, this is an emergency now. Yeah, America is on life support and we’ve got to get busy.
And we have for you. We hand it to you right now, a peaceful and effective solution. And if you can tell me one or two others, I’ll stop doing this and I’ll join that peaceful and effective solution. But right now, I hadn’t, I haven’t had anybody tell me another peaceful and effective solution. It’s county by county working within your community. If you think there’s a still a solution in Washington, DC. I’ve got beachfront property for you in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s not going to happen. You are not kidding. I mean, and for people who think that this is kind of insurmountable, that you would have to get every sheriff in the nation, you say it takes, it only takes a small number to really affect significant change.
Well, look at the seven of us. We changed the history of America. Yeah. And our lawsuit against the Brady bill, actually, I found out there were five Brady bills, and Brady Bill two was introduced by Howard Metzenbaum just two weeks after I filed on number one. And it didn’t get out of committee and none of the others did either because we beat number one. And so we stopped the gun control movement that was going to destroy the Second Amendment. Seven sheriffs, the magnificent seven stopped the destruction of our Second Amendment rights. Isn’t it something how when even a small group of Americans choose to stand up, how quickly the opposition crumbles? Do you think that we kind of overestimate their, their resolve or their power? Sometimes they’re powerful and there’s no doubt about that.
But I think. Do you think that we kind of overestimate a little bit? Oh, yeah. It’s called intimidation. And their bark is bigger than their bite. Because ultimately, I could tell you hundreds of stories where sheriff stood up to the federal government, other state governments, and every time the sheriffs have won. And we’re not trying to start a fight. This is a peaceful movement. This is an effective movement. But we will stand firm and imagine that you’re now committing an act of civil disobedience like Martin Luther King did. Martin Luther King was arrested over 30 times because of that, and yet he never committed a crime.
Kind of sounds like Donald Trump to me. But. But regardless of that, we all have a responsibility to stand and say no and in a peaceful manner. It’s called civil disobedience. It’s okay to do that. But imagine how powerful that becomes if your sheriff’s there, standing with you and his deputies, and you’re there, and you’re part of his posse, and you are a deputized member of his posse. That’s powerful, folks. And I guarantee you, if we just have a third of the nation’s sheriff’s. No, a fourth, which would be about seven or 800 sheriffs standing, we will win.
And so, folks, we need your help. We need your financial support. The only way we’re funded is through your small monthly donations. We hope that hundreds of you will. Will join us and help us change America and help us get our freedom back and restore our constitution as the supreme law of the land. This is a fascinating conversation. This half hour went by way too quickly. Before we let you go, sheriff, I am of the mind that this movement, they accuse our side of being violent insurrectionists and all this other stuff. I am of the mind that this movement is entirely devoted to changing the course of this country peacefully.
We’re the ones trying to avoid the violence and avoid the fight. What are your thoughts on that? That’s exactly correct. And our movement has been that in 20 years of law enforcement, I’ve never committed an act of violence. I never beat anybody up. I never shot anybody. I would have if I had to, but I’ve never committed an act of violence. Yet. They say that our group is a paramilitary group out hell bent on committing violence. That’s all balderdash. It’s bull, Lonnie. And, folks, they cannot cite one time where I have advocated violence, or our group has, or that we’ve been part of violence.
But the Southern Poverty Law center had one of their lawyers arrested for domestic terrorism in Atlanta about seven or eight months ago. You can look that up in the newspaper, but yet they sell us for being violent and racist. We are not racists. We never have been. My mom did not raise me and my brothers and sister that way. We are not. And don’t call me that, because that’s even as offensive as certain racial slurs that are entirely taboo. Now, these people lie because they want America’s constitution replaced with the communist manifesto. Yes, and that’s what they want.
The ADL, Southern Poverty Law Center, Irehr and many others are out to destroy our foundation, and we must stand firm in the resolve of preserving our God given american republic. Sheriff Macklewood, an absolute pleasure to have you on, sir. You are a true hero and a true patriot. Please tell the folks where they can find you. Where they can find your organization, folks. It stands for CSPOA, constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers association, cispo, cspoa.org. become a member, make a donation, get on our mailing list. But if you’re a posse member, you qualify, and we’ll make sure that you get our videos and that you’re part of our training every Wednesday afternoon.
We really need you. America needs you. And folks, this is the only peaceful solution we have left. It really is. That is not hyperbole. Thank you very much for the time, sir. We’d love to have you back on real soon. I’d love to. Thanks so much.
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