Already facing growing pressure for ties to white nationalists, the head of a “Constitutional Sheriffs” group appeared on the podcast of a Hitler-loving white nationalist.
On October 10, Sam Bushman, the CEO of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), was a guest on the AFP Report, a podcast of the white nationalist publication, the American Free Press.
American Free Press is the tabloid founded by the late white nationalist leader Willis Carto after he lost control of the Liberty Lobby and its publication, The Spotlight, in a legal dispute. For a detailed account of the role of the American Free Press/Spotlight in the white nationalist movement, see Leonard Zeskind’s Blood and Politics: History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream.
The AFP Report podcast is described as a vehicle to highlight the work of writers for the tabloid and others. Previous guests have included white nationalists like James Edwards and antisemites like E. Michael Jones, and Kevin Barrett.[1]
The program’s host is Long Beach, CA-based white nationalist John Friend. In addition to running the white nationalist website, The Realist Report, Friend is a contributor to the American Free Press and Holocaust Denial journal The Barnes Review. Friend has praised Adolf Hitler, referred to the Holocaust as the “Holohoax,” and claimed Jews orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.[2] In a 2015 interview uncovered by Media Matters, Friend even claimed that Hitler and the Nazis “were the greatest thing that’s happened to Western civilization.”[3]
Sam Bushman and the American Free Press
Why would the busy CEO of a group trying to recruit sheriffs go on a fringe podcast like the AFP report to spend an hour chatting with a white nationalist? It turns out that CSPOA CEO Sam Bushman has a long history with the organization.
During the interview, Bushman confessed that he’s been a longtime reader of and remains a supporter of the white nationalist publication,
“I’ve been around so long that I used to read the Spotlight magazine as a teenager. Loved it. Fantastic. That’s where I really cut my teeth on what’s going on in America. I know it’s the American Free Press, but Pat Shannon, who’s been on the radio with me for literally decades, breaking stories and talking about things. So he’s a great friend as well. Piper and others, I’ve been around and watched you guys and support everything you’re doing.”
Listen: Sam Bushman on the white nationalist AFP Report.
Bushman added, “Spotlight magazine taught me, and my experience in the radio business, hey man, he who owns the media makes the rules, John.”
Bushman further expounded that the notorious white nationalist tabloid was instrumental to his political development, “The Spotlight was first. I learned the Spotlight as a teenager in the 80s and read that, then when I started in media then, I’m like, oh my gosh, it all came back, right.” Bushman added, “I cut my teeth on Spotlight magazine, the predecessor to the American Free Press that you guys are all familiar with.”
Listen: Sam Bushman on the white nationalist AFP Report.
The interview was not merely a “free speech” endeavor. Bushman concluded the podcast with a financial appeal for the white nationalist group, “Fund this show and fund the American Free Press. They’re doing a great job, and they all need your support. I don’t get paid for saying that; I’m just telling you the truth.”
Listen: John Friend and Sam Bushman on the white nationalist AFP Report.
On the podcast, Bushman also defended his friendship with American Free Press contributor James Edwards, “Are James Edwards and I dear friends? Absolutely. Do we stand shoulder to shoulder to promote God, family, and country and protect life, liberty, and property? You bet we do. You know what, we’re both white and of course, we advocate for America, so you’re a white nationalist if you do that, right.”
Sam Bushman and Bo Gritz
CSPOA’s Bushman wasn’t done confessing to his history of far-right activism. During the AFP Report interview, in discussing his long history of political involvement, Bushman confessed, “Then I was helping a friend with a political campaign, believe it or not, the Bo Gritz campaign back in ’91.”
Listen: Sam Bushman on the white nationalist AFP Report.
In 1991, James “Bo” Gritz became the candidate of the Populist Party, the white supremacist entity that emerged from Carto’s Spotlight and whose first national chair had been Mississippi Klansman Robert Weems.
Gritz’s popularity as a candidate was boosted by his 1991 book Called to Serve, a self-aggrandizing ramble in which the former Green Beret Lt. Col. repeated the antisemitic canard that “Eight Jewish families” controlled the Federal Reserve Bank.[4]
Such fare was standard for Gritz, as IREHR’s Leonard Zeskind described in Blood and Politics. At a 1991 “Bible camp” hosted by Christian Identity leader Pete Peters, Gritz declared, “He [God] has given us all that we need…He’s given us the likes of Pete Peters. He’s given us that likes of the Christian Identity movement.”[5]
Gritz told attendees at the Peters’ event,
“The enemy you face today is a satanic overthrow of the United States of America, a nation under God, into USA Incorporated, with King George [Bush] as chairman of the board. And a Zionist group that would rule over us as long as Satan might be upon this earth. That is your enemy.”[6]
In keeping with Gritz’s antisemitism and embrace of Christian Identity, the Populist Party and Gritz’s campaign remained a racist project across the 1991-1992 election cycle. National Populist Party leader Don Wassall would later lead Council of Conservative Citizen chapters in Nevada and Pennsylvania and serve as a director of the white nationalist American Freedom Party (formerly American Third Position), according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Wassall became editor of The Nationalist Times – an organ that cast the 1965 Immigration Act as “‘Diversity’ Designed to Protect Jews By Destroying Western Civilization.”[7]
In Washington State, leaders of the Gritz Populist Party bid included Knights of the Ku Klux Klan leader Kim Badynski and a Seattle-based Holocaust denier.[8] In Oregon, Gritz’s campaign was led by Richard Flowers, head of the Boring-based Christian Patriot Association (CPA).[9] The CPA book store peddled Richard Kelly Hoskins’ Vigilantes of Christendom, a book promoting the idea that murdering interracial couples is a high calling of God, and The Turner Diaries, national socialist William Pierce’s pulp-fiction ode to white revolution and genocidal mass murder.[10] Flowers attended speaking events by British Holocaust denier David Irving and once told reporters,
“I don’t mind that they own land or vote but there should not be any affirmative action and if the blacks don’t like it they can always go back to Africa. Blacks in general have a lower IQ than whites, and most want to just come in and take over without establishing anything for themselves.”[11]
A leader in Gritz’s campaign in Western Montana was Chris Temple, also a correspondent for the Christian Identity publication, The Jubilee.[12]
Across the Gritz campaign, a split raged between a Willis Carto/Spotlight faction and Populist Party leaders under Don Wassall, weakening the overall effort and leading Gritz to form his own America First Coalition to boost his run alongside other efforts.
Due to these splits and the limited capacity of the Populist Party, the campaign saw Wassall’s group play a lead role alongside other, at times contentious, efforts. Richard Flowers organized under the banner of Gritz’s America First Coalition in Oregon, as did Chris Temple in Western Montana. In addition to America First and the Populist Party, Gritz appeared on the ballot as a Constitution Party candidate, an Independent, and as a write-in.[13] In some areas, independent Spotlight supporters in the Carto camp mounted their own efforts to promote Gritz.[14]
CSPOA and Jack McLamb
Bushman’s involvement in the Gritz campaign is not CSPOA’s only brush with this political camp. In 2014, CSPOA gave a “Lifetime Achievement” award to former Phoenix, Arizona police officer Jack McLamb—a longtime close colleague of Bo Gritz.
Paving the way for the rise of CSPOA, Jack McLamb led far-right efforts to recruit law enforcement officers during the militia movement of the 1990s.[15] McLamb appeared at early Preparedness Expos with Gritz. Following a series of paramilitary trainings led by Gritz in 1994, Jack McLamb backed Gritz in forming a far-right “Christian Covenant Community” in North Central Idaho called “Almost Heaven.”[16]
Before becoming CSPOA’s National Legislative Liaison, Rick Dalton worked with McLamb on his conspiracist Police Against the New World Order (PATNWO) project. Dalton’s CSPOA biography continues to boast his serving as McLamb’s Aid & Abet newsletter editor.[17]
A 2005 issue of Aid & Abet, edited by Dalton, featured an article by Richard Mack that pressed his idea that the federal government lacks authority to “tell a county sheriff what to do” and that “The only way the federal government has any control over the county sheriffs is if the sheriff…acquiesces and goes along, allowing federal agents and their agencies to take control.”[18]
Eulogizing McLamb in 2014, Richard Mack referred to the far-rightist as “my friend and mentor” and “the original Oath Keeper.”[19]
To the press and the public, Sam Bushman continues to dodge his relationship with white nationalists, casting it aside as a “free speech” exercise. Out of the eye of the mainstream, while chatting with a Hitler-loving antisemite on a white nationalist podcast, Bushman let slip damning details that shatter any denial.
The newly surfaced statements about Bushman’s admiration for the white nationalist tabloid Spotlight/American Free Press and his participation in the 1991 Gritz campaign mean the CSPOA leader has even more to answer regarding his involvement with white nationalists. Local officials, law enforcement officers, and the public should be aware of the man behind the helm of the far-right pro-paramilitary group possibly coming to a town near you.
NOTES
[1] “Audio” American Free Press Website. Undated. Last Accessed October 18, 2023. https://americanfreepress.net/podcasts/.
[2] Eyes on the Right. “James Hake, Producer For Jesse Lee Peterson, Tells Neo-Nazi Podcaster That Jews Have Disproportionate Influence.” Angry White Men website. May 12, 2021. https://angrywhitemen.org/2021/05/12/james-hake-producer-for-jesse-lee-peterson-tells-neo-nazi-podcaster-that-jews-have-disproportionate-influence.
[3] Hananoki, Eric. “Trump Surrogates Promote Campaign in Interview with Neo-Nazi Holocaust Denier.” Media Matters for America website. March 13, 2016. https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/trump-surrogates-promote-campaign-interview-neo-nazi-holocaust-denier.
[4] Gritz, James “Bo”. 1991. Called to Serve. Sandy Valley: Lazarus Publishing Co.
[5] Zeskind, Leonard. 2009. Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.
[6] Zeskind, Leonard. 2009. Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.
[7] Altman, John W. The Immigration Act of 1965. Nationalist Times. October 2011. https://issuu.com/american3rdposition/docs/oct_nt_1025; Southern Poverty Law Center. American Freedom Party. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/american-freedom-party. Accessed October 18, 2023.
[8] Zeskind, Leonard. 2009. Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.
[9] Coalition for Human Dignity and Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. 1994. The Northwest Imperative: Documenting a Decade of Hate. Portland, OR: Paragon Printing.
[10] Coalition for Human Dignity and Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. 1994. The Northwest Imperative: Documenting a Decade of Hate. Portland, OR: Paragon Printing.
[11] Coalition for Human Dignity and Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. 1994. The Northwest Imperative: Documenting a Decade of Hate. Portland, OR: Paragon Printing.
[12] Coalition for Human Dignity and Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. 1994. The Northwest Imperative: Documenting a Decade of Hate. Portland, OR: Paragon Printing.
[13] Federal Election Commission. Federal Elections 92: Election Results for the U.S. President, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. June 1993.
[14] Coalition for Human Dignity and Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. 1994. The Northwest Imperative: Documenting a Decade of Hate. Portland, OR: Paragon Printing.
[15] Coalition for Human Dignity. 1994. Patriot Games: Jack McLamb and Citizen Militias. Portland, Oregon.
[16] Newsweek Staff. Bo Gritz Builds His ‘Heaven.’ Newsweek. September 4, 1994. https://www.newsweek.com/bo-gritz-builds-his-heaven-188248; Hedberg, Kathy. Associate of Bo Gritz to be at Kamiah meeting. The Lewiston Tribune. February 7, 1995. https://www.lmtribune.com/northwest/associate-of-bo-gritz-to-be-at-kamiah-meeting/article_583b9313-827b-5826-85c6-36dc6477b446.html
[17] Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. Our Leadership. https://cspoa.org/about/our-leadership/. Accessed October 18, 2023; Police Against the New World Order. 1992, Revised 1999. Operation Vampire Killer 2000. https://www.lawfulpath.com/ref/vk2k.php; Anti-Defamation League. The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) and Richard Mack: How Extremists Are Successfully Infiltrating Law Enforcement. September 20, 2021. https://www.adl.org/resources/report/constitutional-sheriffs-and-peace-officers-association-cspoa-and-richard-mack-how
[18] Aid & Abet. Fall 2005. https://www.scribd.com/document/512707363/Aid-Abet-Sheriff-Edition-2005-Office-Jack-McLamb
[19] Mack, Richard. Friend and Mentor Jack McLamb Passes Away. CPOSA.ORG. January 17, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20150926151335/http://cspoa.org/friend-and-mentor-jack-mclamb-passes-away/
