The Posse Rides Again

By contrast, Ammon Bundy’s vision for People’s Rights is grounded in a broader “Constitutionalism,” and popular far-right conspiracies, particularly around COVID-19. Left unchallenged, the more expansive appeal gives People’s Rights the potential to build a larger movement than the Posse.

Fixation on the county as a locus of power, veneration of the county sheriff as “the highest law officer of the land,” promotion of racist and antisemitic conspiracies, outlandish pseudo-legal tactics, and calls for armed insurrection were the hallmarks of the Posse during their heyday. Many of those themes have been echoed by Ammon Bundy and other leaders in the People’s Rights network.

Bundy voiced the Posse Comitatus-like view that “we delegate policing and arresting power to certain people, but who do we, when it comes to law enforcement, do we the people delegate it to?…The sheriff, and only the sheriff.” He’s gone so far as to tell his supporters that city, state, and federal law enforcement agencies are illegitimate, “Your city police are not Constitutional policing agents. Your state police are not Constitutional policing agents. And your federal police are not.”[50]

Some People’s Rights leaders, including Bundy, have called for “defunding” city police. This, however, should not be construed as a nod towards the efforts of Black Lives Matter. Instead, the People’s Rights “defund” effort is in the context of shifting power and resources to the county sheriff.

Also like the Posse Comitatus, some People’s Rights activists, like Brand Thornton, have even called for replacing local police outright with bands of “citizen militias.”[51] Thornton’s vision is especially troubling given another post in which he declared, “I live to hear Antifa getting shot all day long.”[52]

Posse-like ideas don’t stop with Ammon Bundy. Take, for instance, People’s Rights Washington leader, Kelli Stewart, who also voiced a similar fixation on the county sheriff, “The county sheriff is the highest law enforcer, even when there are incorporated cities within his county…I would love to see the County Sheriff send in his deputes to keep the peace in the cities, and defund all police” [italics added].[53]

Stewart has not only echoed Posse ideas, she’s gone so far as to lend support to the cause of imprisoned Posse murderers. [54]  She recently wrote, “Let my people go! Free Yorie Kahl and Scott Fahl! Scot is my friend and brother in Christ, and I believe he should be released after almost 4 decades in prison for defending himself and his friends against a federal ambush!”[55]

The alleged “ambush” occurred on Feb. 13, 1983, near Medina, North Dakota, when Yorie Kahl and Scott Faul murdered two federal marshals and injured two other enforcement officers who were attempting to serve Yorie’s father, Gordon Kahl, with a probation violation warrant as they were leaving a Posse Comitatus meeting. Gordon Kahl had been a Posse Comitatus leader who refused to pay taxes to the, in his words, “Synagogue of Satan under the 2nd plank of the Communist Manifesto.”[56] Gordon Kahl escaped the gun battle and fled. Four months later, he killed an Arkansas sheriff before dying in a firefight.

Putting words into action, People’s Rights groups have attempted to get county sheriffs to intervene against local governments and police departments to prevent enforcement of COVID-19 health restrictions. At a Vancouver, Washington, People’s Rights rally in support of a woman ticketed for illegally reopening her business during the pandemic, Joey Gibson, leader of the violent far-right street-fighting group, Patriot Prayer, and a member of the People’s Rights Washington Area 8 group, fully embraced Posse rhetoric,

“For those of you who don’t know, it is the Sheriff’s responsibility to protect the Constitution within his own county. Doesn’t matter if it’s within the city, right? Doesn’t matter if he has to protect us from this guy, the city council or any other law enforcement. That is his job.”[57]

The embrace of Posse ideas by a far-right street activist like Gibson represents an expansion of these ideas into other far-right circles not known to be previously impacted by such ideas.

Gibson let slip the overall game plan for this manufactured conflict, “To flip it around on them, to get a movement going.” Creating fear is also part of the plan. “We’ve got to put fear into their hearts, so they don’t charge one more business owner. Not one. Not one. I talk about this all the time. They have to be afraid of us, guys,” he declared.[58]

In a similar vein to the Posse Comitatus, though not yet as relentless, People’s Rights groups have also taken up sending bogus documents to legislators which they claim have legal weight. Most recently sending a “Petition to Cease and Desist and Demand to Restore the Republic” to Idaho legislators to end the state’s COVID-19 restrictions.[59]

In Montana, People’s Rights leader Nick Ramlow drafted a “Petition for Redress of Grievances” against Governor Steve Bullock, claiming that the governor didn’t have the authority to issue public health directives.[60] He filed the grievance in Montana District Court and served copies to most government agencies in Flathead County.[61] Ramlow went even further, drawing up bogus forms for businesses to file complaints against public officials, threatening to use the militia to “arrest” public officials enforcing shelter-in-place orders, and even offering a $100 bounty for the address of Kalispell’s mayor so he could make a citizen’s arrest. [62]