He Parties With Neo-Confederates, Trashes MLK, and Leads the ‘Constitutional Sheriffs’

Published October 20, 2023 By admin with Comments 0

Sam Bushman wears many hats. All of them scream extremist.

Bushman is the new CEO of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association — a far-right group, with far-reaching influence, that preaches that the nation’s sheriffs have authority to judge the constitutionality of laws, and to block enforcement of any they deem objectionable.

Bushman is also the owner of Liberty News Radio, a right-wing radio and podcast network that provides a soapbox for white separatists, including airing shows that platform former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke and Charlottesville Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler. Bushman hosts his own radio show on the network, and used his airtime on Juneteenth 2023 to blast Martin Luther King Jr. as a “thug.” In an interview with Rolling Stone, he doubled down, calling the civil rights icon “a bad guy in many, many, many ways.” This July, Bushman broadcast from a neo-Confederate carnival called Dixie Fest, where he platformed an author who called for the South to “secede from what is really a degenerate empire.”

Bushman’s intersection with white separatists is concerning on its own terms. “Folks that Sam runs with are seeking secession and the creation of a white nationalist entity in the South,” says Chuck Tanner, research chief for the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a Seattle-based nonprofit that watchdogs far-right movements.

But Bushman’s outré views are even more troubling in the context of his leadership role with CSPOA. As many as one in 10 of the nation’s 3,000 sheriffs are members of the constitutional sheriffs group he leads. CSPOA is also authorized to train law enforcement officials in states from Montana to Virginia to Tennessee. The constitutional sheriffs movement even counts allies with Beltway ambitions. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb — a featured speaker at CSPOA’s national conference in 2020 — is running for Senate as a Republican in Arizona.

Content retrieved from: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/constitutional-sheriffs-ceo-sam-bushman-ties-white-supremacists-1234855624/.