Last November, the Claremont Institute hosted its inaugural class of “Sheriff Fellows.” Over the course of a week, eight sheriffs—all white men—chosen from the more than 3,000 in the country stayed at the Waterfront Beach Resort in Huntington Beach, California, attending a series of discussions, lectures, and fireside chats steeped in the far-right-wing think tank’s heady intellectualism and radical ideology. While the Claremont Institute restricted public access to the fellowship, a review of the fellowship’s previously unreported curriculum reveals a program that presented for the sheriffs two sets of people in America: those communities sheriffs should police as freely and brutally as they see fit, and those “real” Americans who should be considered virtually above the law.
At least some of the Claremont sheriffs were recruited because of their resistance to COVID orders from state and federal governments.
Ultimately, the Claremont Sheriffs Fellowship is, at first blush, an unlikely union of the intellectual right and the populist right. Considering Claremont’s embrace of Trump and the Big Lie, the union feels like the appropriate sign of the times.
The intellectual far right also clearly sees the utility of an army of sheriffs who are able to put these ideals into practice. Prior to the last presidential election, the Claremont Institute’s 79 Days Report outlined how Donald Trump could take over the federal government by force, specifically naming county sheriffs as important to recruiting militia members and civilian posses to prevent “hostile crowds of outsiders” from protesting a MAGA takeover. Sheriffs appear willing to accept this mantle.