> The Anti-Defamation League calls Mack’s organization an “anti-government extremist group,” while he prefers to invoke Barry Goldwater’s 1964 battle cry: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.” Since founding the group in 2011, Mack estimates it has trained at least 800 sheriffs. Agencies in several states, including Texas and Virginia, have allowed officers to use these events for professional education credits....
> Over his long, peripatetic career, Mack has learned to persuade people: He’s been a car salesman, high school history teacher, reality show contestant (on the 2004 season of Showtime’s “American Candidate”), recruiter (for Gun Owners of America) and unsuccessful entrant into Republican primaries for governor of Utah and congressperson from Texas....
> In a 2019 study, political scientist Zoe Nemerever found that the presence of a sheriff with “Constitutionalist” views was associated with a higher likelihood of violent confrontation between their constituents and federal Bureau of Land Management employees. “Who has been violent in our country?” Mack told me. “The federal government has, quite often.”

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