Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

By Zach Hirsch and Emily Russell. NCPR

About If All Else Fails

Far-right extremism is thriving in small, rural communities across the country, gaining the support of mainstream voters and local law enforcement. In this podcast from North Country Public Radio, reporters Emily Russell and Zach Hirsch investigate extremist groups and militia movements in northern New York State, why they’re drawing support, and what kinds of threats they pose at a pivotal moment for democracy in the United States. This story is part of a series on far-right extremism called ‘If All Else Fails.’

All episodes available now at NCPR.

We met Rich Giardino at his office in Johnstown, New York last summer. “The place is a mess, I apologize. It’s a working office,” he said as he led us inside.

Giardino is the sheriff of Fulton County, a rural county west of Albany. He’s a lifelong Republican, but he had action figures of Bill and Hillary Clinton on his desk. He told us the Clintons were a gift he got as a joke. There’s also a campaign sign in Giardino’s office from when he ran for district attorney decades ago. Giardino likes to talk about his career — he jokes that he has “quite the ego.” “I’m the only one in the state history that’s been a DA, a judge, and a sheriff,” Giardino said.

We were there to talk to the sheriff about far-right extremism in Fulton County. There have been incidents in recent years connected to white supremacist and antigovernment ideologies.

We also knew that Giardino was a member of Protect America Now, a far-right constitutional sheriffs group. Experts say the group is radicalizing sheriffs across the country, pushing election conspiracy theories and a far-right interpretation of the constitution, and potentially posing a risk to the upcoming presidential election.

Extremism in Fulton County

Just days before our interview with Giardino, a Black Lives Matter sign was vandalized in the Fulton County town of Oppenheim. Someone spraypainted swastikas and the n-word on the sign.

Giardino described the incident as “mean-spirited” but said that his office didn’t investigate it as a hate crime. “I honestly believe, right now, we believe they’re kids on four wheelers,” said Giardino. “I don’t believe it’s an organized white supremacist group, or any organized group.”

The vandalized BLM sign wasn’t the first time something like that had happened in the area. There were reports of Ku Klux Klan activity in Fulton County in 2017, and the group appeared to resurface in nearby Montgomery County in 2020. But again, Giardino seemed to downplay that. “It was not only our community. There were some in other counties around us, there were some in some villages and the city, and people were writing ‘KKK meeting,’ or ‘support the KKK.’ But that was a blip on the screen and it was gone,” Giardino said.

But then something else happened. In 2022, an alleged neo-Nazi was caught planning to rob a bank just down the road from Giardino’s office. The sheriff described that case as serious and scary, but told us he doesn’t see far-right extremism as a systemic issue in Fulton County. “When we have incidents, it’s like one or two, frankly, nut jobs,” said Giardino.

That year, Governor Kathy Hochul issued an executive order in response to the Buffalo mass shooting, requiring all counties to develop and maintain a domestic terrorism prevention plan. Local lawmakers chose Giardino to lead Fulton County’s plan. “They don’t give us a choice as to what is the biggest threat to our community,” he was quoted as saying at the time, adding that drug sales and overdoses are more serious local issues.

“My office has not come across any white supremacist groups. We have come across individuals who spew white supremacist views,” Giardino told North Country Public Radio. “So they do exist. They’re isolated. In this county, we have far too many overdoses [...] and we have far too many mental health cases.”

But that was very different from what we heard from the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services Commissioner, Jackie Bray. “I simply disagree with this sheriff,” Bray said in a separate interview. “It’s a total false choice to say one thing is a greater threat than another thing. Law enforcement has to walk and chew gum all the time, and there is not a county in the state that doesn’t have a challenge with extremism.”

Law enforcement and the far-right

Far-right extremism is thriving in small, rural communities across the country - gaining support from mainstream voters and local law enforcement, including in Upstate New York. “There have been real efforts to recruit amongst domestic extremist groups from law enforcement, including law enforcement leadership,” Bray said. “And that’s something we have to grapple with as a state and as a country.”

During our interview with Sheriff Rich Giardino, we asked him about his connections to Protect America Now, the constitutional sheriffs group. He said he joined the group because of what it stood for, particularly on issues of border security. “I look at it as Protect America Now — makes sense — protect America. The few people I know from [the group] are not extremists. I mean, they’re loud. They’re vocal,” said Giardino. “But it’s about the borders and it’s about the crossings and the drugs and the guns. It’s a problem across the country, and not just down south.”

Protect America Now was formed after the 2020 presidential election by Mark Lamb, a sheriff from Arizona. According to its website, one of the goals of Protect America Now is to “build a coalition of patriots.”

“Our borders are overrun. Crime is taking over our cities, and progressives want to take our guns. America’s sheriffs are the last line of defense, and we refuse to lose hope,” Lamb says in an ad for the group, wearing a tactical vest and a cowboy hat. “Together, we are fighting back against the liberal takeover. We are calling out the ridiculous lies in the fake news. And we are pushing back against an overreaching government that wants to make America less safe, less secure, and less free.”

Lamb and his group have connected with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigration organization, and Protect America Now often portrays migrants as potential threats. The group has also amplified false claims of widespread voter fraud after the 2020 election. It teamed up with True the Vote, a conservative nonprofit that spreads election conspiracy theories.

Chuck Tanner is a researcher with the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a social justice group tracking white nationalism. He said the most alarming thing about groups like Protect America Now is that they use law enforcement to promote extremist ideologies. “When you look at the constellation of things that these groups are mobilizing around, you’re looking at pushing a far-right agenda through policing, plain and simple,” said Tanner.

Protect America Now is also part of the constitutional sheriffs’ movement. There is a lot of overlap between Protect America Now with the other major group in that movement, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. Tanner said Protect America Now is slightly softer in its rhetoric. The group uses language that appeals to a wider audience, focusing broadly on issues that many conservatives care about - such as a secure border and drug trafficking.

“Protect America Now doesn’t take as hardline a stance on these issues and because of that, it can be a little bit more appealing to the general public,” said Pete Kurtz-Glovas, a researcher at the Polarization & Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University. “But at the end of the day, both of these groups are pushing the same idea, the same concept that the sheriff is the ultimate authority in the United States. And that is where the real threat is.”

Law enforcement members in the constitutional sheriffs’ movement believe they can decide what is and isn’t constitutional. That’s played out in recent years in Upstate New York, where sheriffs have refused to enforce certain laws.

Protect America Now has 75 members listed on its website – all county sheriffs from across the U.S. – including two from New York. That day we were in his office last September, Fulton County Sheriff Rich Giardino was one of those two sheriffs.

Interpreting the Constitution

To understand Giardino’s ideology as a sheriff, it’s helpful to know about his legal background. Giardino went to Albany Law School and served as a district attorney and later, a county judge. His nameplate from back when he was a judge is hanging on the inside of his office door.

It’s that legal experience that Giardino leans on as sheriff when it comes to his interpretation of the law. “My positions are always based on my education, my training, having written decisions about constitutionality,” said Giardino. “If I believe it’s unconstitutional, I will not enforce it or I will not put resources onto it to enforce it.”

In 2020, Giardino said he would not enforce a state-mandated 10-person limit on holiday gatherings during the pandemic. He’s also pushed back on a state gun law that passed in 2022 – the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, saying it “unfairly targets law-abiding citizens.”

“If we stopped you and you’re at Price Chopper, you’ve got your gun on, and Price Chopper doesn’t allow guns, we’re not going to arrest you,” Giardino said. “We’re going to say, ‘Look, the law changed, you can’t bring your gun in there, it’s got to be in the lockbox in your car.’ So, I have a tremendous amount of discretion.”

Other sheriffs around New York State have shared similar criticisms of the new gun law, and prosecutors and police do use discretion all the time. But Giardino seems to take the idea of discretion further, deciding what is and isn’t constitutional. “I take a position based on my personal opinions,” Giardino said. “Where I live is pretty conservative-moderate. I think most of the people who support me, whether they agree with me or not, like the fact that at least I take a position.”

Top security officials and experts say it’s concerning when local police lean heavily on their own interpretation of the law when deciding what to enforce. In our system of government, lawmakers make the laws, while the role of police is to enforce the law.

“I would like to know when he was appointed to the Supreme Court?” asked Rachel Goldwasser, an analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Because if not, that is genuinely outside of the scope of his duties as a lawyer or as a sheriff.”

“Obviously, there is some level of discretion within prosecutors offices, et cetera,” Goldwasser added. “What I hear is that ‘I’m not actually going to be doing my job.’”

Drawing a line

Our interview with Sheriff Giardino back in September 2023 lasted more than two hours. In that time, we learned that Giardino is in more of a gray area when it comes to the constitutional sheriffs movement.

It’s clear that the constitution is important to Giardino – his interpretation of that document and his experience as a judge drive a lot of what he does as sheriff. But Giardino does draw a line. He doesn’t think being a local sheriff gives him some “almighty power,” he said. He describes that idea embraced by many constitutional sheriffs as “extreme.”

Giardino said he was asked to join the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, but he declined. “I mean, I like the concept of constitutional sheriffs, it sounds good, right? It sounds like, ‘Yeah, we’re there for the Constitution,’” said Giardino. “But if they go too far, or if they have members who go too far, then it doesn’t take much to tarnish the whole organization and you can’t make a distinction.”

Giardino said he also turned down an invitation to join the Oath Keepers militia. But Protect America Now didn’t seem to cross a line for Giardino. That might be because he was recruited by someone he knows and respects, Sheriff Mike Lewis from Maryland. “Mike said, ‘Hey, you know, I’m going to nominate you for this Protect America Now. It’s a group of sheriffs and we need a strong voice in New York,’” Giardino recalled.

We asked Giardino whether he knew that Protect America Now is considered the other main constitutional sheriffs group, similar to the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. “I am not that aware of in-depth,” Giardino said. “It didn’t trigger any red flags, because the portions of [the group] that I reviewed in the online research I did, everything I was sent had to do with the borders, drugs, guns, and crime,” said Giardino.

We told Giardino what we knew about the group – specifically how the Southern Poverty Law Center labels it extreme, and part of the same ecosystem of antigovernment and extremist groups as CSPOA.

“What you’re telling me is news to me,” Giardino said. “I didn’t know about this.”

He joked that the moment reminded him of 60 Minutes, the investigative television series.

Recruited, now reconsidering

During our interview, Sheriff Giardino seemed concerned, at least with the optics of being connected to a group like Protect America Now. But about a month after our interview, his photo was still on its membership page. So we called him back. That was one of several long follow-up conversations; Giardino was generous and open with us throughout our reporting.

Giardino said he thought about it some more and told us the group still didn’t cross a line for him. “I do think that the Protect America Now has specific reasons and objectives. And most of those I agree with, that have been published and that I’ve heard spoken of,” said Giardino. “If there’s some radical element that I don’t know about – I can’t speak to that. I just know what I know about.”

But the day after that phone call, he texted us, saying he looked into it a little further. “There are more connections with the Constitutional Sheriff’s than I was previously aware of and some of the statements of some board members prior to my joining the board are troubling to me and not in line with my beliefs.”

While Giardino told us he supports Protect America Now’s stance on border issues and echoed some of the group’s rhetoric about “drugs and criminals” flowing into the country, ultimately, Giardino told us he was withdrawing his name from the group immediately.

“Thanks for bringing this to my attention,” Giardino said in one of his texts. “Your insistent questioning caused me to dig deeper.”

Cautionary tale

Giardino’s photo is still on the group’s website, but it appears that they haven’t made many updates in more than a year. We reached out to Protect America Now and never heard back, but we have a copy of Giardino’s email to Mark Lamb asking to leave the group.

In that email, Giardino does not denounce or condemn Protect America Now. While he said he’s resigning from the group, Giardino also said he’ll continue to support efforts to strengthen border protection.

The experts we spoke with for this story said they were glad to hear Giardino left Protect America Now. But if his ideology remains the same, they wondered if it even really matters. And they said there is a cautionary tale here – about how easily a person can be recruited into a larger movement before they have all the facts.

“It’s easy, right? You hear there’s a group that wants to endorse you, that wants to back you,” said Pete Kurtz-Glovas, from the PERIL Lab at American University. “The name Protect America Now does not scream concern. But at the end of the day, these are groups that are pushing their own political agenda, and they’re trying to do so by having sheriffs carry out their agenda.”

The constitutional sheriffs are still recruiting in New York and across the country. They’re still pushing conspiracy theories about election security, and a far-right interpretation of the constitution, which experts say is especially concerning ahead of the upcoming presidential election.

This reporting is part of a podcast on far-right extremism in Upstate New York called ‘If All Else Fails.’ The podcast received grant support from Grist and the Center for Rural Strategies. The artwork for the show was designed by Dan Cash.