A Sheriff for Some (Part 2): Cochise County Sheriff's ties to Christian nationalists, purveyors of hate and conspiracy theory
Part 2: Dannels goes to Yavapai County and embraces chaotic far-right 'patriot' group-- dives into paranoid world of 'globalist' enemies, as well as 'traitors' and 'enemies' from within
Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels bills himself as “a sheriff for all the people.” However, records obtained by Cochise Regional News cast doubt on this claim, showing that Dannels has gone far out of his way to cozy up to Christian nationalists, far-right “patriot” groups, elections denying conspiracy theorists, and individuals with close ties to various extremist militias.
Far from being inclusive of the rights of “all the people,” this strange milieu Dannels has inserted himself into holds at its center a patchwork of ideologies that hold non-European immigrants, members of the LGBTQ community, and non-Christians (particularly Muslims) in extreme contempt.
This is the second part of a four-part investigative series. [Read Part 1.]
Dannels goes to Yavapai County-- a very special place in the heart of right-wing chaos and disruption
Setting aside the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office’s refusal to confirm or deny whether Sheriff Dannels had been among CCSO command personnel to receive Lyle Rapacki's anti-Middle-Eastern-immigrant "Medical Time Bomb" tract on June 8, 2021, records indicate that Dannels had received plenty of other correspondence from Rapacki by that time-- all of which should have served to make Rapacki's views very clear to the Sheriff. And, according to public statements made by both Rapacki and Dannels, the two men have known each other since about 2011.
Apparently, Dannels liked what he saw in Rapacki and his associates. Records obtained by CRN show that, by the time Rapacki's Middle-Eastern-immigrants-are-diseased-criminals "briefing" was delivered to CCSO command, Dannels had accepted an invitation to serve as keynote speaker at an upcoming event of the Yavapai Patriots.
According to Arizona Corporation Commission records, Yavapai Patriots, LLC was incorporated by Rapacki, a resident of Yavapai County, on March 26, 2021. [Note: Rapacki/Sentinel Intelligence Services had been signing certain correspondence under the banner of “Yavapai Patriots” and conducting social media for the group for at least a year prior to its formal incorporation.]
A mission statement posted by the group to their website at some point in 2021 suggested that the group mirrored Rapacki's Christian nationalist values and conspiracist leanings, in that they advocated for “Judeo-Christian values,” and emphasized “legitimate” elections, border security and support for law enforcement.
Rapacki and then-Yavapai Patriots chair Mona Patton did not respond to queries from CRN concerning the group's beliefs or purpose.
Email records obtained by CRN show that, around March 24, 2021, Dannels had been invited to join the group as keynote speaker, on issues of immigration and border security, during an event to be held at the Hassayampa Inn in Prescott (Yavapai County) on July 17.
Records of email correspondence between Dannels and Yavapai Patriots chair Patton demonstrate that Dannels gladly accepted the invitation to the group's speaking engagement. Dannels evidently viewed speaking to Rapacki's group as such an honor that he declined the honorarium the group had offered to pay him, opting instead to foot the bill himself for travel and lodging, for both himself and his wife, at the event.
According to Arizona Secretary of State records, Yavapai Patriots registered as a political action committee (PAC) on February 23, 2021. Rapacki would serve as the PAC's single largest contributor.
Records indicate that the Yavapai Patriots PAC, with Rapacki serving as its single largest donor, paid for July 17 event at which Dannels served as keynote speaker.
Apparently, the Dannels keynote event was a big success.
“What an awesome event we held in Prescott because of you!!!,” Patton wrote Dannels on July 18. “You were wonderful and packed so much valuable information into a short amount of time. Everyone's attention was captured and they were attentive to every word you spoke. Our many thanks to both you and Nickie [Dannels' wife] for your long drive to join us. Please let us know if there is ever a way that we can ever repay you.”
Dannels responded: “I truly appreciated the invite and opportunity to spend some time with your organizations and yes, community. Nickie and I truly enjoyed it.”
According to email records obtained by CRN, some of Dannels' fan mail stemming from his Yavapai Patriots speaking engagement had a darker, more seditious, tone.
“Sheriff, I attended the Yavapai Patriots meeting in Prescott today. Thank you for sticking with the Constitution and America First. I wish everyone held similar beliefs,” wrote an individual named Bruce Moeller to Dannels on July 17.
“There are too many who fail to honor their oath of office, and frankly, there ought to be a simple remedy to remove those shills. Any ideas on how? I believe that our constitutional republic depends on removing traitors to the principles of freedom and the rights of the individual over the increasing power of a centralized and growing federal government.
“I went to law school, and have a deep affection for what this country represents. We're under attack daily, and the enemy is unrelenting. Thank you for your remarks today.”
Dannels responded:
“Good evening Bruce. Truly appreciate the feedback and supporting words regarding our country! We need to all stand united, thank you!! Glad you enjoyed the presentation, it was my honor to address you all!!”
Where the “traitors” and “enemy” referenced in the Moeller email are concerned, it should be noted that Dannels had provided Yavapai Patriots with an informational “packet” prior to the July 17 event. The packet contained multiple documents that alleged that some in the Biden administration and federal law enforcement were in violation of their oaths of office, relative to border security (at least one such document had been authored by Dannels himself, in his capacity as president of the Arizona Sheriff's Association).
CRN's public records requests to CCSO turned up no written remarks prepared by Dannels for the Yavapai Patriots event, and the Sheriff declined to comment on his relationship to the group. Patton and Rapacki also did not respond to written questions from CRN concerning this event or Dannels' speech.
However, it is not likely that the tone or tenor of the event at which Dannels spoke on matters of immigration and border security varied from the exclusionary tone of Rapacki's Middle-Eastern-immigrants-are-diseased-criminals "briefing."
Indeed, Rapacki and Dannels appear to have a close relationship (even exchanging warm Christmas emails), to be cut from a similar cloth, and travel in the same exclusionary circles.
For example: Rapacki claims to have previously taught criminal justice at Wayland Baptist University. According to biographical information provided by Dannels to Patton ahead of the July 2021 Yavapai Patriots event, Dannels was then a current teacher at Wayland Baptist University.
Wayland is a hard-right religious institution of higher education affiliated with the Southern Baptist Church. The university strictly prohibits homosexuality among its student body, as “contrary to God's purpose, and thus sinful.”
As stated in Wayland's “Policies and Procedures Manual,” students who engage in “homosexual relations or activities” may face disciplinary action, including expulsion.
Email records detailing Rapacki communications with Dannels (much of which are comprised of Sentinel Intelligence “briefings,” articles by Rapacki, and various Rapacki rants) suggest that the exclusionary views seemingly held by the men may extend beyond non-European immigrants and homosexuals.
Rapacki writings contained in emails sent to Dannels and CCSO command personnel contain frequent references to “diabolical” attacks underway against the United States by the United Nations, Islam, Marxism, and the shadowy globalist cabal/New World Order-- all of which seek to erase the borders of the United States and flood it with a fearful tide of non-white humanity.
Where this vast conspiracy is concerned, it should be noted that, according to email records, Rapacki makes mention of the “globalist manipulator and villain George Soros.”
According to Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Intelligence Project Senior Researcher and Analyst Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon, Soros has become something of a lynchpin in understanding modern antisemitism.
George Soros is a Jewish Hungarian-born billionaire hedge fund manager whose family survived Nazi occupation of Hungary during the Second World War. Due to his decades of support to progressive causes and the Democratic Party, Soros has become something of a boogieman to the political right.
“'Globalists' is a dogwhistle for 'Jews',” said Wiinikka-Lydon.
Framing Jews as an international threat to sovereign nations is an old trope, tracing back centuries, he said. “It's this awful antisemitic story, that Jews don't have their own homeland, so they're not actually loyal to the countries that they're in.”
Such mistrusted individuals, said Wiinikka-Lydon, have served a galvanizing purpose for nationalists through history. “Germany is for Germans, France is for the French,” and so on, said Wiinikka-Lydon.
The white nationalist/supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory is one in which malignant forces, often Jews, work to open the borders of a nation to non-white immigrants (including, or especially, Muslims) in order to rob white Christians of their dominance.
Sentiments of this sort appear in Rapacki's various writings-- from the allegations that the Obama administration deliberately flooded Republican-dominated states with diseased Muslim criminals and various non-white immigrant scourges, to “globalist manipulator and villain George Soros'” role in the plot to “permanently erase American sovereignty and eliminate the founding principles by which our Nation, under God, was so conceived.”
[Note: the words “under God” were not added to the American Pledge of Allegiance until 1954. The words were added amid the fervor of the Cold War and high anti-communist sentiment. Soviet communism, particularly under the rule of Joseph Stalin, opposed religion.]
Since border security and immigration are Dannels' stock-in-trade and were the subjects he was asked to discuss with Rapacki's Yavapai Patriots, it is also worth noting that Rapacki's vision of a fearful influx of disease-ridden criminal Middle Easterners bears striking resemblance to the infamous anti-immigrant book “The Camp of Saints” by Jean Raspail.
In short, the work of fiction depicts the destruction of Western civilization at the hands of mass non-white migration. Some of the diseased immigrants depicted in the book ate their own feces.
Trump administration senior advisor and immigration policy architect Stephen Miller has cited the book, as have Bannon and white nationalist former Iowa congressman Steve King (whom has met with Dannels to discuss border policy).
“Camp of Saints” is distributed in the United States by anti-immigrant activist John Tanton's Social Contract Press. This distribution was initially financed by Cordelia May Scaife, heiress to the Mellon-Scaife banking dynasty. Scaife was one of the primary funders (to the tune of many tens of millions of dollars) of Tanton's influential anti-immigration network, which includes the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Immigration Law Reform Institute (IRLI).
Dannels and several of his compatriots in Cochise County have ties to the Tanton network. [Read about it here and here.]
Rapacki did not respond to written questions from CRN concerning his familiarity, if any, with “Camp of Saints,” or his current views on Middle Eastern immigrants and refugees.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations-Arizona (CAIR-AZ) is an organization that works to counter anti-Islamic hate and protect the civil rights of Muslims in Arizona. CAIR-AZ Executive Director Azza Abuseif told CRN that when she reviewed Rapacki's “Medical Time Bomb” “briefing,” the only word that occurred to her was “disgusting.”
“The people described in this document are monsters. They're not immigrants or refugees. These are monsters,” said Abuseif, herself the daughter of a Sudanese immigrant who fled an attempted theocratic coup in that country during the 1980s.
“Everybody deserves basic human rights-- no matter your faith, your background, your sex, your ethnicity, the color of your skin. There is nothing that can justify anything in this document-- because you are dehumanizing a whole community [...] you're dehumanizing other humans. What makes [Rapacki] better than these immigrants and refugees? This country was built by immigrants.”
[Full disclosure: I am, myself, the son of a Middle Eastern immigrant who fled Iran following the 1979 theocratic Islamic Revolution in that county.]
The fact that Cochise County Sheriff Dannels only deepened his ties with Rapacki after CCSO command had received Rapacki's Middle-Eastern-immigrants-are-diseased-criminals document should be cause for significant concern, said Abuseif.
“Public figures like Dannels play a crucial role in shaping public opinion and policies,” said Abuseif. She went on to say that she believes Dannels is misusing that influence, catering to the far-right. “You should be protecting the communities. You should be dismantling false narratives. You should stop the misinformation and disinformation.”
Unfortunately, said Abuseif, “we have people in power who are not de-escalating-- they're just instilling fear in peoples' hearts. […] There are many like Dannels. He's not the only one, there are many.”
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks of the Islamic extremist terror group al-Qaeda, American domestic law enforcement infrastructure saw a vast restructuring. Through federal legislation like the Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act, law enforcement agencies (from federal to state and local) were focused on terrorism prevention. In practice, this often meant the surveillance and infiltration of American Muslim communities, immigrant communities, and mosques.
Arguably, the more than two decades intervening have seen the cultivation of bias within the American 'counter-terrorism' law enforcement community-- segments of which have clearly aligned themselves with the anti-Islam, anti-immigrant, anti-civil rights sentiments of our political far-right.
Abuseif told CRN that Islamophobia within law enforcement is more prevalent than ever. “It's getting worse,” she said.
“This article by Rapacki is a prime example […] Even if it was written in 2016, it's now 2023 and we're [CAIR-AZ] still getting Islamophobic calls. It's like we have not learned a thing. This is not what this country was supposedly built on. People flee here for a better life […] When people go places in fear for their lives, they are for a better life. To dehumanize that is unreal.”
CCSO Public Information Officer Carol Capas and Sheriff Dannels declined to respond to requests for comment from CRN, asking whether Dannels agrees with the description of Middle Eastern immigrants contained in Rapacki's “Medical Time Bomb” briefing.
[Note: CRN interviewed Abuseif in October 2023, not long after the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. Where the attack and resultant war between Israel and Hamas is concerned, Abuseif said CAIR-AZ condemns the violence and suffering perpetrated against “both our Jewish brothers and sisters and our Muslim brothers and sisters-- [against] all humans.”]
According to SPLC Intelligence Project Senior Researcher Wiinikka-Lydon, hatred and mistrust of Jews, in particular, received a shot in the arm in the early twentieth century through the publication of anti-Jew propaganda such as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and “The International Jew”-- both of which were published and widely circulated by Henry Ford, and both of which served as seminal works for the German NAZI party.
During Ford's time, and the time of the German Nazi Reich, the malignant “International Jew” was typified by hatred and suspicion of the Rothschilds, a wealthy European Jewish banking family active in Germany, Austria, Vienna, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom in the nineteen and early twentieth centuries. To this day, phrases such as 'globalist banker cabal,' 'international bankers' cartel,' 'globalists,' etc. are dogwhistles harkening back to the Rothschilds.
According to Wiinikka-Lydon, conspiracy theories involving 'globalist' elites often also contain some nexus to perceived related “Marxist” or “Communist” threats (one need look no further than the writings of people like Lyle Rapacki to find examples of this). To be sure, this is contradictory-- given that bankers are the paragon of capitalism and Marxists are the antithesis of capitalism-- but it makes sense in an antisemitic context, given that many leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia were (like the much more fortunate Rothschilds, who did not live in Russia) Jewish.
“And there was good reason for that: Jews were at the very bottom of the totem pole in Tsarist Russia,” said Wiinikka-Lydon. Tsarist Russia saw several waves of anti-Jewish pogroms, and Jews were often relegated to the poorest social and economic standing. So, when a rebellion of the nation's underclass came in the form of the 1917 revolution, there were Jews among them.
German Nazi propaganda used both caricatures of the wealthy International Jew and the Marxist Jew (Karl Marx himself was of German Jewish descent) to substantial effect. The result was the holocaust.
Today, Soros checks all the boxes: he is Jewish, he is wealthy, he has lived in multiple nations, and he has supported progressive causes around the world with the ostensible intent to elevate the less privileged.
“Soros is then the stand-in-- kind of the Boogie Man-- for the international Jewish alliance that is trying to take over and destroy the United States and Western Civilization-- I mean, it's that profound, it's like this existential threat,” said Wiinikka-Lydon, speaking to the utility of the contemporary far-right's scapegoating of Soros.
[Full disclosure: I have reported for a non-profit news organization that received grant funding from Soros' Open Society Institute. CRN receives no funding from Soros or any other organization.]
Forty years ago, Sam Caron helped to found Temple Kol Hamidbar in Sierra Vista. He currently serves as president of the synagogue's board.
Caron is familiar with the trough-lines that bind centuries of antisemitism with our present moment; his grandmother fled the pogroms of Tsarist Russia, and his family eventually made a home in Detroit.
Caron told CRN that the Detroit of his youth was segregated along religious and ethnic lines: “If you were Christian, you lived in the best neighborhood. If you were Jewish, you were in a lower neighborhood. If you were Black, you were in the slums.”
Caron said Jews could not get good jobs at the Ford manufacturing plant-- and on Christmas, when kids went out to see the city's lights on display, the Jewish kids knew to steer clear of Ford's house.
Today, Caron said, he is troubled to see these old divides, including antisemitism, on the rise. He told CRN that he is troubled to learn of Dannels' ties to Christian nationalists like Rapacki.
Christian nationalism, he said, is “just another flavor” of the kind of hate that thrived among men like Ford and Hitler.
“You know when you see wrong, and it's good to speak out-- but people are afraid to speak out because of the consequences,” said Caron. “We're a small county, but that [the office of sheriff] is an important role in the community. The fact that probably half or more of the population is going in that direction [to the political far-right] … that's, that's real scary.”
CCSO Public Information Officer Carol Capas and Sheriff Dannels declined to respond to requests for comment from CRN, asking whether Dannels agrees with Rapacki's Christian nationalist and other extreme beliefs.
Beyond its antisemitic roots, the term “Globalist” has taken on a deeper meaning, said Wiinikka-Lydon, being something of an umbrella term for grievance (take your pick) in this age of often disparate conspiracy theories.
“When somebody gets up and says, 'ah, it's the globalists,' they may have in their mind 'international Jewry,' that old term-- but then the people in the audience can be like, 'yeah, the globalists!,' and they'll kind of infer, or fill in the blanks, the groups that they feel they have grievance against.”
Such are the manifold threads of paranoia running through the rhetoric of people like Rapacki-- where at once, you may be attacked on all sides by a vast and seemingly misaligned coalition of enemies: a Jewish “globalist” billionaire supervillain, Marxist Muslims, 'open-borders' Democrats, the United Nations and it's evil “Agenda 21” plot-- all united under the banner of Satan.
Rapacki did not respond to written questions from CRN regarding his beliefs concerning the alleged global 'diabolical'/'satanic' New World Order conspiracy, nor did he respond to written questions from CRN regarding his views on Soros, Jews, Muslims, or Middle Eastern immigrants.
“When we talk about the extreme Right now, these groups, they're awash in conspiracy, and it's not intellectually coherent-- and that actually works to their advantage,” said Wiinikka-Lydon. “It's almost like what Trump is doing, and what they've done in Silicon Valley. It just disrupts everything-- even how people can just sit and reason together. It just cuts out that ability to be a neighbor with anybody else. It just disrupts all of that.”
Rapacki is a man who seems to inhabit a special place in the nucleus of contemporary American chaos and disruption-- and it appears that his group, the Yavapai Patriots, fell victim to that very chaos and disruption shortly after Dannels' keynote appearance at their Hassayampa Inn event in July 2021.
At some point following the event, likely in early 2022, Yavapai Patriots chair Mona Patton (with whom Dannels had corresponded at length prior to, and following, his speaking engagement) posted the following statement to the group's website [note: at the time of the posting, the group had apparently changed its name to “Yavapai Rising”]:
“Yavapai Rising has been silent for the past two months and I have an explanation for you.
“An attempt against my life was made and a friend of mine who was with me was shot in the head. He suffered a fractured skull, severe concussion, had bleeding and swelling on his brain. My friend spent one week in intensive care and two weeks in rehabilitation. He is still healing from that injury. It was a horrendous experience for both of us. By the grace of God, we are both blessed to be alive.
“During the weeks following the incident, three members of the Yavapai Rising Advisory Board decided to attempt a coup. As I was extremely distressed and distracted, they felt that it was a perfect moment to seize control of the organization and oust me as Chair. They failed to remove me.
“1 Peter 5:8 'Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.'
“After much agonizing and extensive prayer the standing Board of Yavapai Rising has decided to discontinue monthly meetings and disband the organization. This has been a difficult decision to make and there are many regrets as our work is not done.
“God Bless you and keep you safe from harm!”
Patton did not respond to CRN's requests for comment concerning this incident.
Rapacki did not respond to CRN's request for comment concerning this incident.
[Read Part 3.]
Beau Hodai, Cochise Regional News— February 10, 2025.
Please Note: “A Sheriff for Some” was originally published in its entirety by CRN in May 2024. In light of recent events, this investigation is being reprinted as a series.
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