A Sheriff for Some (Part 3): Cochise County Sheriff's ties to Christian nationalists, purveyors of hate and conspiracy theory

Part 3: ties between Dannels and right-wing extremists-- some of whom sought to wage a Christian nationalist holy civil war

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 third part of a four-part investigative series. [Read Part 2.]

Ties between Dannels and right-wing extremists: COWS, et al., and the Christian Nationalist holy civil war

Just as Christian nationalism is (in broad strokes) the belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation that will forever exist as a nation under Christian dominion, white nationalism is the belief that America was founded as a nation for white people, to be forever dominated by white people.

“White Christian nationalism” is the overlapping of these two extreme and anti-democratic beliefs.

The majority of American Christians and white citizens are neither Christian nationalists or white nationalists. Nevertheless, as tides of far-right anti-democratic sentiment have risen, these beliefs have gained currency.

White Christian nationalism, as we know it today, shares lineage with the modern American “patriot movement.”

Like the words “under god” in our Pledge of Allegiance, the modern American patriot movement tracks back to the Red Scare of the 1950s and the foundation of the John Birch Society.

The John Birch Society, founded in 1958, organized around the conspiratorial belief that a globalist communist conspiracy had infiltrated every facet of the American government. The group's founder, Robert Welch, even accused then-president Dwight Eisenhower of being a part of this global communist plot-- despite the fact that Eisenhower and his vice president, Richard Nixon, were ardent anti-communists.

True to its reactionary impetus, the John Birch Society sought to safeguard and enshrine American capitalism and Christianity. Communism is inherently antithetical to capitalism, and religion was oppressed in the communist Soviet Union.

The group was also an early progenitor of the now-ubiquitous conspiracy theory that holds that the United Nations is intent on erasing the borders (and sovereignty) of every nation in order to implement a malignant “New World Order.”

At its peak, the group had around 100,000 members, spread through chapters nationwide. Members of this movement promoted certain candidates in local elections, sought the removal of officeholders whose beliefs did not align with their own, and sought to ban books from schools.

Though the John Birch Society publicly disavowed antisemitism, it is widely accepted that many of the group's largely white Christian membership held less-than-tolerant beliefs, and the group publicly opposed racial integration throughout the civil rights era of the 1960s.

The Society's belief that a vast globalist communist conspiracy had infiltrated and was controlling the federal government often overlapped with “globalist” Jew/communist paranoias of white supremacist groups like the Christian Identity movement (which holds that white Europeans, not Jews, are the true 'chosen people' of the Abrahamic god).

A proponent of these “Christian Identity” beliefs in the early twentieth century was Michigan newspaper, The Dearborn Independent (also known as The Ford International Weekly), owned by antisemite and Nazi sympathizer Henry Ford.

The white supremacist beliefs of the Christian Identity movement were further codified, in the 1940s, through the foundation of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian by California pastor, Ku Klux Klansman, and founder of the antisemitic Christian Defense League, Wesley Smith.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the beliefs of the John Birch Society and active field organizing of the Christian Identity movement began to coalesce around economic crises confronting agricultural communities in the western United States.

This resulted in the “posse comitatus” and “sovereign citizen” movements, which saw an increase in militant activity-- particularly in the Pacific Northwest-- aimed at the federal government and its perceived puppet masters among “globalists,” “international Jewry”/bankers, the United Nations, New World Order, etc. Those active in such activities often saw themselves as righteous 'patriots' standing against unjust tyranny.

Aryan Nations, an outgrowth of the Christian Identity and posse comitatus movements, would go on to conduct a campaign of murder, robbery, and terrorism throughout the United States during the 1980s and 90s.

“Birchers,” as the John Birch Society's adherents were called, were often seen as fringe figures in the American political landscape, and seemed to largely disappear from sight as the decades rolled on, the communist scare cooled, and the Soviet Union crumbled.

In the 1990s, however, there were signs that a violent white power militia movement was on the rise in the United States.

In 1992, federal agents killed the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge in Boundary County, Idaho. The agents had been attempting to arrest the father, Aryan Nations associate Randy Weaver, for selling a sawed-off shotgun to a federal agent posing as a member of Aryan Nations.

In 1993, federal agents laid siege to, and ultimately destroyed, a compound occupied by a Christian sect known as the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. Federal agents killed 82 members of the group on April 19, 1993.

On April 19, 1995, Timmothy McVeigh, a white supremacist with ties to various far-right militia groups, and Terry Nichols, an adherent of the sovereign citizen movement, also with ties to far-right militias, bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Field offices of the FBI and a day care center were situated in the Murrah Building. 168 people were killed. McVeigh claimed the bombing to be revenge for the federal government's actions at Ruby Ridge and Waco.

At the time, this kind of homegrown white supremacist right-wing terrorism was not at the forefront of the American psyche-- which apparently preferred to imagine enemies from with-out, rather than within.

In the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, travelers of Middle Eastern origin were detained at a number of airports. Islamic extremist terror group al-Qaida had conducted its bombing of the World Trade Center in February of 1993.

The election of Barack Hussein Obama to the office of president in 2008 saw a resurgence in “Bircher”-type rhetoric and reinvigoration of the American patriot movement.

Following the 2008 election, whispers and proclamations that the nation's first Black president was a secret Islamic Marxist worked their way through the reactionary tide of the Tea Party movement.

“Patriot” militia groups like the Oath Keepers and Three-Percenters (so named for their false belief that only three percent of the American colonial population took up arms to overthrow British rule during the American Revolution) sprang up throughout the nation.

The Oath Keepers, founded by now-convicted January 6 seditionist Stewart Rhodes in 2009, purport to consist of current and former law enforcement and military personnel, and was named after the oath that service members make to “defend the Constitution of the United states against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” [Emphasis mine.]

Both the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters have a long history of anti-Muslim bigotry. These groups, whose members often held, as central tenants, their Christian faith and their fear of Obama as a Trojan Horse of the globalist Islamic Marxist New World Order conspiracy, often found common cause and formed ties with anti-Islam hate groups like Act! For America (founded in 2007).

A number of anti-Islam hate groups, like Act!, had grown out of heightened anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment following the al-Qaida terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

As previously mentioned, Dannels’ associate Lyle Rapacki has a longstanding relationship with militant Christian nationalist Matt Shea [read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series]. The Coalition of Western States (COWS) was founded in 2014. Shea served as the group's chair, and Rapacki as its vice chair.

At the time of COWS' founding, Shea had been serving as a Republican member of the Washington State House of Representatives, since 2009.

Shea is also the organizer of the Spokane chapter of anti-Muslim hate group, Act! For America, and has ties to the white supremacist Christian Identity movement.

COWS grew out of Shea's participation in an armed standoff that occurred in Bunkerville, Nevada in April of 2014.

In this conflict, Shea and Washington State Liberty for All III% (LFA III%) militia leader Anthony Bosworth helped to coalesce the Oath Keepers and a group of around 1,500 members of the nation's growing “patriot”/militia/sovereign citizens movements in an armed standoff against federal agents in Clark County, Nevada. At issue was illegal cattle grazing conducted by the Bundy ranching family on public lands managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management.

A 2015 press release issued by COWS claimed that the group was comprised of more than 50 state legislators and community organizers throughout the western United States, who were “dedicated to stopping federal overreach.”

The press release identified eleven individuals who served as COWS' leadership, alongside chairman Shea and vice chairman Rapacki.

According to the document, Washington LFA III% leader Bosworth had been appointed COWS' northwest “grassroots coordinator.”

The document also listed then-Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem as COWS “Arizona coordinator.”

As previously discussed, Finchem has close ties to Cochise County Recorder and former Arizona state representative David Stevens. In 2018, Finchem and Stevens founded the Election Fairness Institute/Pathway Research and Education (EFI). EFI directors include prominent elections deniers and a 'field organizer' of the John Birch Society.

In addition to Rapacki and Finchem, other Arizona personnel listed on the 2015 COWS press release included then-Greenlee County Supervisor Robert Corbell as COWS' “county elected coordinator.”

LFA III% Arizona leader and White Mountain Militia member Cope Reynolds was listed as COWS' “grassroots coordinator.” Reynolds is currently running as a Republican candidate for sheriff in Apache County.

COWS documentation lists former Graham County Sheriff Richard Mack as the group's “peace officer coordinator.” Mack also served as an early board member of the Oath Keepers and was involved with both that organization and COWS during his participation various armed standoffs.

Mack also has ties to the John Birch Society. He announced an ultimately unsuccessful bid for Congress at a Texas Bircher event in 2011.

In 2010, Mack launched the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA). The organization incorrectly asserts that only county sheriffs hold the authority to determine which laws are constitutional and, therefore, enforceable.

In the vision of the 'constitutional sheriff,' county lawmen are miniature emperors of mini nation-states-- the ultimate arbiters of what government and citizens may, or may not, do-- regardless of what is written in statute, the Bill of Rights, or judicial case law.

In 2022, Mack handed nominal leadership of CSPOA to Sam Bushman, owner of far-right Liberty News Radio. According to other reporting, Bushman and his talk radio company have documented ties to neo-Confederates and white supremacists.

CSPOA currently claims membership of several thousand active law enforcement personnel nationwide.

Both Dannels and Rapacki have ties to Mack.

Dannels was a featured speaker at a 2019 CSPOA event, which also featured Oath Keepers founder (and now-convicted January 6 seditionist) Stewart Rhodes as keynote speaker.

In addition to serving as COWS vice chair alongside COWS “peace officer coordinator” Mack, Rapacki claims to be a founding member of the Oath Keepers, and claims founding membership in CSPOA.

From 2014 through 2016, COWS and their members played roles in various armed standoffs with the federal government, including those involving the Bundy ranching family in Nevada and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.

The occupation and armed standoff with federal authorities at the Malheur National Wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon's Harney County took place over 41 days in January and February of 2016.

In 2012, Harney County ranchers Dwight and Steve Hammond had been convicted of several charges relating to acts of arson they had committed on federal lands in the early 2000's (one of these fires had apparently been set with the intent to conceal the Hammond's illegal slaughter of a herd of deer on federal land).

Following the Hammonds' convictions, the case became a rallying cry for the Bundys, who had become far-right activist celebrities following the 2014 Bunkerville standoff, and various far-right 'patriot'/militia groups.

Though the Hammonds eschewed attention and offers of support from these factions, the various groups laid siege to the wildlife refuge in early 2016. COWS was among them.

COWS, LFA III%, and the various other groups engaging in the standoff at Malheur, demanded that the federal government turn federally-managed lands over to local control.

Though, on the surface, these various confrontations seemed to be stands against federal overreach and protests in favor of individual liberty, there was something more substantive-- and sinister-- beneath the surface.

In 2018, a document authored and distributed by COWS Chairman and Washington State Representative Shea was provided to Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich by a concerned citizen.

The document was titled “The Biblical Basis for War.” In it, Shea provided a detailed roadmap, complete with purported Christian theological basis, for civil war-- the purpose of which would be to replace American secular democracy with Christian theocracy.

“The document Mr. Shea wrote is not a Sunday school project or an academic study,” Knezovich told the Spokane Spokesman-Review. “It is a 'how to' manual consistent with the ideology and operating philosophy of the Christian Identity/Aryan Nations movement and the Redoubt movement of the 1990s.”

The American Redoubt movement is one that seeks to forge a separatist white Christian theological nation in the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain regions. It has seen substantial resurgence in recent years.

Portions of the Pacific Northwest-- particularly eastern Washington State, eastern Oregon, and Idaho-- have served as the nucleus of the American Redoubt and Christian Identity movements (including Aryan Nations and other related violent hate groups) since at least 1974.

In that year, Richard Butler, a devotee of Christian Identity evangelist Wesley Smith, purchased land in Hayden Lake, Idaho with the intent of building his own “Christian Posse Comitatus” compound. This soon morphed into Butler's own Church of Jesus Christ Christian, which soon gave birth to Aryan Nations-- which was meant to serve as the church's political arm.

Aryan Nations is an unabashedly violent white supremacist terrorist organization.

Butler was an early advocate of the Northwest Territorial Imperative, an envisioned white ethnostate that served as forerunner to the current American Redoubt movement.

Knezovich found Shea's call to war sufficiently disturbing to forward it on to the FBI.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of Shea's “Biblical Basis for War” document was his cavalier approach to violence. In the document, Shea asserted that “assassination to remove tyrants is just, not murder.”

Shea went on to say that the enemy in his holy war “must surrender on terms of justice and righteousness” or face dire consequences. To Shea's mind “terms of justice and righteousness” meant that abortion, same-sex marriage, “idolatry or occultism,” and communism, must all be prohibited-- and that the nation “must obey Biblical law.”

“If they yield,” wrote Shea. “[Conquered American citizens] must pay share of work or taxes.”

“If they do not yield -- kill all males.”

By the time the press and public got hold of Shea's “Biblical Basis for War” manifesto, troubling rumblings concerning the Washington state representative had been circulating for some time.

Apparently, the call for holy civil war and the murder of all non-compliant male citizens was a bridge too far for the Washington State House of Representatives, and in July 2019 that legislative body engaged the services of private investigators, Rampart Group LLC, to conduct an investigation into Shea's activities.

In December 2019, Rampart delivered its findings to the Washington State House of Representatives in the form of a 108-page report. The report was based on witness interviews, email communications between Shea and his co-conspirators, and open source intelligence (i.e. social media posts and press reports).

According to the Rampart report, metadata associated with the Shea “Biblical Basis for War” document demonstrated that the file had been created in July 2014, only a few months from the April 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada that had served as the impetus for Shea's creation of COWS.

Shea has a long standing and close relationship with Anne and Barry Byrd, pastors of Marble Country Community Fellowship. In turn, the Byrds had a close relationship with COWS.

According to encrypted email communications obtained by Rampart Group through the course of their investigation, Shea (suing codename “verumbellator”) and Rapacki (codename “excubitor”), along with other COWS members (including LFA III% leaders Bosworth and Reynolds), engaged in planning relating to the armed standoff at Malheur with Anne and Barry Byrd.

In the 1990s, the Byrds founded Marble Country (a fundamentalist Christian 'intentional community') in eastern Washington's Stevens County.

The Byrds have close ties to the white supremacist Christian Identity movement.

Barry Byrd was one of the 14 signatories of the “Remnant Resolves,” a core document of the Christian Identity movement, written in 1988. Anne Byrd's brother, Brad Bulla, was also a signer of the document.

“Remnant Resolves” stated, among other things, that “aborticide” and “sodomy” are “sins against God,” and that “interracial marriage pollutes the integrity of the family.”

The signers of the document further “resolved” to “promote only virtuous and God-fearing men to positions of authority at all levels of Government both religious and civil.”

Rapacki, like the Byrds, makes frequent mention of the “Remnant Church” in his writings. The “Remnant Church,” as described by Rapacki, is a fundamentalist organization meant to mirror the Christian Church of the first century, anno domini, described in the Bible's Book of Acts.

Shea, for his part, has publicly referenced the Byrds as being his spiritual advisors.

At the time the Byrds founded Marble Country, the town of Marble was virtually a ghost town. The marble mining industry from which the town and general area derived its name had long since dried up.

In 2007, Barry Byrd, along with other leaders of Marble Country and other area landowners, founded the private nonprofit corporation, Marble Community Landowner's Association (MCLA). MCLA was essentially an end-run around any democratic process, which sought to create a fundamentalist theocratic society in Marble.

According to court documents, MCLA bylaws stated that it sought to “bring forth in this place an Intentional Biblical Christian Covenant Community, a Holy Commonwealth, for the benefit of Ourselves and our Posterity.”

As stated in court records, in order to obtain this end, Marble Country Community Fellowship was given a perpetual seat on MCLA (a right not extended to any other member property owner), and MCLA sought to “exercise godly dominion over their common resources and to regulate themselves and their property in a manner that establishes liberty and justice and maintains a spirit of Christian unity within her gates.”

Toward this aim, members of MCLA were required to record religious covenants to their property deeds, and agree to certain limitations pertaining to their use of their property, as well as to limitations on the types of persons they may sell, lease, or rent their property to.

MCLA bylaws also stated that they would have the power to own, lease, and maintain the local water utility, and to decide which parcels of property would be provided with access to this water.

In short, according to court records, Marble property owners who recorded religious covenants to their property deeds would be granted water and other infrastructure services (such as road maintenance). Those who did not were denied access.

[Note: MCLA's discriminatory activities were cut short in 2020 through the intervention of the Washington State Attorney General's Office. Several Marble land owners who did not wish to comply with MCLA's theocratic vision had filed complaints with that office.]

According to the Rampart report, it was in 2016-- a time in which Marble Country's miniature Christian Identity-rooted theocratic MCLA “commonwealth” was in full swing-- that Shea, COWS, and the Byrds, began preparing for full-out religious civil war.

According to the Rampart report, Shea held a private meeting in early August 2016. That meeting took place in the same Spokane office building in which his office as Washington state representative was situated.

According to a confidential witness cited by Rampart, the meeting had at least thirty attendees. Among them were numerous COWS members, both known and unknown to the witness. These included Washington LFA III% leader Bosworth, Idaho State Representative Heather Scott, and Nevada State Assemblywoman Michelle Fiore.

Also present were Marble Country Community Fellowship pastors Anne and Barry Byrd.

Apparently, COWS, the Byrds, and other far-right militant groups, feared that federal reprisals for the Malheur standoff, which had taken place in January and February of that year, were imminent. As such, they reasoned, the time for holy war was upon them.

Rampart Group investigators alleged that in the months leading up to this meeting, Shea and other COWS members-- along with LFA III% leaders, members of various “patriot”/militia/American Redoubt groups, and at least one representative of the John Birch Society-- had taken part in activities the Byrd's Marble Country Community Fellowship compound, meant to promote the call for holy civil war and to train combatants (including youth tactical training).

According to the Rampart report, the August 2016 Spokane meeting had been called by Shea for the purpose of planning for the creation of a “provisional government.”

At the meeting, Shea distributed a number of packets to attendees. These contained the “Biblical Basis for War” manifesto, along with documents detailing survivalist tactics, the use of encrypted communications, the use of various weapons, and a “recipe for Tannerite based explosives.”

The packets also contained another document, titled “Restoration.” This document apparently outlined Shea's vision for the theocratic government that would replace our existing systems of governance following the holy war.

According to the Rampart report, key points of “Restoration” were as follows:

Establishment of a militia-based military; the termination of all local law enforcement; “liaison with gangs who have honor”; the establishment of “patriot banks”; repealing all taxes and all non-criminal laws and regulations; the decentralization of government services, such as education and healthcare; the transfer of public lands to private homesteaders; a final settlement with Indian tribes to become part of the state; a revision of the existing U.S. Constitution to sanctify Jesus Christ; bans on all abortions and euthanasia; and capital punishment for murder, rape, molestation, bestiality, kidnappings, adultery, treason, and sodomy.

Such is the American theocratic Christian state envisioned by Shea, COWS, and the Byrds.

[Note: Rapacki's involvement in COWS during the summer of 2016 is not known; the Rampart Group report makes no mention of him beyond the January 2016 “excubitor” Malheur Shea/Byrd/et al. emails. However, Rampart analysis of metadata associated with the “Biblical Basis for War” manifesto demonstrated that the document had been created around the time of COWS' creation, in July 2014.]

Rapacki did not respond to written questions from CRN pertaining to his involvement in COWS during the summer of 2016, the “Biblical Basis for War” or “Restoration” documents/meetings, or the nature of his relationships with Shea or the Byrds.

To recap: Cochise County Sheriff Dannels has demonstrably close ties to COWS Vice Chairman Lyle Rapacki. According to public statements made by both Rapacki and Dannels, the two men have known each other since about 2011.

Dannels also has demonstrable ties to COWS “peace officer coordinator,” CSPOA founder, and former Graham County Sheriff Richard Mack.

Cochise County Recorder Stevens has close ties to COWS “Arizona coordinator” Mark Finchem.

COWS Southwest “grassroots coordinator” and Arizona LFA III% leader, Cope Reynolds, is currently running for sheriff in Apache County.

Though Rampart Group, in its report to the Washington State House of Representatives, concluded that COWS Chairman Shea had “participated in an act of domestic terrorism against the United States by his actions before and during the armed takeover and standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge,” neither Shea or any of COWS leadership have been criminally charged in connection to this event.

In 2020, Shea chose not to seek another term in the Washington State House of Representatives.

In 2021, Shea incorporated On Fire Ministries & Kingdom Christian Academy in Spokane. He currently serves there as a senior pastor.

Beau Hodai, Cochise Regional News— February 17, 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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