The rightwing Claremont Institute will present its 2023 Sheriff Award to the California sheriff Chad Bianco, a former member of two far-right “patriot movement” groups, and whose Riverside county department (RCSD) has been branded a “disaster” by local media amid criminal allegations and a state investigation into death rates in its jail.
Bianco’s award will be presented by the former attorney general Jeff Sessions, who served in the Trump administration, just before the commencement of Claremont’s 2023 Sheriffs Fellowship – a secretive annual program that experts say coaches law enforcement officers in far-right “constitutional sheriff” ideology, which posits that their authority overrides that of the federal US government.
