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Colorado Undersheriff: DHS told police to monitor "people who take The Bible literally"

April 12, 2013
Wilson

Writer

Earlier this week, Glenn told audiences about the undersheriff in Colorado who claimed that the Department of Homeland Security was teaching police in his state to look at Christians who interpret The Bible literally, believe America was founded on Godly principles, or are "fundamentalists" as potential members of the sovereign citizen movement. Today, Glenn interviewed that undersheriff, Ron Trowbridge, about exactly what he saw during the training session and why he decided to speak up.

Transcript of the interview is below:

GLENN: Okay. I want to go to Prowers County, the Colorado undersheriff Ron Trowbridge. Last Monday he attended a Colorado State Patrol training session and they were warned by the State police to watch out for sovereign citizens and Christians who take the Bible literally or say that America was founded on Godly principles, and fundamentalists because they're trouble.

Ron is with us now. I'm sure this caused a firestorm in Colorado. Again, the undersheriff from Prower County ‑‑ Prowers County, Colorado. Welcome to the program, Ron.

TROWBRIDGE: Thank you, Mr. Beck.

GLENN: Thank you. First of all, thank you for having the guts to actually expose this. Because I have to believe at some point you thought that yourself or maybe you talked to your wife and said, "This could turn out ugly for me; do I say anything."

TROWBRIDGE: Yeah, I did. You know, it offended me greatly at the time. It took me back so much, I just ‑‑ I just went back to the office right away. I regret that I should have said something there at the time, but it stuck with me, it stewed with me and ‑‑ but I ‑‑ you know, I teach to my kids, I teach to our people that we're to do the right thing no matter what the cost, and I think this is the right thing. I think they need to know.

GLENN: Okay. So here is the statement from the Colorado State control: Law enforcement training class offered by a Colorado State control April 1st, Southeastern Colorado has come under scrutiny from one of its attendees, blah, blah‑blah. Baker, the guy who was teaching it, Baker's statement went on to note that the officials had spoken with several officers who attended the same training ‑‑ I'm sorry. It was not Baker. This is ‑‑ Baker is the ‑‑

TROWBRIDGE: Kluczynski.

GLENN: Yeah, and Baker is the guy who was the Colorado State patrol sergeant that released this thing.

Baker's statement went on to note that officials had spoken with several officers ‑‑ I'm quoting ‑‑ who attended the same training and they did not interpret the comments delivered by Kluczynski in the same manor as the undersheriff. We regret that he misinterpreted the training material in a way that is clearly not the position of the Colorado State Patrol.

TROWBRIDGE: Well, I don't know how you misinterpret those who believe the country was established on Godly principles, those who believe the Bible is literal, those who take it too serious, I don't know how you misinterpret that. I am one of those people.

GLENN: Okay.

PAT: And that was the statement was that he said that those who interpret the Bible literally are dangerous, are extremists or ‑‑

TROWBRIDGE: Well, you know, he didn't say "dangerous." What he was trying to do was show that, hey, these people tend to gravitate towards this sovereign citizen movement and they're potentially ‑‑

GLENN: Tell me what a sovereign ‑‑ tell me what a sovereign citizen is.

TROWBRIDGE: Well, there's no direct definition for them, but generally they're people who, they like to dodge their responsibility for debt, for ‑‑ they don't pay taxes, they don't recognize laws when it concerns them. They often use the court system to bully those who stand in their way.

GLENN: Extraordinarily anti‑police as well.

TROWBRIDGE: Oh, absolutely, yes.

GLENN: Right. Stu, correct me if I'm wrong, but the sovereign citizen is the movement that I came out, this was right maybe even before the Occupy Wall Street and I said this movement is going to happen from the left and here, look at this movement because this is extraordinarily anti‑police. And weren't they saying that they were going to build bombs and blow up police stations?

STU: Yeah, you're talking about a specific militia group ‑‑

GLENN: I think it ‑‑

STU: ‑‑ that was related to this, yeah. But that's correct.

GLENN: Okay. So now he's talking about this and this group is a threat and ‑‑

TROWBRIDGE: Yes.

GLENN: And so he's talking about this and so then how did he get from those guys to Christians?

TROWBRIDGE: Well, see, he ‑‑ he never really described those guys and that's what angered me so much. I get the point that many people hide behind the banner of Christianity while they preach anything but Christianity. And had he explained that clearly, well, yeah, no problem. But he never really got there. He explained it as simply, just as I described, those people who take the Bible literally. He never really went into any depth on it.

GLENN: All right. So I take the Bible literally as well. Are you, are you telling me then that he said that they were sovereign citizens or they should be watched, or how, what ‑‑

TROWBRIDGE: Well, he wasn't saying that they were necessarily sovereign citizens, although several of the people kind of laughed about that saying, "Yeah, I guess I'm a sovereign citizen then." But what he was saying was that these people have leanings towards sovereign citizen ideology. And he described it as, you know, a chunk of icebergs is what I'm trying to think of in the ocean and the big portion of it is underwater and that's where these groups tend to be. They're kind of, they're legal, and he emphasized that they have the right to their opinion, but that when something ‑‑ something may happen that might spur them on to illegal behavior.

GLENN: Okay.

TROWBRIDGE: And so he kind of lumped us all together.

GLENN: You talked to ‑‑ when you released this, what has the blowback been? What's happened since?

TROWBRIDGE: Well, you know, I've ‑‑ I got a lot of support from several people around the country, and I certainly appreciated that. I don't mind telling you I'm scared to death and ‑‑ not for myself but ‑‑ I'm not worried, but really about, did I do the right thing or not. And I spent many sleepless nights wondering about that. I ‑‑

GLENN: Why do you question it?

TROWBRIDGE: Well, you know, because unfortunately there are those who took that opportunity, who took my statements to make threats and attack the troopers at the state patrol. And I think that was wrong because they're good people. They ‑‑ many of them believe just like I do. They've got a tough job to do and they're trying to do it and ‑‑

GLENN: Well, I don't think this is about anybody ‑‑

TROWBRIDGE: ‑‑ they don't deserve that.

GLENN: Maybe I'm the only one that read it this way, Ron, but I think this is only about the guy who made that statement, and he's leaving the State Patrol to go to the Department of Homeland Security.

TROWBRIDGE: That's the way intended it to be.

GLENN: Right. And that's the way I at least read it. I mean, am I alone in that? I don't see this as something against the state troopers. I see this as a guy who is packing his bags. I mean, isn't he ‑‑ is he now no longer part of the state patrol?

TROWBRIDGE: Yeah, he said at the class. He at the beginning of the class he said, I'm going to the Homeland ‑‑ Department of Homeland Security. Friday is his last day and this is his last hoorah.

GLENN: So your sheriffs have kind of rallied around you, have they not?

TROWBRIDGE: Yes, he has. The sheriff's been very supportive.

GLENN: But I mean the sheriffs around Colorado, in Colorado, have they not all kind of ‑‑ isn't there a group of you that are kind of standing together?

TROWBRIDGE: Well, I don't know. I think that's probably too strong of a statement.

GLENN: Okay.

TROWBRIDGE: I think they're not sure about my stand or why I'm making the stand. I think that's why so many in that class, why they just don't get it, why ‑‑ what I'm bothered about, why this upset me. So there have been some who have called and the sheriff spoke to them. I did ‑‑ I spoke to one and he seemed supportive but I can't really say that for sure.

GLENN: I have to tell you, Ron, there's a lot of people that would say things like this and try to become famous or they try to have their, you know, their five minutes of fame or they would try to become more powerful or anything else. I sense from you that you are an extremely reflective man, a decent man who, you are reluctantly saying this, you feel compelled to say it. I think that's honorable, Ron. Have you heard from any of the state control?

TROWBRIDGE: Yes, I have. I spoke to Major Copley. I've known Major Copley for several years. He tried to reassure me that the way I took the class was not the way it was intended to be taught.

GLENN: See, I got a problem with this. I mean, I'm sure you know him, and I'm not saying ‑‑ I am a huge supporter of our police, I am a huge supporter of our state patrol. I have been ‑‑ when Pat and I worked together 30 years ago in Baltimore, Maryland when they were just shooting at the state patrol on the highways as they ‑‑ I mean, it was bad. I have been a ‑‑ I would never want to do any of your jobs and I have tremendous respect for you. With that being ‑‑

TROWBRIDGE: Well, I've got to tell you I would rather go into a big bar fight than deal with this again.

GLENN: Well, I know. I will tell you that ‑‑ and that's what they want you to learn, by the way, Ron. I will tell you that what bothers me about this is it's one thing to say, you know, "Well, I'm sorry for the misinterpretation" because that's not really ‑‑ I mean, if he said those things, what they should have said is, "That's not our policy." If, you know, "We've discussed it with him and he said that wasn't his meaning, we're sorry for the misinterpretation but we want to make it extraordinarily clear we disagree with those things," and I ‑‑ I guess I kind of see this. You know, "We regret that he misrepresented the training material in a way that clearly is not the position of the Colorado State patrol." Are they talking about you, or are they talking about Kluczynski on that line? Do you know?

TROWBRIDGE: Well, I'm not sure about that. Other statements, of course, are that nobody else in the class took it the way I took it and so I tend to believe they're referring to me on that.

GLENN: Do you know if anybody else took it that way? I'm not asking for names or any ‑‑ pardon me? You didn't talk to anybody else?

TROWBRIDGE: I'm sorry? I ‑‑ you know, I have not talked to them about it really and, you know, I'll make my stand where I need to make it. I think that assume look at it as a battle not worth fighting. Some, I think many look at that as ‑‑ and think that, "You know what? I don't see the problem with it." So I think that I probably stand alone in the group.

GLENN: Ron, when you're you standing up for the truth, there is nothing that at the end of the day is more honorable than standing alone, and I congratulate you for it and I wish you well, and we will keep you in our prayers as we will all of the sheriffs around the country, all the state control and all the police as well as we head into turbulent times in our nation. God bless you.

TROWBRIDGE: Thank you.

GLENN: Thank you very much.

This is the kind of guy who is ‑‑ we need more of. I wish I would have handled my career that way for a longer period of time.

Patriotic uprising—Why 90% say Old Glory isn’t just another flag

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

In a nation where the Stars and Stripes symbolize the blood-soaked sacrifices of our heroes, President Trump's executive order to crack down on flag desecration amid violent protests has ignited fierce debate. But in a recent poll, Glenn asked the tough question: Can Trump protect the Flag without TRAMPLING free speech? Glenn asked, and you answered—thousands weighed in on this pressing clash between free speech and sacred symbols.

The results paint a picture of resounding distrust toward institutional leniency. A staggering 85% of respondents support banning the burning of American flags when it incites violence or disturbs the peace, a bold rejection of the chaos we've seen from George Floyd riots to pro-Palestinian torchings. Meanwhile, 90% insist that protections for burning other flags—like Pride or foreign banners—should not be treated the same as Old Glory under the First Amendment, exposing the hypocrisy in equating our nation's emblem with fleeting symbols. And 82% believe the Supreme Court's Texas v. Johnson ruling, shielding flag burning as "symbolic speech," should not stand without revision—can the official story survive such resounding doubt from everyday Americans weary of government inaction?

Your verdict sends a thunderous message: In this divided era, the flag demands defense against those who exploit freedoms to sow disorder, without trampling the liberties it represents. It's a catastrophic failure of the establishment to ignore this groundswell.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

Labor Day EXPOSED: The Marxist roots you weren’t told about

JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Contributor | Getty Images

During your time off this holiday, remember the man who started it: Peter J. McGuire, a racist Marxist who co-founded America’s first socialist party.

Labor Day didn’t begin as a noble tribute to American workers. It began as a negotiation with ideological terrorists.

In the late 1800s, factory and mine conditions were brutal. Workers endured 12-to-15-hour days, often seven days a week, in filthy, dangerous environments. Wages were low, injuries went uncompensated, and benefits didn’t exist. Out of desperation, Americans turned to labor unions. Basic protections had to be fought for because none were guaranteed.

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

That era marked a seismic shift — much like today. The Industrial Revolution, like our current digital and political upheaval, left millions behind. And wherever people get left behind, Marxists see an opening.

A revolutionary wedge

This was Marxism’s moment.

Economic suffering created fertile ground for revolutionary agitation. Marxists, socialists, and anarchists stepped in to stoke class resentment. Their goal was to turn the downtrodden into a revolutionary class, tear down the existing system, and redistribute wealth by force.

Among the most influential agitators was Peter J. McGuire, a devout Irish Marxist from New York. In 1874, he co-founded the Social Democratic Workingmens Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States. He was also a vice president of the American Federation of Labor, which would become the most powerful union in America.

McGuire’s mission wasn’t hidden. He wanted to transform the U.S. into a socialist nation through labor unions.

That mission soon found a useful symbol.

In the 1880s, labor leaders in Toronto invited McGuire to attend their annual labor festival. Inspired, he returned to New York and launched a similar parade on Sept. 5 — chosen because it fell halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

The first parade drew over 30,000 marchers who skipped work to hear speeches about eight-hour workdays and the alleged promise of Marxism. The parade caught on across the country.

Negotiating with radicals

By 1894, Labor Day had been adopted by 30 states. But the federal government had yet to make it a national holiday. A major strike changed everything.

In Pullman, Illinois, home of the Pullman railroad car company, tensions exploded. The economy tanked. George Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages for those who remained — yet refused to lower the rent on company-owned homes.

That injustice opened the door for Marxist agitators to mobilize.

Sympathetic railroad workers joined the strike. Riots broke out. Hundreds of railcars were torched. Mail service was disrupted. The nation’s rail system ground to a halt.

President Grover Cleveland — under pressure in a midterm election year — panicked. He sent 12,000 federal troops to Chicago. Two strikers were killed in the resulting clashes.

With the crisis spiraling and Democrats desperate to avoid political fallout, Cleveland struck a deal. Within six days of breaking the strike, Congress rushed through legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday.

It was the first of many concessions Democrats would make to organized labor in exchange for political power.

What we really celebrated

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

Kean Collection / Staff | Getty Images

What we celebrated was a Canadian idea, brought to America by the founder of the American Socialist Party, endorsed by racially exclusionary unions, and made law by a president and Congress eager to save face.

It was the first of many bones thrown by the Democratic Party to union power brokers. And it marked the beginning of a long, costly compromise with ideologues who wanted to dismantle the American way of life — from the inside out.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Durham annex EXPOSES Soros, Pentagon ties to Deep State machine

ullstein bild Dtl. / Contributor | Getty Images

The Durham annex and ODNI report documents expose a vast network of funders and fixers — from Soros’ Open Society Foundations to the Pentagon.

In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Architects and operatives

At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

The funding networks behind the machine

The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Federal funding pipelines

Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

Not just domestic — but global

What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network's architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The truth behind ‘defense’: How America was rebranded for war

PAUL J. RICHARDS / Staff | Getty Images

Donald Trump emphasizes peace through strength, reminding the world that the United States is willing to fight to win. That’s beyond ‘defense.’

President Donald Trump made headlines this week by signaling a rebrand of the Defense Department — restoring its original name, the Department of War.

At first, I was skeptical. “Defense” suggests restraint, a principle I consider vital to U.S. foreign policy. “War” suggests aggression. But for the first 158 years of the republic, that was the honest name: the Department of War.

A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

The founders never intended a permanent standing army. When conflict came — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the trenches of France, the beaches of Normandy — the nation called men to arms, fought, and then sent them home. Each campaign was temporary, targeted, and necessary.

From ‘war’ to ‘military-industrial complex’

Everything changed in 1947. President Harry Truman — facing the new reality of nuclear weapons, global tension, and two world wars within 20 years — established a full-time military and rebranded the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Americans resisted; we had never wanted a permanent army. But Truman convinced the country it was necessary.

Was the name change an early form of political correctness? A way to soften America’s image as a global aggressor? Or was it simply practical? Regardless, the move created a permanent, professional military. But it also set the stage for something Truman’s successor, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, famously warned about: the military-industrial complex.

Ike, the five-star general who commanded Allied forces in World War II and stormed Normandy, delivered a harrowing warning during his farewell address: The military-industrial complex would grow powerful. Left unchecked, it could influence policy and push the nation toward unnecessary wars.

And that’s exactly what happened. The Department of Defense, with its full-time and permanent army, began spending like there was no tomorrow. Weapons were developed, deployed, and sometimes used simply to justify their existence.

Peace through strength

When Donald Trump said this week, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too,” some people freaked out. They called him a warmonger. He isn’t. Trump is channeling a principle older than him: peace through strength. Ronald Reagan preached it; Trump is taking it a step further.

Just this week, Trump also suggested limiting nuclear missiles — hardly the considerations of a warmonger — echoing Reagan, who wanted to remove missiles from silos while keeping them deployable on planes.

The seemingly contradictory move of Trump calling for a Department of War sends a clear message: He wants Americans to recognize that our military exists not just for defense, but to project power when necessary.

Trump has pointed to something critically important: The best way to prevent war is to have a leader who knows exactly who he is and what he will do. Trump signals strength, deterrence, and resolve. You want to negotiate? Great. You don’t? Then we’ll finish the fight decisively.

That’s why the world listens to us. That’s why nations come to the table — not because Trump is reckless, but because he means what he says and says what he means. Peace under weakness invites aggression. Peace under strength commands respect.

Trump is the most anti-war president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter. But unlike Carter, Trump isn’t weak. Carter’s indecision emboldened enemies and made the world less safe. Trump’s strength makes the country stronger. He believes in peace as much as any president. But he knows peace requires readiness for war.

Names matter

When we think of “defense,” we imagine cybersecurity, spy programs, and missile shields. But when we think of “war,” we recall its harsh reality: death, destruction, and national survival. Trump is reminding us what the Department of Defense is really for: war. Not nation-building, not diplomacy disguised as military action, not endless training missions. War — full stop.

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Names matter. Words matter. They shape identity and character. A Department of Defense implies passivity, a posture of reaction. A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

So yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’m for the rebranding to the Department of War. It shows strength to the world. It reminds Americans, internally and externally, of the reality we face. The Department of Defense can no longer be a euphemism. Our military exists for war — not without deterrence, but not without strength either. And we need to stop deluding ourselves.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.