A member of the Oath Keepers, the far-right militia group that attempted earlier this year to stage a Bundy-style standoff with the Bureau of Land Management at a goldmine in Oregon, suggested in an interview with radio host Pete Santilli last week that the county sheriff should have “deputized” the Oath Keepers to stand against federal authorities in the mine dispute.

Scott Hicks, a member of the local Oath Keepers chapter and a leader of the Sugar Pine Mine effort, lamented to Santilli that the county sheriff had not joined their cause as a “constitutional sheriff,” a county sheriff who considers his or her authority to be superior to the authority of federal laws and federal agents.

Hicks told Santilli that since the county sheriff is “the one that has the highest law here,” he should have been “deputizing” the Oath Keepers to protect the gold mine from federal authorities. The county’s former sheriff, he said, is “a constitutional sheriff,” and “his words were, ‘You know, if I would have been in office I would have deputized every single one of you guys so you could do the job.’ If they didn’t have enough people to do the job, hey, deputize the ones that are willing to do it.”