Oregon sheriff in charge of massacre response once posted Sandy Hook conspiracy video

A month after 20 children and six staff members were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin wrote this Jan. 13, 2013, letter to Vice President Joe Biden. It it, Hanlin threatened to obstruct federal agents if they attempted to enforce new gun laws in his jurisdiction. less A month after 20 children and six staff members were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin wrote this Jan. 13, 2013, letter to Vice President Joe Biden. It it, Hanlin threatened to ... more Image 1 of / 70 Caption Close Oregon sheriff in charge of massacre response once posted Sandy Hook conspiracy video 1 / 70 Back to Gallery

Douglas County (Oregon) Sheriff John Hanlin, lead investigator of the Umpqua Community College mass shooting, posted a Facebook link to the YouTube conspiracy video, "The Sandy Hook Shooting: Fully Exposed," about a month after the massacre of 20 first graders and six adults at a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school.

"This makes me wonder who can we trust any more," Hanlin wrote in the January 2013 post. "Watch, listen and keep an open mind."

The conspiracy video is introduced in seemingly rational terms, with the words: "In this video I will prove to you there has been a lot of deception around the Sandy Hook shooting. This is a simple logical video. No aliens, holigrams (sic), rituals or anything like that. Just facts."

The "facts" include raising questions about whether there was a shooter other than Adam Lanza, and hinted that grieving parents of the first graders were really crisis actors. It has been viewed more than 11 million times but has been debunked even by Glenn Beck's website, TheBlaze.

The link on Sheriff Hanlin's Facebook page was deleted or made private sometime Friday afternoon.

Still, the Facebook page contains plenty of gun-activist jargon. A sample: "Remember when the Colonists stood in line to register their muskets ... me either."

Two days after posting a link to the conspiracy video, Sheriff Hanlin wrote a letter to Vice President Joe Biden, much publicized at the time and now, vowing not to enforce any gun-safety law that he deemed to be unconstitutional.

"Gun control is NOT the answer to preventing heinous crimes like school shootings," he wrote Biden. "Any actions against, or in disregard for our United States Constitution or Second Amendment rights by the current administration, would be irresponsible and an indisputable insult to the American people."

"The United States Supreme Court has ruled that when a sheriff chooses to enforce an unconstitutional directive, he is violating his Constitutional Oath. I will NOT violate my Constitutional Oath.

"Therefore, the second purpose of this letter is to make notification that any federal regulation enacted by Congress or by executive order of the President offending the Constitutional rights of my citizens shall not be enforced by me or my deputies, nor will I permit enforcement of any unconstitutional regulations or orders by federal officers within the borders of Douglas County, Oregon."

The sheriff's letter echoes some of the extreme rhetoric heard at the Washington state Capitol last December, after the state's voters passed an initiative requiring criminal background checks for those purchasing firearms at gun shows and online.

The letter to Biden was riddled with language of a group called Oath Keepers, part of the so-called "patriot movement" that encourages law enforcement officers and military personnel not to obey laws or orders that they deem unconstitutional.

Sheriff Hanlin has testified before the Oregon Legislature against background-check legislation, saying: "This (proposed) law is not going to protect the citizens of Oregon in that it is going to keep guns out of the hands of criminals."

Instead, he argued, it would "create criminals" out of "our most ordinary, normal, law-abiding citizens."