SECRET RECORDINGS FROM INSIDE CHILD PREDATOR STING ☭ ALLEGES TO SHOW POLICE 'IGNORING LAWS&#[1

⁣What happens when you give people with bizarre conspiracy theories a gun and a badge? Secret recordings from inside the troubled Millersville Police Department provide a sobering answer

Millersville cops team up with so-called pedophile hunter who blames 'satanic cult masquerading as Jews'

Town's conspiracy cop warns about "kids that are actively being smuggled, being chained to walls, that are being raped." Yet, conspiracy theorists can produce no photos or videos as evidence

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — An exclusive NewsChannel 5 investigation has now discovered the man who has helped to fuel some of the wild conspiracy theories inside the troubled Millersville Police Department.

That man, our investigation discovered, is a self-proclaimed pedophile hunter from Tucson who believes America is controlled by what he calls "a satanic cult masquerading as Jews."

And, like some of the Millersville cops, Craig "Sawman" Sawyer has a history of seeing conspiracies where there are none.

Watch full investigation on NewsChannel 5 at 6 p.m.

"Some of the information we're dealing with right now, it has to do with kids that are actively being smuggled, being chained to walls, that are being raped," said Shawn Taylor, the conspiracy theorist who was later hired as the assistant police chief in Millersville, a community of about 6,000 just north of Nashville.

After years of voicing some bizarre conspiracy theories, Taylor decided back in May to gather a group of like-minded MAGA activists to run a child sex-predator sting.

That group was led by Craig Sawyer.

"My name is Saw. I'm a Navy SEAL. Defending the innocent is my trade," Sawyer said in the 2013 introduction to an episode of Animal Planet's "Rhino Wars."

After his military service, Sawyer found a new career playing the hero on television's Rhino Wars and in a handful of sniper-related TV shows.

His next move: making a film about going after the pedophile rings he imagined his team of veterans would find on the southern border.

"I know that for this kind of work — especially dealing with cartels — I'd need a team of guys I could depend upon for high-threat security," Sawyer said in the "Contraland" movie.

"So I put together what I call the VIPR team: Veterans Interdicting Pedophile Rings."

Sawyer would also create a nonprofit group, Veterans for Child Rescue, although there's no evidence the group ever rescued any children — and the film doesn't show them actually interdicting any pedophile rings at the border.

Then in 2018 while filming "Contraland," Sawyer led local TV crews in Tucson to an encampment that he and his documentary team thought might have been their big break.

"What we found was a tree that looks like a rape tree back over here," the former NAVY Seal said. Showing a piece of wood nailed to a tree, Sawyer declared. "This may have been a place where a child was made to hold onto this."

Sawyer — who also portrays himself as a trained federal investigator — breathlessly reported his group's stunning conclusion.

"They're telling me this looks like a child rape camp," he said, letting out a big sigh. "That's what they're telling me."

In fact, Tucson Police reported there was no evidence it was anything but a homeless camp.

Still, as the local newspaper reported, the lack of evidence did not stamp out the flames of a sex-trafficking conspiracy theory that had caught fire.

These days, Sawyer continues to push his conspiracy theories on far-right podcasts, including unproven claims about planeloads of children being flown into the U.S. by sex traffickers — which is what he says brought him to Middle Tennessee back in May.

"And one of those locations is near Nashville, Tennessee, that they are flying the children into," Sawyer claimed. "So there's a lot of child trafficking around Nashville."

In fact, Nashville police say they have never had any reason to believe that such flights actually exist.

Of course, like with most conspiracy theories, Craig Sawyer with his hotshot Navy SEAL and law enforcement credentials has never actually produced any evidence. There are no photos or videos of planes, nor of children in cages.

But he does have a video camera where he makes the most outlandish of claims, soliciting donations in the name of combating child sex trafficking.

"In the almost four years that I worked with Veterans for Child Rescue, I'm not aware that they ever actually combated child trafficking — now, therein lies my actual concern," said former Sawyer associate Kim Kelley.

Kelley said, that as a child trafficking survivor herself, she came to the group hoping to make a difference.

What she found instead was what she calls "performance activism," tagging along with law enforcement as they conduct child predator stings — which was the plan in Millersville.

"Catching pedophiles on the internet, that's a worthy cause but that's not the same thing as child sex trafficking," Kelley said.

"Those are two separate things. You can try to coordinate that, but it's not necessarily so."

Online, Sawyer spouts all sorts of bizarre conspiracy theories about a secretive organization, or cabal, engaged in the "torture, rape, organ harvesting and ritual murder" of children, decrying the "Satanic pedos" who "run America."

He also believes Taylor Swift may have "sold her soul" and "the children are her target."

"This whole picture that he's painted of this whole leftist cabal and all of these things, I see them as sort of trigger words or the narrative that he's painting because his followers like to believe that story," Kelley said.

In fact, we discovered that Sawyer announced the creation of Veterans for Child Rescue in 2017 on Alex Jones' show on InfoWars.

"A lot of these pedophiles are very connected. They’re very wealthy, and they own a lot of the media. And things just get swept under the rug," Sawyer told Jones.

He later announced that Jones — the notorious conspiracy theorist who had mocked the murder of innocent children at Sandy Hook — had written a $100,000 check for the cause.

More recently, the former Navy SEAL has given credit for supporting his organization to the Rev. Sean Moon, head of the gun-loving Rod of Iron Ministries, now based in East Tennessee.

Sean Moon believes his father was a new Messiah and that his father chose him as his successor. Sean Moon's crown is a crown of bullets — and he views himself as ruling over a kingdom that will come to rule the Earth.

NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Kelley about the relationship with Moon, "So Craig viewed it as it's a source of money?"

"Right, they literally were saying we would take money from the devil if we could use it to protect children," Kelley answered.

"Again, my problem is they are not actually protecting children with that money. But knowingly associating with a known cult, a very notorious cult, like you can't play stupid that hard to pretend like you don't know."

And Sawyer continues to court the MAGA crowd.

Then, when I began to investigate his friend Shawn Taylor, the Sawman decided to train his sights on me, texting his team, "It seems like a pretty radical, overly-aggressive & desperate effort to stop Shawn from disrupting the cabal in TN."

Sawyer then returned to InfoWars, labeling me a "Pedophile Protector."

There, and on other far-right platforms, he leveled all sorts of bizarre accusations: "It doesn't make any sense on the surface unless there's a criminal network or a pedophilia aspect that Williams is desperate to protect."

"They go on this whole rant with, it's a false premise," Kim Kelley said.

I wanted to know, "Do you think he really believes that?"

"Oof!" she exclaimed. "It's hard for me to understand the mind of a conspiracy theorist because I think a lot of times they get more attention for perpetuating those beliefs and they know what revs people up or gives their followers clickbait to be excited about."

And that's why Kim Kelley argues that people who are driven by conspiracy theories, rather than facts, are distracting from the real problems of human trafficking.

"I look at that as exploiting the problem or profiting off of the problem, which I think makes you part of the problem."

We wanted to give Mr. Sawyer a chance to respond to the findings of our investigation. But, instead of talking to me, he went on a podcast run by another conspiracy theorist to respond.

Tuesday at 6 p.m., we'll take a look at that interview — and show what it reveals about the twisted mind of a conspiracy theorist.

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