Butler County sheriff’s offer to help celebrities leave U.S. if Trump is reelected goes viral: ‘I’ll even help them pack’

CINCINNATI (FOX19) - An outspoken local sheriff’s offer to pack for celebrities declaring they will leave the U.S. if President Donald Trump is re-elected is going viral.

“This happened in 2016 and it is believed not one celebrity left then and it appears the same threats are being made this election year," Sheriff Richard Jones said in a news release earlier this week.

He added that he "would like to extend an invitation to put money towards a one-way ticket for any celebrity that would like to leave the country this time around if President Trump is reelected.”

“Hell," he said, “I’ll even help them pack.”

In a video posted to his Facebook page that drew 189,000 views, the sheriff said: “These are mostly the same people who don’t like police, that doesn’t like first responders. I hope you do leave.”

Several celebrities including Bruce Springsteen and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee have said they plan to leave he country if Trump wins.

Jones is chairman of Trump’s re-election campaign locally and introduced him at a 2016 rally in West Chester Township just before the election.

The story has been picked up in the U.K. by the Daily Mail and the veteran law enforcement official is starting to make the national talk show rounds, appearing early Friday on Fox & Friends.

The cigar-chomping sheriff with framed pictures of John Wayne and a saddle in his office has made national headlines over the years with a series of controversial statements.

Most recently, in September, Jones sent out a news release after a chase involving several local law enforcement officials including his deputies pursuing a Hamilton homicide suspect resulted in a shootout that wounded a Middletown officer.

The sheriff warned people who he says “abuse police” that if “you shoot at police, expect us to shoot back.”

“I will not allow my deputies or any law enforcement officer in Butler County to take the abuse I have seen over the past several months,” he said.

‘You shoot at police, expect us to shoot back,’ Butler Co. Sheriff says

Earlier this year, he was the first law enforcement official locally if not nationally to publicly declare he was not going to enforce a mask mandate or have his deputies stop people and tell them to put their mask on amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s out of control and if people want to wear a mask then they should be able to wear a mask and if not they shouldn’t,” he said.

The Butler County Sheriff’s Office also is the only southwestern Ohio sheriff’s office whose deputies do not use Narcan.

“'I’ve seen reports to where people have been Narcaned 20 times,” he has told FOX19 NOW.

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