Per the AP, Republican Swain County, North Carolina Sheriff Curtis Cochran tendered his resignation last week, days after he was arrested on two counts of oppression in office and one count of abusive sexual contact over two separate incidents considerably more fucked up than the statutes would imply. A June 27th Smoky Mountain News story on the charges – brought under Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians tribal law – are a red flag that the incidents were part of a pattern and just the times that Cochran, 72, got caught trying to diddle poor, young Indigenous women.

An affidavit from the first victim says she accepted a ride from Cochran after a fight with her boyfriend on the side of a road, which she regretted right away. “Curtis immediately took my left pinky and began rubbing it against his polo shirt as we were going by the sand bluff. By the time we got to Jenkins Grocery, Curtis began rubbing and squeezing my left breast with his right hand. When Curtis rubbed my left breast, he commented that my breast did not feel real and said, ‘show me.’ I did not show him my breast. I was wearing a camisole and Curtis tried to put his hand under my shirt through the neckline of my top. I would estimate his fingers went several inches into the top of my shirt. I pushed his hand away and told him that I didn’t like that,” the woman wrote.

Cochran, first elected in 2006, then propositioned the woman for oral sex, which she refused, whipped his cock out and began stroking it, but then dropped her off without further incident, asking her to keep it a secret. Days later on June 23rd, while the Cherokee cops were “investigating the first report of sexual assault, Assistant Chief Josh Taylor observed a silver unmarked Dodge Durango SUV matching the Sheriff’s law enforcement vehicle on the Boundary driving suspiciously at approximately 16:10 (4:10 pm) near the Cherokee Indian Police Department,” per a removal petition by local District Attorney Ashely Welch. Taylor then followed the vehicle, which was trying to elude him at first before Taylor caught up and initiated the stop. Cochran was behind the wheel but not alone: “A female was found to be in the car with him who had just been released from the Cherokee Indian Police Department jail.” The tribal cops let them go but followed Cochran to a store where the woman got out and went inside as Cochran drove off and quickly left the area.

“Law enforcement approached [the woman] inside the Catamount Travel Center store and observed that she was visibly upset in that she was trembling and appeared to be about to cry. [The woman] informed law enforcement she was scared of that ‘sick, perverted old man,’ Curtis Cochran, who had touched her all over while they were riding down the road and had wanted her to do things that she did not want to do,” said the removal petition. The woman did not want to sit for a formal interview until the next day when she then told a story very similar to that of Cochran’s first near-victim.

So yeah, pretty typical MAGA worldview put into practice: Brown women are genetically inferior to whites but they’re good when you want to get your rocks off through abusive sexual coercion.