The White House has prepared the paperwork for President Trump to pardon former sheriff Joe Arpaio when he makes the final decision to do so, CNN has learned.Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt of court because he repeatedly held himself out to be above the law. It's the job of the legislature to pass laws, the job of the judges to say what the law means and it's the job of the cops to enforce the law. But only the law. The cops don't get to decide what the law is.
An administration official said the White House has also prepared talking points to send to surrogates after he is pardoned.
One of the talking points is that Arpaio served his country for 50 years in the military, the Drug Enforcement Administration and as Arizona's Maricopa County sheriff, and that it is not appropriate to send him to prison for "enforcing the law" and "working to keep people safe."
That's what Arpaio did, repeatedly. When he was told by judges to "stop doing that shit", he continued on doing it. Arpaio's willful defiance of the law and the Constitution has cost the taxpayers of his county over fifty million dollars, and that's just for one series of cases.
Arpaio has held himself out as being above the law. By his conduct over the decades, so has Trump.
No wonder Trump's planning to issue a pardon to Arpaio.
4 comments:
So the damn fool pardoned him, in a Friday-with-a-hurricane news dump, and before the judicial process had even run its course.
Guess he doesn't have much respect for the other branches of government.
Remember when they used to call Obama "lawless"?
I guess all of his felonious cronies don't have much incentive to cooperate with the investigations any more, huh?
-Doug in Oakland
I put this as Ignacio Ramos < Joe Arpaio < Marc Rich, but this still undermines the Rule of Law.
So I guess next is a pardon of himself on Federal taxes? It debatable if he can do that, but I'm confident he'll try. The fun bit of that is, it doesn't cover State and Local tax issues that I bet will come up as well...if Mueller has his taxes, you can bet they'll get them too.
Aside from what Arpaio did, one thing notably is what he failed to do. There were numerous sex abuse cases that he failed to investigate, some including children. His tab over the years was picked up by the citizens of Maricopa county, to the tune of $50 million - and they didn't want to be on the hook for more, so he didn't get reelected. Now that the show is over, maybe we can hope he goes away.
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