To me, it’s a yawner, sorry. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a patriot. He tried to enforce existing border law. He stepped on some judge’s order and was then targeted for prosecution by the Obama administration. He was found guilty, under the letter of the law. The Constitution lets the President pardon people. Some lefties are calling it the end of the Constitution, that President Trump would have pardoned Arpaio; but it’s the usual misleading hyperbole. In reality, the whole thing from start to finish is an exercise of the Constitution.
Here’s video of former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (a clean government guy) making the point (among others) that President Obama pardoned or commuted the sentences of 1700 people, from drug dealers to forgers to the traitorous Chelsea Manning.
UPDATE: Who can forget Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich? By any objective standard, Arpaio deserves his pardon more than Rich or Manning.
Which is what makes it so boring. The Left gins up non-controversy #1,388,544,877 over a pardon as reasonable/constitutional as any.
UPDATE: Our intrepid commenters point out other matters where Arpaio might deserve prosecution. I could be fine with that. Operative word, “other”.
In this post, I’m discussing the one contempt-of-court charge. I assumed that Trump’s pardon was tailored to that. I looked for the actual text of the pardon and didn’t find it. But I think it would have to be (since conviction comes before pardon).
Actually, I don’t think a jury was impaneled.
On the one hand, he did violate a court order and so the criminal contempt *charge* was probably legitimate.
On the other hand, an argument can be made that judges can, and often do, exceed their authority (see Trump’s Muslim “ban”: judicial interference despite the plain language of the federal statue cited in the EO).
Presidential pardons are provided in the Constitution (and by the states) to allow the executive to rectify what s/he believes to be an injustice.
After Clinton pardoned Mark Rich and various terrorists, we were told that POTUS can pardon whomever he wants so shut up. There’s a lot more justice to Sheriff Joe’s pardon than there was to many of Bill’s and Barry’s.
In the case of Scooter Libby, GWB allowed an injustice to stand by only commuting the sentence Libby received for a non-crime (Martha Stuart and unknown thousand are in the same boat).
The Obama Administration defied judicial orders almost daily so, apparently, judicial supremacy and infallibility only applies when the targets are not in the Democrat Inner Party.
“He tried to enforce existing border law. He stepped on some judge’s order and was then targeted for prosecution by the Obama administration. The jury found him guilty, under the letter of the law. Some lefties are calling it the end of the Constitution…”
Seriously, ILoveCapitalism? So, what is the argument those “lefties” are making, and why do you think it is BS? Clearly it doesn’t worry you even if he tried to enforce the border law ILLEGALLY, but your flippant approach to the issue is a bit surprising. If he had been targeted by the Bush administration rather than the Obama administration, would that have made a difference to you? Anyhow, its good that the President has that power to pardon. He is very likely going to need to use it on close confidants, family, and possibly himself.
Thanks, I’ve changed the wording.
Wow, you don’t believe me? See for yourself.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-23/arpaio-pardon-would-show-contempt-for-constitution
Or this:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/08/trump_s_pardon_of_joe_arpaio_is_an_impeachable_offense.html
The “argument”, such as it is, boils down to The President TOTALLY DOES have the power to pardon any U.S. crime; and he should be impeached anyway, because WE don’t like THIS pardon.
It’s a Pandora’s box that no one should open. Again: Obama pardoning Chelsea Manning. Clinton pardoning his own donor, Marc Rich.
Because it’s so arbitrary, subjective, politically-motivated, hypocritical, and non-Constitutional. Good enough reasons?
The Leftist Elites no longer knows what ” high crimes and mistomeners ” are any more since they commit them everyday.
** yawn ** ** snore **
The leftists see the Arpaio pardon as another nail in Trump’s impeachment coffin.
At its height of incarceration, “Gitmo,” the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba prison camp, held 242 terrorist prisoners. According to Pentagon statistics, Obama released 100 inmates or 75% of the then Gitmo population. 59 inmates remain in Gitmo, because even Obama could not bring himself to pardon them.
But, Sheriff Arpaio was too law and order for your precious, effete leftist.
The leftists have stacked the courts with liberal judges who are preoccupied with and beguiled by reading their brand of social justice into their convoluted decision making. Leftists are keenly aware that the rule of law can be bent to their ideology by corrupting the judiciary.
Cripple justice and the rule of law and the very foundation of the republic is destroyed. That is the best ground from which to raise a socialist dictatorship.
Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio is, to borrow a term from a right-of-center tweeter, “a dirtbag”. He’s a showboat who bragged about how many media appearances he made in a month. What other county sheriff in the US does so many media appearances, other than David Clarke of Milwaukee County (who seems to be in the running for Joe’s replacement as America’s Most Obnoxious LEO), and why? He wasted Maricopa County money by sending a deputy to Hawaii to investigate the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate. That helps law enforcement in the metro Phoenix area or increase border security in AZ how? The amount of money he cost Maricopa County is staggering, from $15 million in settlements to $44 million in legal fees. If the sheriff in my county cost the county that much money (even prorated per total annual budget), the Board Of Commissioners would find a way to have him disappear or resign for “health reasons”.
Prisoners died in his jail at an alarming rate, often without explanation. He arrested reporters for covering him, winning them a $3.75 million settlement. Still, hundreds of sex abuse cases went uninvestigated and one member of his civilian sheriff’s posse was implicated in a child porn sting. After a federal judge ruled against his office in a civil rights lawsuit (part of the original basis for the crime for which he is now pardoned), he hired a private investigator to dig dirt on the judge and his wife. What kind of ‘patriot’ does that?
The pardon shouldn’t have happened. It was a sop to a campaign supporter and, as has been reported, something of an FU to the federal judiciary, as it relates to a contempt charge, not an extraneous crime. This was an unwise move and will haunt POTUS 45 in the future, either in his selection of judges or his future campaign (there’s a reason most White House-initiated pardons are done in the second term). Still, the acceptance of the pardon by the convicted opens him up to a plethora of civil suits, so his retirement will be spent keeping members of the Arizona Bar employed. (Hopefully his wife has a backup source of income.)
Still, the hue and cry over the pardon by lefties who throw around terms like “unprecedented” and “an insult to X, Y, Z” is overrated and misplaced. You can be outraged about the particular pardon without claiming that the Half-Black Messiah would never have done something similar, because he actually did. Of course, the funniest comments come from people like Victor/Victoria Manning who openly wondered why they were being tagged in the national conversation. To that end, a number of POTUS 44’s pardons were worse and absolved the recipients of much more severe crimes. Comparisons actually weaken the argument against the pardon and is yet another example of the left overplaying their argument.
patriot: one who loves his or her country
Please note that “saint” or “hero” would have other definitions, and were not words I used.
In today’s world, it seems a normal thing. “Know your opponent”
All that is serious; if true, that should be investigated (or prosecuted as appropriate).
All in accordance with the Constitution. As I said: This whole thing bores me, in the sense that I see the ebb and flow of normal legal-system processes.
Jon Gabriel is editor in chief of Ricochet.com and a contributor to The Arizona Republic. Follow him on Twitter at @exjon.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/08/27/sheriff-joe-arpaio-no-conservative-no-hero-no-matter-what-trump-says-jon-gabriel-column/606012001/
Let me see if I have my facts correct:
Joe Arpaio enforces federal law, which the Obama administration’s Justice Department said should not be enforced (thus rescinding a law via fiat).
A judge tells Joe Arpaio to stop enforcing the law (thus rescinding the law via judicial fiat).
Joe Arpaio continues to enforce the law, thus being in contempt of court.
Joe Arpaio is charged with contempt of court and convicted, which is a misdemeanor.
President Trump pardons Joe Arpaio, based on his support of federal law which ought to have been enforced but was not before.
Liberals go crazy that Trump would pardon a criminal, when just about every pardon ever handed out was to people convicted of a crime.
Am I getting this right?
So then, what does ‘patriot’ have to do with either the pardon or the crime in the first place? (Keeping in mind the crime was contempt.) “Elderly White Guy” might have had more actual meaning. Do a search with just the term ‘patriot’ and then with the terms ‘patriot’ and ‘hero’ [in the Boolean tradition] and see what the difference is. They are often used interchangeably in many cases. Why use ‘saint’ or ‘hero’ when ‘patriot’ conveys the same message. This is what Sean Hannity does on a daily/nightly basis. Don’t be like Sean Hannity. Be better than Sean.
Seriously? Okay, fine. Here’s an experiement: next time you have a court appearance (traffic ticket, civil suit, whatever), do a little research beforehand and hire someone to do background on the judge assigned to the case prior to your appearance. Then, after the resolution of the case, compare the judgment you received with that of those simiarly charged or with similar cases. See how you fared compared to others. If there is no difference, I’ll print out this thread and eat it. First thing a defense attorney will tell you: don’t fark with the judge. Make yourself seem like the victim, not like an arrogant jerk who is too decent to be saddled with silly things like obeying court orders.
Perhaps it shouldn’t seem so boring. The normal ebb and flow of the judicial process was interrupted by the pardon. If POTUS was thinking this through, he would have let the process actually play out before he used his powers of fiat. Let Fake Conservative Former Sheriff Joe take his case through the appeals process and let it play out to its natural conclusion. Then let the pardon process commence, depending on the natural conclusion. But don’t interrupt it in the process and show a contempt for the rule of law all while wrapping everyone involved (except the Federal judge, of course) in the flag of patriotism. This is where it becomes problematic from a political perspective for POTUS 45. Even POTUS 44 let Bradwina Manning be a suicidal drama queen for seven years before issuing a commutation. Perhaps that’s one advantage (small one) to having a constitutional lawyer as POTUS. But POTUS 45 is demonstrating his contempt for the legal process yet again by the issuance of this pardon. (Along with his whine during the campaign about the unfairness of the non-Anglo judge tasked with hearing the Trump University fraud case.)
I’m a reluctant supporter of POTUS 45, even though I didn’t support him during the campaign and didn’t vote for him. But we are now wading into Nixon-level contempt for the legal process which will not serve him well into the future if it continues. That, more than anything so far, will put him on the path to impeachment. Hopefully, the hue and cry for impeachment based on meaningless crimes and misdemeanors will overshadow any real call for impeachment based on real high crimes and misdemeanors and thus buy him more time, at least until the end of his first term.
Craig, I think that’s right.
RSG, I just added this to the post. Good enough?
It has to do with the idea of intending (at least) to serve faithfully; plus, Arpaio is a veteran. It was pointing out that Arpaio meets a certain baseline.
No. The possibility of pardon is part of the normal ebb and flow. It’s right in the Constitution. Every person who was ever pardoned, was someone who had been convicted as a criminal.
No. No, you’re not.
First off, Joe Arpaio was not ‘enforcing’ Federal law. He doesn’t have the statutory authority to enforce Federal law, other than for felonies or warrants for same. He was using the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office [MCSO] as a Gestapo against the citizens of the County who didn’t meet his deputies’ criteria for who should be allowed to wander around the county unmolested. To that end, he cooperated with Federal agents, but only when it fit his agenda to do so. He treated citizens of his county disproportionately based on a perception of difference in appearance in racial or ethnic background. This is in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Civil rights groups and others (including the ACLU) filed suit against the MCSO, claiming violation of said Federal law. US District Judge G. Murray Snow agreed with the plaintiffs and ordered the MCSO to cease and desist its actions against its own citizens as it pertains to the profiling of those who appear to be of the incorrect skin tone and without probable cause. MCSO essentially ignored the court order and continued business as usual. In January of 2015 Judge Snow announced the filing of civil contempt charges against MCSO for its continued actions. In August of 2016, Judge Snow issued an order directing the US Attorney’s Office to prosecute America’s Sheriff and three of his MCSO employees for criminal contempt. This is the basis for the August 2017 order of judgment and the subsequent POTUS pardon.
The second part of this conflation of issues is the investigation of MCSO by the US Department Of Justice regarding practices in general and their demand for documents related to the investigation, which America’s Sheriff refuses to provide. This is the only part where “Obama” enters into the matter. Judge Snow will also hear the case which the USDOJ filed regarding that matter, but is otherwise unrelated to the racial profiling case. It should be noted that G. Murray Snow is LDS and an appointee of George W. Bush, with his entire career spent as a law clerk and judge. He’s hardly a bleeding heart perpetual ambulance chaser.
President Trump pardoned America’s Sheriff based upon his prior support for his candidacy and for a perceived unfairness in prosecution. Very misguided, in my opinion, and with long-term consequences as I’ve previously suggested. Sad!
Kudos to Jon Gabriel for publishing his op-ed in USA TODAY. I daresay he probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing so a year ago, lest he suddenly turn a darker shade of skin tone than simply having an Arizona tan. He shows the money wasted on the MCSO as being far in excess of the figures I mentioned and correctly states that the court decision was the equivalent of busting Al Capone based on tax evasion. That alleged conservatives outside of AZ are defending the publicly paid thug is maddening, but not as maddening as it must be to those actually in his county and subject to his misdeeds.
[Shoutout to rusty for posting the link to the USA TODAY column.]
Richard Nixon would gratefully disagree with you. Whether powers are in the Constitution are somewhat irrelevant as to their application. There has only been one instance in which a pre-emptive pardon has been issued and it didn’t turn out so well for the guy who granted it. This is the reason that the USDOJ has a pardons office to vet requests, both from petitioners and the office of POTUS. It’s why the first known pardon by POTUS 45 is so problematic. Few except lefties are denying his power to issue pardons in any way he sees fit, but many are questioning the process and the procedure in the current case as being damaging not only to the prestige of the current POTUS but as to respect for established procedure which is there to protect the grantor from accusations such as those which he is now experiencing.
Close enough for gub’mint work. 😉
Obama did more clemency/pardons than the previous 13 presidents. Some people claim his “Seth RIch” was a crack dealer who went to knife an ex girlfriend + 2 kids to death.
I think that the discussion probably could have stopped after “it’s a yawner”.
I have no love for this particular sheriff — Penn and Teller poisoned that well a long time ago (I think that they ran nearly a whole episode of Bullsh*t! on the man, whom I never heard of previously), and back in the ’00s they were about the closest thing I had to religion. I still consider the men to be somewhat of prophet caliber, though they’ve been keeping their political heads down for a while.
Still, taken in a vacuum, the charges and conviction seem pretty flimsy and the Chief Executive is well within his authority to do what he did. So, yeah, *yawn*
I personally would LOVE to hear the evidence for racial profiling. That seems to be a red herring to me.
Arpaio has a long list of detractors. Seems about right for a law-and-order guy who has been under constant scrutiny for as long as I can remember. He also was very savvy at the self-promotion game. Sort of like Trump.
They finally got Arpaio. He lied about double parking or something even worse such as using the wrong form and laughing about it.
Maybe he is actually a racist terrorist who sells body parts. I don’t know. But I doubt it.
If anyone has the goods on Sheriff Joe, put them out there and let law and order take him down.
On another note, the man is 85. In the Ron White skit, “they finally got the ‘tater!” I think Trump looked at the terrorists, Chelsea Manning types, bomb-throwing activists who have been pardoned and he saw Arpaio as a political target who deserves to have his freedom.
It is not as if the endless string of drug traffickers Obama let loose have joined in Making America Great Again. Yes, I am talking equivalency. The pardon process is not about purity.
Not a strong point; enforcing Federal warrants and felonies still covers a lot of ground, or leaves locals with responsibility and authority to enforce large chunks of Federal law.
…which was never a good thing. Its only justification was that Capone was a monster and local authorities weren’t effective and somebody had to get him on something. But shall we talk about the long term effects of oppressive and unconstitutional IRS practices? Or the long term effects of Chicago never having been properly cleaned up?
“They got him on tax evasion” – One of the great canards of our time; not that it’s incorrect factually, but it’s incorrect morally / no one should ever boast about it.
You and Jon Gabriel like the Capone-Arpaio comparison, which puts forth a premise that Arpaio is as bad as Capone. I’m not angry and I’m not going to agree, either. For now, I’m just pointing out the seriousness of your comparison. (Likewise, the Gestapo-Arpaio comparison.)
Great point. To “pardon” someone prior to conviction is, in effect, to waive the laws or at least to grant the person immunity. Is that within the plain language of a “Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons”? How can it be? So how could Nixon’s pardon have ever had any validity or effect?
I never put 2 and 2 together on that one; it happened when I was a kid and most everyone accepted it.
That, in a nutshell, is what ails America.
Anyway, RSG thanks for the input / making me think! 😉
I believe the president has the power to pardon Arpaio but I also believe the sheriff is a somewhat sadistic authoritarian instead of an upstanding law and order type guy so I think it was more grandstanding than a well thought out move by President Trump.
It’s simple – local / state law enforcement do not have the jurisdiction/legal ground to enforce federal law. That’s the job of the Federal Government to provide law enforcement.
Also, the president can’t pardon anyone he wants to pardon. again, separation of federal/state/local. This is why Sheriff Joe may not be so free and clear. As others have pointed out here, SJ was also found to be employing clearly discriminatory, selective policing against non-whites. Most of them with no regard as to their legal/citizen/immigration status.