President Donald Trump pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio in August 2017 for a misdemeanor criminal contempt conviction that was related to his “hard-line tactics going after undocumented immigrants,” CNN reported.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/25/politics/sheriff-joe-arpaio-donald-trump-pardon/index.html
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/25/545282459/president-trump-pardons-former-sheriff-joe-arpaio
Trump called Arpaio “an American patriot” in a tweet.
Arpaio tweeted his thanks to Trump and called his conviction “a political witch hunt by holdovers in the Obama justice department.”
Arpaio, who learned his style of criminal justice from the Khmer Rouge, served almost a quarter century as sheriff of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.
He touted himself as “America’s toughest sheriff” by waging war against undocumented immigrants. He made inmates wear pink underwear and served rancid food in his jails.
He cares little about Constitutional safeguards and nothing about the truth.
Arpaio was among the birthers, which included Donald Trump, who perpetuated the baseless claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
Arpaio, who is equal parts fascist, racist, and ignoramus, continues to claim without evidence that Obama’s birth certification was fraudulent.
Did I mention that Arpaio was a sheriff who prosecuted suspected criminals based on his interpretation of the law?
What could possibly go wrong?
Arpaio’s “criminal conviction grew out of a lawsuit filed a decade ago charging that the sheriff’s office regularly violated the rights of Latinos, stopping people based on racial profiling, detaining them based solely on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally and turning them over to the immigration authorities,” the New York Times reported.
The judge’s order demanded that Arpaio stop detaining people when he had no evidence that they had broken any laws. Arpaio insisted that his tactics were legal, and he would continue to arrest Latinos at his indiscretion.
This may be liberal quibbling on my part, but Arpaio’s methods clearly violate the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution but fall in close goose step with those of with tinpot dictators.
Donald Trump, using the Arpaio standard, argues that the rights of a con artist supersede the rights of the Constitution.
Or is Arpaio, using the Trump standard, who argues that the rights of a con artist supersede the rights of the Constitution?
Longreads, a website that publishes, among other things, investigatory non-fiction, republished examples of Arpaio’s higher crimes, misdemeanors, from the Phoenix New Times, an alternative weekly that has long chronicled Arpaio’s misdeed and crimes.
Longreads, a website that publishes, among other things, investigatory non-fiction, republished examples of Arpaio’s higher crimes, misdemeanors, from the Phoenix New Times, an alternative weekly that has long chronicled Arpaio’s misdeed and crimes.
“He forced inmates to live in a ‘tent city’ where temperatures reached 135 degrees”;
“He bragged about spending more to feed dogs than human inmates, and letting inmates watch The Food Network to exacerbate their hunger”;
“It’s worth noting . . . that most of the so-called ‘criminals’ in Arpaio’s jail were awaiting trial, and had not yet been convicted”;
“Prisoners in his jails died at alarming rates, with no explanation given”;
Arpaio’s “obsession with immigration resulted in hundreds of sex crimes going investigated”;
“He arrested reporters for covering him”;
“For all that money he saved by depriving human beings of food, he cost Arizona taxpayers nearly $4 million in a settlement with New Times co-founders who Arpaio had falsely arrested for their criticism of him’;
“He staged a fake assassination attempt against himself, costing taxpayers more than $1 million”;
“He’s an inveterate liar, even about things that don’t matter”;
“His officers burned a dog alive for no reason, then laughed as the dog’s owners cried”;
“He paid a private investigator to go after a judge who found him guilty of racial profiling”;
Trump learned techniques of controlling immigration from Arpaio, but it was Trump himself who taught Arpaio the true lesson of humanity by permanently separating families and throwing children in metal cages.
I wish I had thought of that, Arpaio said.
SEE KIRSTJEN NIELSEN
