Arpaio pardoned
President Donald Trump pardons former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio following his conviction for intentionally disobeying a judge’s order in an immigration case.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump issued an executive pardon Friday to Joe Arpaio, the controversial former Arizona sheriff who was hero to the right and a national nemesis of Latinos, immigration advocates and civil rights groups.
Arpaio, 85, was convicted in July of criminal contempt for violating a federal court order to stop racially profiling Latinos. He was scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 5 and faced a maximum of six months in jail.
The president has broad power under the Constitution to pardon people convicted of federal crimes. Trump had all but promised to pardon Arpaio in tweets and comments in recent weeks, yet acknowledged the political furor his pardon was likely to ignite.
“I won’t do it tonight because I don’t want to cause any controversy,” Trump told a raucous political rally in Phoenix on Aug. 22. He added, “I’ll make a prediction: I think he’s going to be just fine.”
Arpaio did not attend the Phoenix rally because he did not get a White House invitation and did not “want to cause any havoc,” he told the Los Angeles Times in an interview a day earlier. He also said he had not spoken with the president since Trump took office.
During his trial, Arpaio was found guilty of ignoring a federal court’s order to cease patrols that racially profiled Latinos and stopped them on suspicion they were in the country illegally.
In November, Arpaio lost his bid for a seventh term after a race in which his hard-line record was a top issue.
The bond between Trump and Arpaio first formed over their shared false belief that Barack Obama likely wasn’t born in the United States and thus was a usurper president. Obama was born in Hawaii.
After Trump entered the presidential race in July 2015, Arpaio invited him to Phoenix to talk about a crackdown on illegal immigration. He endorsed Trump just before the first votes in the Iowa caucuses last year and became a frequent campaign surrogate.
Trump told Fox News in August that he was “seriously” considering pardoning Arpaio.
As White House aides prepared paperwork for the pardon — reportedly without the usual assistance of Justice Department lawyers — they also drafted talking points for supporters to defend the president’s action.
Those argued that the aging Arpaio didn’t deserve jail after his decades in the military, federal drug enforcement and as sheriff of Arizona’s populous Maricopa County.