For Arpaio, pardon is a symbol of loyalty rewarded
YVONNE WINGETT SANCHEZ AND MICHAEL KIEFER
When Joe Arpaio’s attorney first showed him the presidential pardon, the former sheriff’s first reaction was to ask if it was a fake.
Late Friday afternoon, attorney Mark Goldman was already driving to Arpaio’s house to help him celebrate his wife Ava’s birthday, when he got a phone call from his co-counsel.
A White House attorney wanted to know if his client would accept a presidential pardon. The answer was yes. When Goldman arrived at Arpaio’s house, he showed him an emailed copy of the document, titled “Executive Grant of Clemency.”
“Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, To all to whom these presents shall come, greeting: Be it known that this day, I, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, pursuant to my powers under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, of the Constitution, have granted unto Joseph M. Arpaio a full and unconditional pardon.”
Arpaio looked at it and asked out loud, “Is this a fake?”
“I’m very good at investigating fake government documents,” he later quipped to The Arizona Republic during a Friday night interview in the study of his Fountain Hills home.
He had just finished a dinner of spaghetti, calamari and red wine at a favorite Italian restaurant.
Though Arpaio had been found in criminal contempt of federal court for violating a judge’s orders, Trump had been teasing the country for weeks by suggesting that he might pardon the 85year-old former Maricopa County sheriff.
Trump nearly came out and said it during his campaign rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, telling a crowd of cheering supporters: “I’m going to make a prediction. I think he’s going to be just fine.”
“Was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?” Trump asked the thousands gathered at Tuesday’s rally. Arpaio was not invited and says he chose not to go.
“I didn’t want to agitate the agitators,” he said.
Finally, Friday evening, as Hurricane Harvey bore down on Texas, the White House announced the news, again igniting the debate over Arpaio’s tenure and reputation for racial profiling.
Applauded and condemned
The president’s — and Arpaio’s — fans lauded the move, saying it righted an unjust decision by the federal courts. Civil-rights advocates, many in the Latino community and even some of Arpaio’s and Trump’s fellow Republicans, derided the pardon, saying it undermined the rule of law and deepened racial divisions.
There has been much misinformation about the nature of Arpaio’s conviction from both sides of the aisle. Some claimed he had been convicted of racial profiling, others that he had been the victim of an Obama administration witch hunt.
In fact, he was convicted of disobeying a judge’s order to stop enforcing immigration, which was never a job mandated by state statutes for a county sheriff.
The underlying claims were in a civil lawsuit pursued by the American Civil Liberties Union, alleging racial profiling. Arpaio and his office lost. The allegation of criminal contempt came from a judge, not the U.S. Department of Justice, though the judge asked Justice to prosecute it.
Maricopa County’s expenses in the case thus far: $70 million.
“The court orders stand in the civil case,” said Cecillia Wang, deputy legal director at the national office of the ACLU. “We’re working to reform the agency and the people voted him out of office.”
For years, Arpaio had been a rock star in conservative quarters of the Republican Party despite being battered by negative headlines:
» Mistreatment of inmates in his jails, resulting in millions of dollars in legal settlements.
» Failed investigations into judges and political rivals, some of which resulted in legal settlements and ended up costing the county more than $40 million.
» Hundreds of sex-crime cases that sat on shelves without being investigated by his office.
» The so-called “birther” investigation of former President Barack Obama ‘s birth certificate.
Until recently, Arpaio had always come out on top, even sidestepping a federal abuse-of-power investigation and winning handily at the polls.
But after decades as the county’s top cop, Arpaio’s past caught up with him in 2016.
The bad press and public sentiment finally overwhelmed him and he was voted out.
His loss came even as Trump, a man with many traits similar to Arpaio, ascended to the presidency.
Friday, with Trump’s pardon in hand, Arpaio was already talking about getting back into politics, aided by a president who shares similar views on border security and illegal immigration.
“The person upstairs is looking out for me,” Arpaio said. So is Trump. In announcing the pardon, the White House cited the ex-sheriff’s “life’s work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration.” At his age, given his service to the nation, he was a “worthy candidate” for a pardon.
Given his respect for Trump, Arpaio returned the compliment, saying Friday he would be willing to work for the president in any capacity.
“I will be helping him anyway, helping him get re-elected,” Arpaio said.
‘I did nothing wrong’
The ex-sheriff remains unapologetic about his immigration sweeps, the ensuing litigation and his conviction.
“My guys did nothing wrong and I did nothing wrong,” he said. Like his patron, he blames the media. “The media had a ball with me, even nationally,” he said. “You think that bothers me? For 10 years they’ve been following me around.”
Even this night, as his phone blared a ring-tone set to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” a TV cameraman repeatedly rang the doorbell, then stood waiting for an hour hoping Arpaio would speak to him. He did, of course.
Dressed in a button-up shirt and dress pants, Arpaio sat in a study festooned with blow-up photographs of himself with Donald Trump. There was also a photo of Arpaio with Obama, whom he blames for his travails.
When asked to show the pardon, he shuffled through a manila folder labeled “Trump Off File.”
Around it lay newspaper clippings about their relationship and about the potential pardon.
But Arpaio couldn’t find the actual pardon at first. “Did I lose it?” he asked himself. Late in the wide-ranging interview, Goldman spoke up.
“The justice system failed the sheriff,” he said.
Despite the pardon, Arpaio remains convicted of criminal contempt. Goldman and his colleagues have filed appeals with several courts.
Legal pundits have theorized that pardoning a court’s finding of contempt is unconstitutional because it frustrates the separation of powers.
But there will be no appeal of the pardon from the opposition. There is no pertinent case law to stop it.
“The remedy for the pardon is political,” said Wang, the ACLU attorney. It will be dealt with in Congress or at the polls.
“The law is that the president has absolute power to pardon,” Goldman said.
Arpaio listened quietly as Goldman discussed the finer legal points.
When asked what he would have done if he had been sentenced to prison, Arpaio offered a response he had given before.
“It would be federal prison,” he said. “I’d learn how to play bocce. Three good meals a day. Free medical.”