Say No to Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Mr. Trump - by the NYT Editorial Board

[DonViejo]

-snip-

The Constitution gives the president nearly unlimited power to grant clemency to people convicted of federal offenses, so Mr. Trump can pardon Mr. Arpaio. But Mr. Arpaio was an elected official who defied a federal court’s order that he stop violating people’s constitutional rights. He was found in contempt of that court. By pardoning him, Mr. Trump would show his contempt for the American court system and its only means of enforcing the law, since he would be sending a message to other officials that they may flout court orders also.

Mr. Arpaio could not be less deserving of mercy. In addition to the dragnets of Hispanic-looking people that ultimately led to his contempt conviction, he racked up a record of harassment, neglect, mistreatment and other flagrant abuses of office that should have ended his career years ago. But he was in power in 2015, when Mr. Trump entered the presidential race. He soon won Mr. Trump’s abiding affection and returned the love, calling Mr. Trump “a great patriot” and supporting him throughout the campaign. (Both also spent years promoting the lie that President Barack Obama was born outside the United States.)

The bromance between “America’s toughest sheriff,” as Mr. Arpaio liked to call himself, and America’s toughest-talking presidential candidate should have surprised no one. Both men built their brands by exploiting racial resentments of white Americans. While Mr. Trump was beginning his revanchist run for the White House on the backs of Mexican “rapists,” Mr. Arpaio was terrorizing brown-skinned people across southern Arizona, sweeping them up in “saturation patrols” and holding them in what he referred to as a “concentration camp” for months at a time.

It was this behavior that a federal judge in 2011 found to be unconstitutional and ordered Mr. Arpaio to stop. He refused, placing himself above the law and the Constitution that he had sworn to uphold.

That alone would be reason enough to deny him a pardon. But a grant of mercy from Mr. Trump would also go against longstanding Justice Department policy, which calls for a waiting period of at least five years before the consideration of a pardon application and some expression of regret or remorse by the applicant. Mr. Arpaio shows no sign of remorse; to the contrary, he sees himself as the victim. “If they can go after me, they can go after anyone in this country,” he told Fox News on Wednesday. He’s right — in a nation based on the rule of law, anyone who ignores a court order, or otherwise breaks the law, may be prosecuted and convicted.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/joe-arpaio-trump-pardon.html?emc=edit_th_20170825&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284

[dalton99a]

1. He will pardon Arpaio

Rules and policies mean nothing to Trump

[Stuart G]

2. And of course, you are correct..he did pardon Arpaio....no text..