Fucking scumbags.
I had to get that out.
Donald Trump pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the notoriously racist Sheriff of Maricopa County, AZ, who was a national name by virtue of his astonishingly repugnant methods of detention and punishment for suspected illegal immigrants. He routinely had people in chain gangs in his "Tent City" of inmates, essentially labor camps in the natural oven of the Arizona desert. He is absolute Scum. So of course the President saw fit to pardon him of his conviction, which was not even for being a cruel monster who killed people, but for criminal contempt of court for blatantly refusing to abide by a court order to quit being a discriminatory piece of shit.
That's the tl;dr, here are the sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/08/25/trump-pardons-controversial-former-arizona-sheriff-joe-arpaio/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_arpaio-830pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.11b495813142
President Trump has pardoned controversial former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of failing to follow a court order to end the practice of detaining people merely on the suspicion that they might not have legal status in the country.
In a statement, Trump made no mention of Arpaio's conviction, but praised his past military service. It is the first pardon of Trump's presidency.
"Arpaio’s life and career, which began at the age of 18 when he enlisted in the military after the outbreak of the Korean War, exemplify selfless public service," Trump said. "Throughout his time as Sheriff, Arpaio continued his life’s work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration.
"Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now eighty-five years old, and after more than fifty years of admirable service to our Nation, he is worthy candidate for a Presidential pardon," the statement continued.
Arpaio's practices have been characterized as racial discrimination. He was awaiting sentencing at a hearing in October.
Trump's pardon came late on a Friday night, at a time when much of the country is focused on a Category 4 hurricane bearing down on Texas. Hurricane Harvey is the most powerful such storm to hit the nation in 12 years.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/22/16151256/trump-pardon-arpaio
Pardoning Arpaio just sent a strong message to other sheriffs: Don’t worry about the courts
The Trump administration has spent its first several months in office steadily ramping up immigration enforcement. But it’s running into a couple of big obstacles — and one of them is that many local sheriffs are wary of holding immigrants for ICE pickup.
Scooping up unauthorized immigrants who’ve been booked into local jails is an important ICE strategy: It allows them to claim they’re going after “criminal aliens,” without having to do the work of tracking anyone down or causing the outcry they get for conducting home raids. For all the administration’s complaints about “sanctuary cities,” the linchpin of this strategy isn’t actually city police forces: it’s county sheriffs, who operate the overwhelming majority of jails.
But many sheriffs are worried that holding people after they’d otherwise be released from jail, in order for ICE agents to pick them up, could get them in trouble with the courts for violating the Fourth Amendment.
“If we violate the law by doing what they ask us to do, we’re subjecting ourselves, no question, to civil liability and civil rights violations,” sheriff Bob Gualtieri of Pinellas County, Florida, told the Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff.
Gualtieri felt the Trump administration was oblivious to sheriffs’ concerns: He told Woodruff that officials “are saying, ‘What are you sheriffs doing? Why aren’t you cooperating?’ when they don’t know that it is clearly a problem and that we can’t do it.”
But other reports indicate that the administration is trying to solve the court problem by going around the courts — either by finding some way to “contract” sheriffs to hold immigrant detainees, as the New York Times reported on Monday, or by forcing the courts to decide that holding immigrants for ICE pickup is constitutional. (The administration is trying to intervene in a case in the Third Circuit, which includes Florida, to argue just that.)
There’s no guarantee that any of these strategies will work. The judicial branch — which has been less than deferential to the Trump administration — might hold firm in decreeing that people have a constitutional right to be released from jail when they have posted bail or been cleared, regardless of their immigration status.
That’s where the pardon power comes in. When Trump pardoned Arpaio of a criminal conviction he got for aggressively enforcing immigration law — including holding immigrants for ICE pickup — it sent a very clear message to the sheriffs like Gualtieri who are worried about court liability through the rest of the country. It indicates to them that if they get aggressive, and get in trouble with the law for it, the administration will have their back.
Let me be clear about a few things. Yes, a pardon suggests an admission of guilt. But the pardon was merely for the contempt of court. There is no admission of guilt for the extraordinary cruelty and inhumane bigotry of a man who has flouted law and order while wearing its badge his entire career. People are needlessly dead because of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He was rejected by the voters, after he had enough time to wear out his welcome. He is Scum, and he has not had to admit to anything but being Trump's buddy and sufficiently loyal and bigoted enough to earn a pardon. In addition to being a pardon for a singularly unworthy man, it is a pardon that is a favor for a political ally. This could also belong in the Non-Russia Corruption thread, because this is corrupt as fuck.
Oh, and he tried to sneak this through on a Friday night, while Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas, and right after signing an order reversing the transgender policy in the military.
I am feeling very dark. Discuss.
Posts
I am still fucking livid.
I want to say there has to be consequences to this, but hell, I'd be legitimately surprised if there were any. It's not like we didn't have evidence of the President being on the side of racists before today.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Good thing there is zero chance that our beloved President would find himself the subject of a federal courtroom anytime soon. Wouldn't that be so awkward?
Every Mexican in the country, especially those working at Trump owned or Trump affiliated businesses, should go on strike.
Manafort and Flynn have to be excited.
E: Legal question: if you get pardoned for being in contempt of court, and don't stop doing the thing you're in contempt for, won't you just get new contempt charges?
Doesn't matter, the highest court is tilted toward him.
They didn't even let arpaio' sentencing finish. "Law" and "order".
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Just Order.
NNID: Hakkekage
we don't have a president in the White House. a Grand Dragon is currently running this country.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
I will not say that the Court isn't political, because it is, but it is not the same politics of the party and Trump is NOT their brand of Republican. One thing they ALL share is that they are former Circuit Judges (except Kagan) and I can not see a single one of them being pleased with the President saying folks like him can just ignore judges rulings.
It's an existential attack on the branch of government they run.
He's not in office anymore, so he can't do the thing.
Arpaio is a Trump supporter and a fellow violent anti-immigrant white supremacist and so an ideological ally too. The pardon lays out no reason beyond his work as a violent anti-immigrant white supremacist as reasoning for the pardon.
The message is clear: this is what Trump's America is about. No one, of course, is likely surprised here.
As Scooter said, he doesn't have the authority anymore.
More broadly speaking, pardons pardon you from a particular conviction. If I went and donated fire to a nearby building, was convicted for that, and then inexplicably got pardoned, that wouldn't protect me in the event of any future charitable acts.
There's no other reason to do this. Police unions weren't asking for it. Arizonans weren't asking for it. The state GOP reps weren't asking for it afaik. Not even Arpaio seemed to be actually expecting it.
And it's not like there was much chance that he was really going to do any large amount of jail time, he's 85. On an individual level a pardon doesn't mean much. But it was going to be an important symbol about the supremacy of the law over individuals.
There's only one reason to do this, and it's to send a message, that it's OK to break the law when your target is brown people.
Every step of the way someone was supposed to stop trump because they wouldn't stand for his breaking of norms and here we are. I don't have faith SCOTUS will be any different.
Arpaio hasn't even been sentenced yet. Dudes 88 or whatever ancient age. He was highly unlikely to get jail or anything significant from this.
Arpaio has shown zero remorse or accountability. This is HUGE and one of the biggest requirements for pardons under the guidelines set up by previous presidents.
The personal relationship between the two is wildly inappropriate. Previous presidents avoided, generally, pardoning anybody they'd ever met anybody involved with. When this wasn't the case folks screamed bloody murder. (Clinton had some very iffy ones but he went ahead at the end of his presidency.)
this is the signal to nazis to keep on doing their thing.
man I wasn't expecting the nazis to be actual nazis this time.
To me that's one of the most frustrating parts of this. The pardon of someone who so flagrantly broke the law should offend everyone, but because Joe was famous for treating inmates worse than animals way to many people will think it's the right thing to do, because they also think that inmates shouldn't be treated like humans.
Dave Weigel is a political analyst for the Washington Post.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Aye. What's important here is that finally someone stepped in and definitely stated that what he was doing was wrong and illegal. Because the people he represented sure didn't think so, despite what the law said.
this is seriously so fucked up.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
The DOJ has distanced itself from this and said they had nothing to do with it so it seems even Sessions thinks this is not a good look.
There's limits to how flagrant you wanna be with your white supremacy and it's not like Arpaio is useful or anything.
Just waiting for another big news story to camouflage it. The hurricane will be news item #1, 2 and 3 tomorrow unless it's less devastating than expected.
What a difference a day makes.
Ignores DoJ, skips investigation, throws all norms for the application of pardons out the window.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Jeff Flake is a dead man walking. I take no pleasure in this.
NNID: Hakkekage
Yeah but even as a dead man walking he's still all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpPvGlrqhdA
He's basically fucked from both ends politically. He's got a right wing challenge that's more serious than it should be, and a left that's pissed off.