This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Donald Trump on Friday pardoned former sheriff Joe Arpaio, the hardline Arizona lawman who was convicted of contempt of court in July for defying a judge’s order to stop racially profiling Latinos.

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Trump signaled his intention to grant the pardon at a rally in Phoenix on Tuesday, when he suggested Arpaio was “convicted for doing his job”.

Arpaio’s life and career “exemplify selfless public service”, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Saunders said in a statement on Friday night, adding: “After more than 50 years of admirable service to our nation, he is worthy candidate for a presidential pardon.”

“I am pleased to inform you that I have just granted a full Pardon to 85 year old American patriot Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He kept Arizona safe!” Trump later wrote on Twitter, as a major hurricane made landfall in Texas and after signing a controversial directive on transgender people in the military.

In an interview with the Arizona Republic, Arpaio hinted at a return to politics.

“I told my wife that I was through with politics,” he said. “But now I’ve decided I’m not through with politics because of what’s happening. I didn’t ask for a pardon. It has nothing to do with a pardon. I’ve been saying this for the last couple of months. I’ve got a lot to offer.”

In Arpaio’s 24-year tenure as sheriff of Maricopa county, he gained notoriety for detaining hundreds of undocumented immigrants in a Tent City jail and forcing them to wear pink underwear. The sheriff courted controversy and media attention – calling his own jail a “concentration camp”, serving inmates just two meals a day and selling replica pink underwear to the public – as he became a national figurehead for the virulent xenophobia Trump embraced in his presidential campaign.

In November, amid a surge in Latino voters, the then 84-year-old lost his bid for a seventh term.

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Friday, Arpaio joked that he would have fared better in federal prison than in the jails he once operated: “It’s federal; I could play bocce and [have] three meals a day.”

Arpaio also said he would hold a news conference next week to discuss “the abuse of politics in the judicial process”, and blamed the news media for “trying to destroy me all these years”.

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Arpaio’s conviction stems from his 2011 refusal to comply with a judge’s order to cease traffic stops that targeted Latino drivers. Arpaio continued for nearly a year and a half. Federal prosecutors charged him with misdemeanor contempt of court in 2016. Arpaio had been scheduled to be sentenced in October and faced up to six months in jail.

Trump said on Tuesday he was waiting to issue the pardon because he did not “want to cause any controversy”.

On Friday night, both Republican senators from Arizona criticized the pardon. John McCain said Trump’s action “undermines his claim for the respect of rule of law”. Jeff Flake said: “I would have preferred that the president honor the judicial process and let it take its course.”

The American Civil Liberties Union tweeted: “By pardoning Joe Arpaio, Donald Trump has sent another disturbing signal to an emboldened white nationalist movement that this White House supports racism and bigotry.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joe Arpaio and Donald Trump together in Iowa. Trump called him an ‘American patriot’ after issuing the pardon. Photograph: Mary Altaffer/AP

The ACLU represented Latino residents of Maricopa county in the lawsuit that resulted in Arpaio’s contempt conviction. In a statement, ACLU deputy legal director Cecilia Wang called the pardon “a presidential endorsement of racism”.

Maria Castro, a community organizer with Puente Arizona, a group that was central to the campaign against Arpaio, said of Trump: “We’ve been calling him a white supremacist and now he’s showing the rest of the country what we already knew.”

“The people who actually deserve this pardon are the people who were in Tent City and who had to endure the 120-degree summer heat and who were victims of [Arpaio’s] rage.”

Though the US constitution empowers the president to grant pardons, constitutional scholars have been sharply critical of the idea of pardoning Arpaio for defying a federal judge’s order to cease engaging in unconstitutional behavior. Such a pardon would be “an assault on the federal judiciary, the constitution and the rule of law itself”, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman wrote for Bloomberg.

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Hilarie Bass, president of the American Bar Association, said in a statement: “Pardoning a law enforcement officer who has disobeyed the courts and violated the rights of people he has sworn to protect undercuts judicial authority and the public’s faith in our legal system.”



Trump’s behavior has frequently raised concerns about his respect for the judiciary – a coequal branch of government with the executive. During his campaign, Trump said a federal judge of Mexican heritage was incapable of ruling fairly over a case involving Trump University. He also repeatedly lambasted judges who ruled against his travel ban.

The reaction among Arizona lawmakers was sharply divided. Republican congressman Paul Gosar welcomed the pardon, saying it “reflects the very reason we voted President Trump into the Oval Office, to uphold the rule of law”. But Phoenix mayor Greg Stanton, who accused Trump of stoking racial tensions with his Phoenix rally, called the pardon a “slap in the face to the people of Maricopa County, especially the Latino community”.

Congressman Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, said on Twitter he was not surprised by the pardon: “Racists always back up racists.”

In another controversial move on Friday, Trump approved a directive that prohibited transgender people from enlisting in the armed forces but stopped short of instructing the Pentagon to remove trans individuals already in the military. The directive jeopardizes the futures of thousands of trans service members, dozens of whom advocacy groups have already mobilized for possible lawsuits.

Molly Redden contributed additional reporting