“I am seriously considering a pardon for Sheriff Arpaio,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday. “He has done a lot in the fight against illegal immigration. He’s a great American patriot and I hate to see what has happened to him.”
From NY Mag:
Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt of court a couple of weeks ago for his serial defiance of a court order aimed at stopping his department’s eager use of racial-profiling methods. He was probably lucky he was only popped for a misdemeanor, since the racial profiling went on for years and Arpaio at one point admitted his lawyers had hired a private eye to investigate the wife of the judge he was battling. Then there’s the fact that his fight with the courts cost his county’s taxpayers well over $50 million. He could have been ordered to make restitution.
Trump likely does sympathize with the old nativist demagogue — and not just because Arpaio was an early and avid backer of Trump’s own campaign, and a big-league fellow birther.
Image: Gage Skidmore/Wikipedia
