Liberals went nuts when President Trump recently granted 85-year old Sheriff Joe Arpaio a pardon. Many of those on the left thumbed their nose at the Constitution for 8 years, while Barack Obama committed one of the most unconstitutional acts ever by a president, when he forced Americans to buy insurance. Suddenly, they were all of a sudden concerned about the possibility that President Trump may not have adhered to our Constitution when he pardoned America’s toughest Sheriff on illegal immigration.
Attorney Dario Navarro was one of several leftists who were all of a sudden concerned about the “constitutionality” of President Trump’s actions.
Even the New York Times, who helped to sell Barack Obama’s horrific Obamacare plan is concerned about Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s pardon.
On July 25, 2016, “America’s Sheriff” Joe Arpaio was found guilty of misdemeanor criminal contempt without the benefit of a jury of his peers.
Here are a 6 interesting facts that Breitbart News laid out, regarding the Sheriff Joe Arpaio case, that every American crying “foul” over President Trump’s pardon yesterday needs to know:
The US District judge who tried the case against Sheriff Arpaio was a Bill Clinton appointee.
1. The guilty ruling, by Bill Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton, is the latest chapter of a nearly decade-long saga of legal proceedings against Sheriff Joe initiated by leftist groups opposed to his aggressive policing of illegal aliens.
The charges against 85 year old Arpaio stem from a civil rights suit demanding he cease “racial profiling” in his Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s immigration enforcement operations. After a federal judge issued an order demanding certain practices, Arpaio was charged with contempt for continuing to try to enforce the law as he saw fit.
The misdemeanor charge was a ploy to prevent Sheriff Arpaio from having a jury trial.
2. Because Arpaio was charged only with a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of six-months in jail, the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee him a right to trial by a jury of his peers. Arpaio and his attorneys repeatedly petitioned for a jury, only to be denied by Judge Bolton in March and again in May. Sources familiar with the proceedings have told Breitbart News the decision to charge only the misdemeanor was likely a ploy by federal prosecutors to avoid a jury trial in the community where Arpaio served as sheriff for more than 20 years
According to the NCPD President, the DOJ had no evidence to make their case against Sheriff Arpaio.
3. National Center for Police Defense (NCPD) President James Fotis, who was present in the courtroom, was highly skeptical a Phoenix jury could have ever found Arpaio guilty. He told Breitbart News:
I sat through three days of testimony and it was clear from the beginning that the DOJ had no evidence to make their case. In fact, all of the DOJ’s witnesses made it clear that Judge Snow’s order was unclear and ambiguous. There is no way a jury would have determined that the Sheriff willfully and intentionally violated the judge’s order.
“Judge Bolton’s ruling has caused me to lose my faith in the court system and the federal judicial system,” Fotis added in a NCPD press release.
Over 40,000 signatures were gathered on a petition by current and former law enforcement officers in support of Sheriff Joe Arpaio who they claimed spent his entire career upholding and defending the Constitution.
4. Fotis was hardly the first or only commentator to question the impartiality of Arpaio’s prosecution. In June, his group managed to assemble over 40,000 signatures from current and former law enforcement officers in support of Arpaio, delivering them to the Department of Justice in Washington, DC. “After devoting 56-years of his life to upholding and defending the Constitution, Sheriff Arpaio deserves our nation’s eternal gratitude — not jail time,” those petitions read.
The Judge in the case should have recused himself, but refused to do so.
5. The initial racial profiling suit that eventually led to this conviction also took on political dimensions and its conduct was criticized. The judge in that case, G. Murray Snow, ignored calls to recuse himself based on the fact his brother-in-law is a partner at Covington & Burling, the firm representing those suing Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
President Obama spent much of his 8 years in office trying to find a way to take down America’s toughest Sheriff on illegal immigrants, who also headed up an independent investigation into the alleged fake birth certificate that would prove Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
6. The decision to criminally prosecute Arpaio was taken while the DOJ was run by Attorney General Loretta Lynch. It would be highly unusual for new leadership to intervene and drop an ongoing prosecution, and no such step was taken, despite the aforementioned petitions.
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