Posted on 08/28/2017 6:47:07 AM PDT by Moseley
"The President shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."
Why did President Donald Trump pardon Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, late Friday night? The greatest weakness of conservatives is that we are poor at explaining. A President would be wise to always release a full explanation every time he issues a pardon. Sheriff Joe announced that he will be explaining the case against him—”a political witch hunt by holdovers in the Obama Justice Department” this coming week. But first Arpaio wants to check with his attorneys in Arizona, he said. So we may never get much of an explanation.
As an attorney, I was honored to help senior attorney Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch represent some affected parties in the actual case in which Sheriff Joe Arpaio was found to be in contempt of court. We did not represent Arpaio there. It was a civil case brought by the ACLU, Melendres v. Arpaio. I also worked directly on Arpaio’s legal team, under Klayman, challenging President Barack Obama’s Executive Order granting amnesty to millions of illegal trespassers.
First, Arpaio was tried under a false interpretation of the law. Only statutes passed by Congress are “the supreme law of the land.” Executive Branch policy is not. Sheriff Arpaio was enforcing the laws as written by Congress. An Executive Branch policy to ignore the law has no legal effect whatsoever. Yet the courts have unlawfully restricted the States—especially Arizona—from enforcing Congressional statutes (the supreme law of the land) based on Executive Branch dereliction of duty (legally meaningless). So Arpaio was found guilty of enforcing the laws Congress passed in conflict with the Executive Branch not wanting to. (Yes, state police can often enforce certain federal laws.)
(Excerpt) Read more at fairfaxfreecitizen.com ...
But the ACLU claimed—and Judge G. Murray Snow found—that if Arpaio held anyone one minute longer than necessary to process their violation of state law for the additional reason of enforcing immigration law (i.e., holding them for ICE), then the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office violated their civil rights. Even if they were illegal aliens, Snow ruled, Arpaio detaining them to hand them over to ICE was illegal because only the federal government can do that. (And under Bush then Obama the federal government didn’t want to do it.)
One complaint was that someone might be held for investigation who is a U.S. citizen. So what? If my car looked like a car involved in a nearby hit-and-run accident, do you really think the police can’t stop me and hold me to see if I was involved in the hit-and-run? The police can hold a U.S. citizen on probable cause to investigate a possible crime.
And, of course, the ACLU claimed that Arpaio’s office “must have” decided based on racial appearance—for which there was not one shred of evidence. In fact, many of the actual deputies involved were Hispanic themselves.
Another great decision by Trump, the list is long at all the progress in just 7 months.
Judge Snow ordered Maricopa County taxpayers to pay $4 million to Covington & Burling.
Funneling millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to his brother-in-law’s law firm is a serious conflict of interest.
Thanks for the tip (to American Thinker)
And let us not forget Speaker Ryan, who the know it all, was a real piece of shi! by bad mouth President Trump for the pardon.
(Alliteration inevitable and unintended.)
(And I offer apologies--above is irrelevant assonance.)
THanks for your insight. In addition to the legal reasons, we know that fundamental fairness is something President Trump believes very strongly in, and the simple laymans version is, in trying to punish him for doing his job, Sheriff Joe was treated unfairly.
I thought that a State may choose to assist in enforcing Federal law but could not be compelled to do so.
In summary, Sherriff Joe was railroaded by unethical, liberal lawyers, including the judge in the case.
JoMa
Thank you.
Trump should go nuclear on leftist judges and juries. His staff should search out wrong anti-constitutional convictions, and commute sentences by the thousands (if that many can be found).
Excellent points. It looks like there were four separate reasons for the judge to recuse himself.
I believe this was the opposite: the Feds wanted to prohibit Arpaio from enforcing existing Federal law.
The author missed one additional reason: Arpaio was denied a jury trial. That, alone, was judicial misconduct.
BUMP
“I thought that a State may choose to assist in enforcing Federal law but could not be compelled to do so.”
In this case, it appears the plaintiff’s argument was that a policy contained in an executive order supersedes long standing law. Nonsense. That policy may dictate what course of action ICE may take since immigration is a federal matter, but MCSD holding an Illegal until notified by ICE what to do violates no law.
Oh, it would take a book to list all of the irregularities in the case and series of related cases. A column has only limited space. The hair-raising mistakes go on and on. But you are right.
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