Standards of other criminal investigations would have to be applied, to justify the expenditures of Arpaio's office and his subordinate's time on this matter.
Statutory Authority: Is there a statute against this specific allegation of electoral fraud, or would it be under a blanket definition of fraud?
Jurisdiction: How would an action defrauding the State of Arizona justify investigation by a County Sheriff? Wouldn't it be a matter for a state agency, like the Secretary of State, instead?
Statute of Limits: Is there an applicable time frame for a charge to be made?
If Obama is not a natural born citizen the it would surely be fraud for him to solicit, accept, and spend the millions collected from unknowing supporters. It would also be fraud for him to allow his name to be on the ballot.
I am not naive, though. Election officials, governors, and judges don't give a twit about the rule of law.
Perjury statutes would apply.
The people of Arpaio’s county were victims of that perjury.
The crime has widespread enough ramifications that if it was dealt with Arpaio’s county would get the Department of Injustice off their backs so they could actually enforce other laws, so this case should take priority as a prerequisite to be able to do some of the other law enforcement that needs to be done.
Secretaries of State don’t do criminal investigations. And the integrity of both the Arizona US Attorney and AG are compromised already, if I understand correctly. I don’t know if it’s correct or not, but I was told that county sheriffs have jurisdiction over crimes that impact the citizens in their county.
I know of no statute of limitations for perjury.
See, the issues you’re bringing up are exactly what has gotten us into this mess: as long as crooks can manipulate, bribe, threaten, etc the political critter in the place they want to pillage, they have it made because nobody else is ALLOWED to hold anybody accountable to the rule of law. That doesn’t sound like America, where accountability to the rule of law is what made us different than the very tyranny we rebelled against.