It should come as no surprise that Trump pardoned former Arizona sheriff, Joe Arpaio, before he was sentenced for his Criminal Contempt conviction.
They are, after all, two of a kind.
They bonded during the joint campaign to spread the racist “birther” lie that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States and therefore not eligible to be President.
Both claimed to have sent investigators to Hawaii who turned up evidence to support that claim, although neither ever disclosed the evidence they claimed to have found.
In Trump’s case the claim he sent investigators to Hawaii was probably a lie.
In Arpaio’s case it was true.
You have to wonder how Arpaio could justify using a public employee and public money for such a fool’s errand.
Maybe Maricopa County had a crime free week.
Arpaio’s contempt for the court processes and his abuse of Latinos spans a greater time frame than Trump’s but that is because he was in office longer.
The Phoenix New Times chronicled his abuses throughout his years in office.
He proudly called his jail a “concentration camp” and if you were a Latino inmate, it probably was.
As a publicity stunt, he marched Latino inmates into a segregated pen surrounded by an electric fence.
He erected a tent enclosure and marched inmates through the streets of Phoenix to the tent jail forcing them to wear pink nightgowns and pink underwear.
Once they were housed there, they were forced to live and sleep outside in below freezing temperatures in the winter months and temperatures that soared to over 120 degrees in the Arizona summer.
Over 160 inmates died in Arpaio’s jails during his tenure.
34 of those deaths were the result of inmates hanging themselves.
39 more died in the county hospital without the cause ever being classified.
Twice, the Federal Courts ruled that medical treatment is so deficient that it violates the Constitution.
A paraplegic inmate had his neck broken while being forced into a “restraint chair” because he asked for a catheter.
Another inmate died while deputies were trying to stuff him into the chair.
Pregnant inmates suffered miscarriages and still births because of the lack of medical attention and care.
Arpaio had the reporters from the Phoenix New Times that were covering him arrested, costing the taxpayers of Maricopa County 3.75 million dollars.
The federal Judge hearing the racial profiling case, G. Murray Snow and his wife, were subjected to an investigation by Arpaio’s agency.
The case was ultimately resolved against Arpaio.
It cost Maricopa County 44 million dollars.
Throughout his time in office Maricopa County has paid over one hundred million dollars in claims against his Sheriffs’ Office.
While Arpaio was devoting these resources to his crusade against Latinos, hundreds of sexual assault cases involving child victims were allowed to languish and die.
Despite Judge Snow’s ruling that Arpaio must cease the racial profiling, he continued to engage in it.
That led to the finding of Criminal Contempt by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton.
Perhaps it was the thought of Arpaio being forced to wear a pink nightgown, pink underwear and having to live in one of his tent jails for six months that motivated Trump to pardon him.
Perhaps he viewed him as a “patriot” and one of those “many fine people” that marched through Charlottesville, Virginia chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil.”
I don’t know what motivated him to do this.
What I do suspect is that Trump is testing the pardon waters to see what the Congressional, media and public reaction to his use of the pardon power is.
I think it’s a prelude to more pardons being granted to people named Flynn, Manafort, Kushner and Trump Jr.
I can’t help but believe that if Arpaio had been born in Germany at the turn of the last century, he would have been prosecuted with the others for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg.
I also wonder if Trump had been born at that time and ascended to the office he now holds, whether he would have pardoned all of them.