CRIME/LEGAL/RACISM/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump offered a fiery defense on Monday [8-29-17] of his decision to pardon Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff, as Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas last week — and claimed he timed it to attract maximum attention as television viewers were glued to storm coverage.
Mr. Trump, who said his action was no worse than late-term pardons issued under the last two Democratic presidents, also suggested that the Justice Department had political motives during the Obama administration for charging the former Maricopa County sheriff in a case concerning his illegal profiling of Hispanics. Mr. Arpaio was convicted last month of criminal contempt for his tactics in hunting down and jailing immigrants in the country illegally, but he was pardoned before his sentencing…
He rattled off a prepared list of people who were pardoned by previous presidents, homing in on Bill Clinton’s pardoning of the Democratic donor Marc Rich and Barack Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence, which cut short a 35-year term she received for leaking secret government documents while serving as a low-level Army intelligence analyst. Ms. Manning ultimately served seven years of her sentence before she was released in May…
Mr. Arpaio, 85, served for 24 years as sheriff of Maricopa County. He built a national reputation for harsh conditions in his county jail, and for cracking down against undocumented immigrants. He lost a re-election bid for a seventh term last year, promptly blaming the Obama administration for the criminal contempt charges that were filed against him on Oct. 26 for persisting with profiling Latinos.”
-Glenn Thrush and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Trump Eyed ‘Far Higher’ Ratings in Pardoning Joe Arpaio as Hurricane Hit,” The New York Times online, Aug. 28, 2017