Trump considering pardon for Joe Arpaio

[Mormolyce]

lol priceless, straight from OPs mouth, DarkTZeratiul

You are aware that I'm distinguishing "white trash tattoos" from tattoos that don't suck, right?

I like tattoos.

[Breccia]

Arpaio: If they can go after me, they can go after anyone

He was ordered to stop racial profiling, refused, and was found in contempt of court. They weren't "going after you" you were warned and refused.

[draynay]

Arpaio: If they can go after me, they can go after anyone

He was ordered to stop racial profiling, refused, and was found in contempt of court. They weren't "going after you" you were warned and refused.

Well it makes sense that he would be surprised to find out the law applies equally to everyone since his career was predicated on the opposite.

[Mayhem]

Well it makes sense that he would be surprised to find out the law applies equally to everyone since his career was predicated on the opposite.

So at least he was sincerely thinking laws don't apply equally.

Oh and btw. was this guy just voted into office or did he needed to have some qualifications?

[Alakallanar]

Voted into office of course. Competence or compliance with the law not required.

Just ask Roy Moore: Elected as Chief Justice of the Alabama SC. Removed from office defying a ruling regarding pre-session prayers & 10 commandments plaque. Gets elected as Cheif Justice again since apparently, getting removed from office isn't seen as disqualifying. Gets suspendend for enforcing same-sex marriage ban in defiance of SCOTUS ruling. Has now good chances of becoming the next senator for Alabama...

[Mayhem]

Voted into office of course. Competence or compliance with the law not required.

Just ask Roy Moore: Elected as Chief Justice of the Alabama SC. Removed from office defying a ruling regarding pre-session prayers & 10 commandments plaque. Gets elected as Cheif Justice again since apparently, getting removed from office isn't seen as disqualifying. Gets suspendend for enforcing same-sex marriage ban in defiance of SCOTUS ruling. Has now good chances of becoming the next senator for Alabama...

This is all kinds of unreal.

[Glorious Leader]

This is all kinds of unreal.

Unfortunately its very real. Trump threw his support behind the other guy though even though roy moore really tried hard to kiss the ring.

[IamStardust]

How can he be pardoned? From my understanding a pardon "carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it."

Arpaio is appealing the decision which seems contrary to the acceptance or confession of guilt. Am I missing something?

Also there is a minimum five year wait between the last date of incarceration and the date of the application in regards to clemency. Has it been 5 years?

Edit: grammar.

[Breccia]

How can he be pardoned? From my understanding a pardon "carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it."

Arpaio is appealing the decision which seems contrary to the acceptance of confession of guilt. Am I missing something?

No, actually that's a good point. The assumption would be the Arpaio would "admit" guilt with a wink to the cameras.

[Lenonis]

What is missing in this discussion is the issue with a self described "law and order" president issues a pardon.

[solinari6]

Also there is a minimum five year wait between the last date of incarceration and the date of the application in regards to clemency. Has it been 5 years?

My understanding is there is a 5 year wait on APPLYING for a pardon. But the president can pardon anyone at anytime, even if they haven't been convicted. That's how Nixon was pardoned.

[Mormolyce]

An interesting read - albeit long.

Arpaio Pardon Would Show Contempt for Constitution
And there would be only one remedy for Trump's disrespect: impeachment.

If President Donald Trump pardons Joe Arpaio, as he broadly hinted at during a rally Tuesday in Arizona, it would not be an ordinary exercise of the power -- it would be an impeachable offense. Arpaio, the former sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, was convicted of criminal contempt of court for ignoring the federal judge’s order that he follow the U.S. Constitution in doing his job. For Trump to pardon him would be an assault on the federal judiciary, the Constitution and the rule of law itself.

To see why pardoning Arpaio would be so exceptional -- and so bad -- you have to start with the sheriff’s crime. Arpaio wasn’t convicted by a jury after a trial for violating some specific federal statute. Rather, he was convicted by a federal judge on the rather unusual charge of criminal contempt of court.

Specifically, Arpaio was convicted this July by Judge Susan Bolton of willfully and intentionally violating an order issued to him in 2011 by a different federal judge, G. Murray Snow.

The order arose out of a civil suit against Arpaio brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, accusing him of violating the law by detaining undocumented immigrants simply for lacking legal status.

Snow issued a preliminary injunction that ordered Arpaio to stop running so-called saturation patrols -- police sweeps that essentially stopped people who looked Latino and detained those who were deemed undocumented. The basic idea was that the profiling, warrantless stops and detention were unconstitutional.

Yet despite the federal court’s order, Arpaio kept running the unlawful patrols for at least 18 months, and publicly acknowledged as much.

Federal judges don’t much like it when their orders are flouted. Snow held extensive hearings in November 2015, and in July 2016 he issued a lengthy opinion finding Arpaio in civil contempt of court. Snow didn’t mince words. He wrote that the department’s “constitutional violations are broad in scope, involve its highest ranking command staff, and flow into its management of internal affairs investigations.”

Crucially, Snow found that Arpaio’s violations had been intentional. But a civil finding of intentionally violating a court order can also trigger a separate proceeding for criminal contempt of court. That’s what happened to Arpaio. To ensure that the judge whose orders were flouted wouldn’t be judging Arpaio criminally, the criminal contempt charges went to a different federal judge.

Judge Bolton convicted Arpaio of criminal contempt. She found he had “willfully violated” the federal court’s order “by failing to do anything to ensure his subordinates’ compliance and by directing them to continue to detain persons for whom no criminal charges could be filed.” And she held that Arpaio had “announced to the world and to his subordinates that he was going to continue business as usual no matter who said otherwise.”

This is the crime that Trump is suggesting he might pardon: willful defiance of a federal judge’s lawful order to enforce the Constitution.

It’s one thing to pardon a criminal out of a sense of mercy or on the belief that he has paid his debt to society.

It’s trickier when the president pardons someone who violated the law in pursuit of governmental policy, the way George H.W. Bush pardoned the Iran-Contra participants, including Oliver North.

But it would be an altogether different matter if Trump pardoned Arpaio for willfully refusing to follow the Constitution and violating the rights of people inside the U.S.

Such a pardon would reflect outright contempt for the judiciary, which convicted Arpaio for his resistance to its authority. Trump has questioned judges’ motives and decisions, but this would be a further, more radical step in his attack on the independent constitutional authority of Article III judges.

An Arpaio pardon would express presidential contempt for the Constitution. Arpaio didn’t just violate a law passed by Congress. His actions defied the Constitution itself, the bedrock of the entire system of government. For Trump to say that this violation is excusable would threaten the very structure on which is right to pardon is based.

Fundamentally, pardoning Arpaio would also undermine the rule of law itself.

The only way the legal system can operate is if law enforcement officials do what the courts tell them. Judges don’t carry guns or enforce their own orders. That’s the job of law enforcement.

In the end, the only legally binding check on law enforcement is the authority of the judiciary to say what the law is -- and be listened to by the cops on the streets.

When a sheriff ignores the courts, he becomes a law unto himself. The courts’ only available recourse is to sanction the sheriff. If the president blocks the courts from making the sheriff follow the law, then the president is breaking the basic structure of the legal order.

From this analysis it follows directly that pardoning Arpaio would be a wrongful act under the Constitution. There would be no immediate constitutional crisis because, legally speaking, Trump has the power to issue the pardon.

But the pardon would trigger a different sort of crisis: a crisis in enforcement of the rule of law.

The Constitution isn’t perfect. It offers only one remedy for a president who abuses the pardon power to break the system itself. That remedy is impeachment.

James Madison noted at the Virginia ratifying convention that abuse of the pardon power could be grounds for impeachment. He was correct then -- and it’s still true now.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...r-constitution

Voted into office of course. Competence or compliance with the law not required.

Just ask Roy Moore: Elected as Chief Justice of the Alabama SC. Removed from office defying a ruling regarding pre-session prayers & 10 commandments plaque. Gets elected as Cheif Justice again since apparently, getting removed from office isn't seen as disqualifying. Gets suspendend for enforcing same-sex marriage ban in defiance of SCOTUS ruling. Has now good chances of becoming the next senator for Alabama...

Electing a judiciary is fucking lunacy if you ask me.

[Breccia]

In case you missed it:

[Ripster42]

How can he be pardoned? From my understanding a pardon "carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it."

Arpaio is appealing the decision which seems contrary to the acceptance or confession of guilt. Am I missing something?

Also there is a minimum five year wait between the last date of incarceration and the date of the application in regards to clemency. Has it been 5 years?

Edit: grammar.

It's not a hard rule and only considers the guilty applying for clemency, not for pardoning people. So, in other words, you can still apply whenever you want as you're constitutionally required to be allowed to do so (addressing grievances), but the DoJ likely won't pass it on to the president, although they still might. And the president can pardon whoever the fuck he wants anytime he wants. Except himself. It's argued he cannot pardon himself as the framers insisted no one be their own judge and laid out an avenue to deal with presidential crimes and take away that authority from the president (the impeachment/conviction process in the house/senate). It's also argued that the very word pardon itself requires two parties being involved. You can't beg your own pardon for instance. You beg others' pardon

[Glorious Leader]

It's not a hard rule and only considers the guilty applying for clemency, not for pardoning people. So, in other words, you can still apply whenever you want as you're constitutionally required to be allowed to do so (addressing grievances), but the DoJ likely won't pass it on to the president, although they still might. And the president can pardon whoever the fuck he wants anytime he wants. Except himself. It's argued he cannot pardon himself as the framers insisted no one be their own judge and laid out an avenue to deal with presidential crimes and take away that authority from the president (the impeachment/conviction process in the house/senate). It's also argued that the very word pardon itself requires two parties being involved. You can't beg your own pardon for instance. You beg others' pardon

To be clear wether or not the president hass the ability to pardon himself has never been tested for well obvious reason. Pardon of course immediately implies guilt so if trump were going to pardon himself he had have to own up to whatever. The courts would then resolve the issue if he could pardon himself but it would leave him wide open for impeachment. We could have a case where trump succesfuly pardons himself but is still booted out of office. He could also leave office and then have pence pardon him like gerry ford did for nixon.

[Breccia]

We could have a case where trump succesfuly pardons himself but is still booted out of office.

The essence of comedy is timing. Trump can't pardon himself if he leaves office before being found guilty of anything, and he also can't pardon himself out of an impeachment. So he'd have to allow himself to be found guilty while somehow still in the Oval Office.

[Glorious Leader]

The essence of comedy is timing. Trump can't pardon himself if he leaves office before being found guilty of anything, and he also can't pardon himself out of an impeachment. So he'd have to allow himself to be found guilty while somehow still in the Oval Office.

Which under normal circumstances would be quite purposterous and scandalous but we're in an age where i take nothing for granted anymore.

[Bullettime]

To be clear wether or not the president hass the ability to pardon himself has never been tested for well obvious reason. Pardon of course immediately implies guilt so if trump were going to pardon himself he had have to own up to whatever. The courts would then resolve the issue if he could pardon himself but it would leave him wide open for impeachment. We could have a case where trump succesfuly pardons himself but is still booted out of office. He could also leave office and then have pence pardon him like gerry ford did for nixon.

Any pardons by Trump, on himself or others, are also ammo for Schneiderman as the president can't pardon state level crimes.

The second he signed pardons, New York is going to have those parties in court so fucking fast.

[Glorious Leader]

Any pardons by Trump, on himself or others, are also ammo for Schneiderman as the president can't pardon state level crimes.

The second he signed pardons, New York is going to have those parties in court so fucking fast.

Almost forgot!! Thats right. And he cant do shit about charges at the state level.

[Ripster42]

Any pardons by Trump, on himself or others, are also ammo for Schneiderman as the president can't pardon state level crimes.

The second he signed pardons, New York is going to have those parties in court so fucking fast.

Congress can also find the presidential pardons are obstruction of justice if they were given in trade for favorable/no testimony.