Sheriff Joe Arpaio
Can you say vindictive peckerhead? Of course you can: "Sheriff Joe Arpaio."
Earlier this week I reported that Arpaio had cost citizens of Maricopa County in Arizona $975,000, the result of another lawsuit filed against the sheriff and county. On Monday the 9th Circuit of Appeals found that Arpaio and then County Attorney Andrew Thomas had brought frivolous charges against, and otherwise harassed, County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox. Last year another former County Supervisor, Don Stapley, received a $3.5 million settlement in a similar case.
To date, Arpaio has cost citizens of Maricopa County more than $44 million because of illegal, vindictive, unethical and unnecessary lawsuits and other actions that he and crony Andrew Thomas leveled against their enemies, or people they believed were enemies because they did not sanction the sheriff's police state tactics.
That's been a common Arpaio ploy: target politicians, journalists, activists and other people with whom you disagree, harass them, file charges against them, and even arrest them. Some of these victims are now fighting back, often resulting in large settlements that the county's citizens must absorb—rather than hire teachers and police, open libraries, maintain parks or staff hospitals.
Now what? Please read below the fold for more.
According to Stephen Lemons in Phoenix New Times, Arpaio is now investigating Eric Holder's Department of Justice and the judge who last year found his office guilty of racial profiling. The sheriff is irked at DOJ because Holder is still investigating him for abuse of powers, a point Arpaio has not been reluctant to make in his fundraising appeals to goobers.
The Obama Justice Department has been rolling out lawsuit after lawsuit to take me down.
Of course, another way this
county sheriff in Arizona is trying to get back at Obama is to appoint himself as
the lead investigator of the president's birth certificate, an inquiry that continues. In March these birther numbskulls said we could expect "universe-shattering" evidence, but so far … crickets.
And Judge Murray Snow? Well, he's a Mormon Republican official appointed by George W. Bush, but he had the audacity in 2013 to rule against the Sheriff's Office:
A federal judge ruled [in May 2013] that Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies had violated the constitutional rights of Latinos by targeting them during raids and traffic stops here and throughout Maricopa County.
Taking on "activist judges" with whom the sheriff disagrees is not uncommon—at least 10 Arpaio-Thomas cases were filed against judges. In 2010, for instance, they brought racketeering and felony charges against criminal court judge
Gary Donahue, because he had ordered County Attorney Thomas to drop a frivolous case Arpaio wanted to pursue. In
his lawsuit, Donahoe
claimed "malicious prosecution, defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress," and eventually received a $1.2 million settlement. Thomas has since been
disbarred for his piss-ant prosecutions, but he's running for governor this year. Natch!
The current Arpaio investigation of Judge Snow, like the Obama pushback and everything else, stems from spite, vindictiveness and crazy conspiratorial BS. According to New Times, Arpaio's deputies, on the taxpayers' dime, are now
focused on U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow, the Justice Department, and a bizarre conspiracy theory that the DOJ and Snow have conspired to somehow "get" Joe Arpaio.
Moreover, the person peddling the conspiracy is computer scammer Dennis Montgomery, who, Lemons points out, was the subject of a 2010
Playboy article titled
"The Man Who Conned the Pentagon." It seems Montgomery, in the wake of 9/11, convinced the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies that he had developed software that could decrypt terrorists' emails. Montgomery bilked the nation out of millions of dollars, but he didn't provide any useful information. He then scammed several other businesses before going bankrupt.
Now Sheriff Joe Arpaio's gumshoes are supposedly working with Montgomery "who, the sources say, has convinced the sheriff that he has information suggesting an anti-Arpaio conspiracy between Judge Snow and the DOJ."
Oh, for pete's sake! Filing bogus charges against political enemies; investigating the president's birth certificate because a gaggle of tea party nitwits asked him to; working with grifters like Montgomery to attack a judge who ordered Arpaio to quit being so damn racist; playing reality TV tough guy with Steven Seagal. That is what Arpaio spends his time and resources on. This is what he's not paying attention to:
His deputies failed to investigate or conducted only the sketchiest of inquiries into hundreds of sex crimes between 2005 and 2007, investigations by Arizona law enforcement agencies have shown. Many of those cases involved molested children.
Next we can expect him to investigate Bowe Bergdahl's release because, of course, it
must be a conspiracy that has something to do with Joe Arpaio.