Let’s call it what it was, obstruction of Justice. A fact which becomes even more obvious when we remember that Trump previously tried to get James Comey to drop the case against Michael Flynn, now we discover from the WaPo that Trump asked Jeff Sessions to drop the case against bigot Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
As Joseph Arpaio’s federal case headed toward trial this past spring, President Trump wanted to act to help the former Arizona county sheriff who had become a campaign-trail companion and a partner in their crusade against illegal immigration.
The president asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions whether it would be possible for the government to drop the criminal case against Arpaio, but was advised that would be inappropriate, according to three people with knowledge of the conversation.
After talking with Sessions, Trump decided to let the case go to trial, and if Arpaio was convicted, he could grant clemency.
So the president waited, all the while planning to issue a pardon if Arpaio was found in contempt of court for defying a federal judge’s order to stop detaining people merely because he suspected them of being undocumented immigrants. Trump was, in the words of one associate, “gung-ho about it.”
Part of what I find amazing about this is that none of this was even up to Jeff Sessions. The original discrimination trial which was brought by the DOJ was settled last year. Arpaio lost that case. Under the terms of that settlement Arpaio was required simply to stop discrimination and he was only under contempt of court because he refused. to. stop. discrimination. against. Latinos. That wasn’t an issue between him and the DOJ anymore, it was between him and the court.
What is “Terrorism” again?
ter·ror·ism
ˈterəˌrizəm/
noun
-
the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
The original issue from the discrimination case was this:
The case began in 2007 when Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres, a Mexican tourist legally in the U.S., was stopped outside a Cave Creek church where day laborers were known to gather. Melendres, a passenger in a car driven by a white driver, claimed that deputies detained him for nine hours and that the detention was unlawful.
Eventually, the case grew to include the complaints of two Hispanic siblings from Chicago who felt they were profiled by sheriff's deputies, and an assistant to former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, whose Hispanic husband claimed he was detained and cited while white motorists nearby were treated differently.
Please recall that many these detentions occurred before Arizona’s SB1070 law was implemented and went to the Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the most hotly disputed part of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, S.B. 1070, which requires police to determine the immigration status of someone arrested or detained when there is “reasonable suspicion” they are not in the U.S. legally. The ACLU, along with a coalition of civil rights organizations, will continue to challenge the Arizona law on other constitutional grounds.
But again not all of the law was upheld, the SCOTUS while allowing police to check on someone’s immigration status didn’t allow them to do so as a pretext for racial discrimination and harassment. And a lawsuit from last year actually ended the use of the law.
Arizona has announced an end to its practice of requiring police officers to demand the papers of people suspected of being in the country illegally — a move that pulls the last set of teeth from what was once the nation’s most fearsome immigration law.
…
Arizona Atty. Gen. Mark Brnovich issued an informal opinion as part of the settlement that instructs police officers to ignore the provision in the law that requires them to investigate a “reasonable suspicion” that a person is in the country illegally — an element of the law that immigrants’ rights groups warned would lead to racial profiling.
“Officers shall not prolong a stop, detention or arrest solely for the purpose of verifying immigration status,” Brnovich wrote. “Officers shall not contact, stop, detain or arrest an individual based on race, color, or national origin, except when it is part of a suspect description.”
If officers suspects that a person is in the country illegally, they may contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “unless doing so would prolong the stop or detention,” Brnovich wrote.
However, Arpaio just wouldn't stop.
NPR's Richard Gonzales explained how the controversy unfolded:
"In December 2011, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow issued a preliminary injunction ordering Arpaio and his deputies to stop targeting Latino drivers. Prosecutors allege that Arpaio's deputies defied the injunction for at least 18 months. In May 2013, Snow ruled that Arpaio's office had engaged in racial profiling.
"Arpaio and his deputies have admitted to violating the judge's order, but they claim their defiance wasn't intentional."
For these violations, Arpaio was found to have committed civil contempt. But Arpaio has long maintained he did not do so intentionally — and so is innocent of criminal contempt — because the judge's order was unclear. As member station KJZZ notes, "his attorneys argued that the violations were a result of poor communication and a lack of understanding by Arpaio and his command staff."
Now, Bolton has rejected Arpaio's argument.
He "willfully violated the 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," Bolton said in her decision.
This is on top of Arpaio’s other previous discrimination suit settlements involving immigration raids on businesses and also retaliation against his political critics back in 2015.
The Justice Department focused in part on allegations Arpaio’s office retaliated against county officials and judges who were at odds with him in political and legal disputes from 2007 until 2010.
The agency arrested two county officials and a judge on corruption charges that quickly collapsed in court. The county agreed to pay $8.7 million to settle lawsuits by people who said they were investigated on trumped-up allegations. Arpaio contended he was trying to root out corruption in county government.
Arpaio raided dozens of businesses from 2008 through mid-2014 in busts that led to the arrests of more than 700 immigrants who were charged with using fake or stolen IDs to get jobs.
Nine months ago, Arpaio voluntarily stopped the raids, shortly before a judge barred county officials from enforcing two laws that were the legal underpinning of the raids, which were Arpaio’s last major foothold in immigration enforcement.
Arpaio also had a tendency to arrest journalist on who criticized him on bogus charges.
So, in 2007, after New Times had dumped on the sheriff for years, Arpaio, at the zenith of his political influence and popular approval, arrested Lacey and fellow journalist Jim Larkin, supposedly for revealing grand jury secrets—a made-up excuse because the grand jury had never been convened. Late in the evening of October 18, 2007, the sheriff’s deputies showed up at the journalists’ homes and took them into custody.
…
In some ways, the arrest of Lacey and Larkin was a tipping point, because members of the Fourth Estate, “white boys” at that, had been arrested by Arpaio, not just another Latino yard worker. The press to an extent protected its own, and soon the media, some elected officials, and certainly the public turned on the sheriff, especially after a Lacey-Larkin story revealed that Arpaio had sought the online identities and browsing habits of visitors to New Times’ website. Before long County Attorney Andrew Thomas was disbarred, Sen. Pearce was recalled, and Joe Arpaio barelywon his 2012 race. Meanwhile, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin sued the sheriff’s office for false arrest and settled for $3.7 million.
This is in addition to maintaining “Concentration Camp” Tent City jail out in the open Arizona heat
“Hitler! Hitler!” the prisoners chanted to the TV cameras in protest. It was 4 February 2009. More than 200 Latino men in black-and-white striped uniforms, shackled to each other, were being marched towards an outdoor unit especially for “illegal alien” prisoners in Arizona’s infamous jail, Tent City.
The chants were directed at the Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who a few months before had called this outdoor jail close to downtown Phoenix – his own tough-on-crime creation – a “concentration camp” in a speech to political supporters at his local Italian-American club.
When asked about the comment by the Guardian in July, Arpaio brushed it off as a joke. “But even if it was a concentration camp, what difference does it make? I still survived. I still kept getting re-elected,” he said.
Not anymore.
The camp was a crime against humanity that included chain gangs and has contributed to the highest rate of jail suicides in the nation, although in some cases inmates are killed by the guards or simply died from lack of needed health care as reported by the same reporters that Arpaio falsely arrested.
Furthermore, of the 157 deaths listed on the sheriff's watch on the M.E.'s chart, 34 simply are tagged as having been found dead with no explanation as to cause of death. More mysteriously, another 39 died in the county hospital without explanation. That's 73 deaths — nearly half of all deaths — that county authorities list as "who knows?"
It gets worse. Arpaio’s guards kill inmates or just let them die at a chilling rate. Last year Felix Torrez was picked up for riding his bike to work on the wrong side of the street, taken to jail, and died from a bleeding ulcer while jailers ignored his cries. Or in 2011 Gulf War veteran Marty Atencio was manhandled and Tased by eight guards, then left to die (warning: graphic video). County residents have shelled out more than $140 million to pay for these criminal fuck-ups—one of the earliest and largest being the $8.25 million that Scott Norberg’s family received after the victim died while being restrained.
Lacey’s account describes other inmates who were hauled into one of Joe’s jails, then died for lack of attention—like a diabetes shot.
For the next 60 hours, Deborah Braillard suffered the agonies of hell as she went into a diabetic coma. She died because jailers did not administer insulin.
What’s even more appallingly misleading is that in some cases, the records state that the inmate died at the hospital, not in Arpaio’s corrupt hell hole, because the victim was transported to the hospital after dying in jail. So, we don’t really know how many died in the sheriff’s custody, but it’s a big, unacceptable number.
Some estimates are that the number of suicides at Arpaio’s jail were as high as 24% which is nearly twice the rate of suicides in Houston. That’s on top of the fact that while Arpaio illegally targeted Latinos, Country Officials and Reporters for arrest, then mistreated or simply allowed an record setting number of inmates to die, he also completely failed to address hundreds of sexual assault cases in his jurisdiction, even including assaults against children.
"Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Phoenix-based department repeatedly arrested Latinos illegally, abused them in the county jails and failed to investigate hundreds of sexual assaults, the Justice Department charged after a three-year civil rights investigation," the Los Angeles Times reported. The investigation found "432 cases of sexual assault and child molestation, often involving Latinos, that were not properly investigated over a three-year period."
Additionally, "one Latino was intentionally hit by a patrol car and dragged, with instructions for other deputies to 'leave him there ... A Latino motorist was incarcerated for 13 days for not using his turn signal. Emails written by deputies caricatured Mexicans as being from 'Mexifornia,' and deputies derided Latino inmates as 'wetbacks,' 'Mexican bitches,' 'stupid Mexicans' and other epithets."(The Los Angeles Times)
So what you have here is pretty much a hellscape of racial bias, police corruption and frankly government terrorism being used surgically against Latinos — whether they were documented or not — which led to their being targeted, stopped, harassed, arrested and assaulted by deputies, jailed unjustly for extended periods in a “concentration camp” where medical attention was withheld, subjected to the modern day slavery tool of “chain gangs” where conditions were horrific leading many to commit suicide and sexual crimes against them were virtually ignored. This parade of terror, intimidation and harassment was then extended to include members of the press and county government who dared to criticize and point out the corruption.
Brought to us all by Joseph Arpaio.
That’s the kind of person that Donald Trump think is a “stand up guy” who he thought the DOJ should just “let go”, a guy who deserves to be pardoned for his “openly admitted” crimes?
And doing so was probably his third instant of obstruction of justice following his attempts to make Comey let Flynn off the hook and his dictating a bogus statement for Donald Jr. about his clandestine meeting with a Russians with direct connections to the FSB and international hacking schemes.
What this pardon reveals about how Donald Trump — who lets remember thought that the Central Park 5 who were all teenagers at the time should be put to death and still believes that despite the fact they were eventually found to be innocent of all charges, and who thinks the story about General Pershing deterring terrorist by having a mass execution with bullets dipped in pig’s blood is a right fine idea — should be absolutely chilling to anyone who actually believes in the Fourth Amendment, Due Process, the Rule of Law and the tenant of “Innocent until proven guilty.”
Arpaio is simply put, a monster and Trump remains one of his biggest fans.
What Trump will ultimately do to our system of justice before he’s gone should send shivers down everyones spine.
Monday, Aug 28, 2017 · 4:07:55 PM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
Oh, and I can’t believe I forgot this one: Arpaio is still a Birther.
Trump wasn’t the first public figure to question Obama’s citizenship — Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich were among many high-profile Republicans to “just ask questions” — but he was the most committed. And then in August of 2011, four months after Obama released his long-form birth certificate, a jowly sheriff from Arizona with a national profile as a hard-ass sadist announced plans to investigate the document.
Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio would assign a five-man “Cold Case Posse” to probe the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate, he told Jerome Corsi, the former World Net Daily columnist and Ur-birther. “When I get allegations brought to me by the citizens of Maricopa County, I look into the allegations, just like I am doing here,” he said at the time.
Six months later, Arpaio announced at a press conference that the long-form birth certificate was a “computer-generated forgery.” That’s when Trump took notice. Within a couple weeks of Arpaio’s announcement, Trump had printed out an Associated Press article about the charade and handwritten a note to the sheriff. It read:
Joe
Great going—you are the only one with the guts to do this—keep up the good fight.
Donald Trump