Gravest Abuse of Power Yet
By Cristian Farias
... The reason Arpaio’s reprieve is a slap in the face to the courts is that the crime originated in the courts. U.S. District Judge Murray Snow — a deeply conservative George W. Bush appointee who for years oversaw a civil case accusing the sheriff of trampling on Latinos’ constitutional rights — held him in contempt of court for doing precisely the thing he was being sued over. Snow had had it with Arpaio’s recalcitrance: He and his cronies "have demonstrated a persistent disregard for the orders of the Court, as well as an intention to violate and manipulate the laws and policies regulating their conduct" ...
Arpaio’s trail of racist lawlessness is endless. But this was the first time that his disregard for the rule of law rose to the level of a criminal offense — Snow found his violations serious enough under federal law that he felt a referral to the Department of Justice was necessary. And once all was said and done, it was Trump’s own Justice Department that prosecuted Arpaio and scored a conviction against him before a different judge just last month. The evidence was conclusive: "Because the Court finds that Defendant willfully violated an order of the court, it finds Defendant guilty of criminal contempt."
.... The pardon effectively disrupts the work of career DOJ lawyers who were preparing for the sentencing phase; of court officers who were readying a pre-sentence report to guide the sentencing judge; of Arpaio’s own lawyers, who just last week filed court papers seeking to quash Arpaio’s conviction; of the judge who was due to sentence the sheriff in October. The wheels of justice ground to a halt simply because the nation’s chief executive said so. As with other matters that are still within the purview of prosecutors, like Bob Mueller’s inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice in the Russia probe, Trump is once again inserting himself in criminal proceedings that are yet to run their course. As one former White House counsel put it .. "a pardon will have every appearance of being direct interference in the administration of justice" ...
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/joe-arpaios-pardon-is-trumps-gravest-abuse-of-power-yet.html
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