Joe Arpaio and a Short History of Presidential Pardons

The most recent Friday night “news dump” by the Trump administration included the fact that Donald Trump has pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who terrorized Latinos in his state’s Maricopa County for decades, ordering that motorists be stopped for the “crime” of appearing to be illegal immigrants (many were not even Latino) and then reported to federal immigration authorities. The sheriff also ran notorious outdoor prison camps that denied their inhabitants the most basic rights and protections from the weather, both hot and cold.

According to The New York Times, “[Arpaio’s] Arizona jail once brutally abused a paraplegic prisoner. Prisoners at the jail died at a suspiciously high rate. Latino prisoners were marched into a segregated area with electric fencing. And Arpaio himself described the jail as a ‘concentration camp.’”

We have now learned that earlier this year Trump inquired of his weasely Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions whether Arpaio’s then-pending case for violating a federal court injunction against detaining anyone not suspected of a state or federal crime could be halted. Sessions advised Trump that the case could not be short-circuited, but that any resulting conviction could instead be pardoned. That gave Donald Trump a green light which he has just exercised following Arpaio’s recent conviction, to wit, he signed a get-out-of-jail card for Birther Buddy Joe—a full pardon.

Neither Arpaio nor Trump took the trouble to submit a pardon request in advance to the DOJ Office of the Pardon Attorney for routine consideration. Nor did Arpaio comply with the regulatory requirement that the pardon request be delayed five years past the date when he would become eligible to apply for a presidential pardon, a waiting period “designed to afford the petitioner a reasonable period of time in which to demonstrate an ability to lead a responsible, productive and law-abiding life.” In fact, Arpaio applied for his pardon (at Trump’s suggestion, wink, wink) after conviction but before sentence had even been pronounced.

On the strength of that pardon, Joe is asking on social media that his defense costs be compensated by the public. And the money appears to be pouring in although The National Center for Police Defense had already raised a cool half-million for Joe. Nevertheless, Arpaio has continued sending emails to his supporters asking for more than $1 million for his latest defense fund.

Remind anyone of the James Comey imbroglio? The modus operandus in that matter was for Trump to ask Comey for an investigatory short-circuit to drop the Russia investigation (followed in short order by firing the FBI Director). Hence, when Trump’s suggestion to Sessions that DOJ somehow halt the Arpaio matter didn’t fly, Trump pivoted to a more dramatic exercise of executive power, i.e., a presidential pardon.

An Arizona ACLU lead lawyer in the Arpaio racial profiling case characterized the Trump pardon as “the official presidential endorsement of racism.”

Even more worrisome, the Arpaio pardon appears to be signaling to the prospective witnesses in the Mueller Russia investigation that they have nothing to fear and hence no need to turn state’s witness.

The Constitution provides that a President may pardon federal convictions for crimes or commute sentences for commission of federal crimes. (A President may not pardon impeachment or state or local convictions for crimes.)

And going back to the founding of the country, President George Washington issued a number of pardons including two for men who had been convicted of treason as part of the Whiskey Rebellion during which armed insurgents attacked the home of the tax inspector to protest imposition of a tax on distilled goods to pay for Revolutionary War debts before fleeing along with their fellow insurgents from thousands of armed state militiamen.

Thereafter, President Andrew Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon to persons who had participated in the rebellion against the United States (the Civil War), including three of the co-conspirators in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. President Ulysses S. Grant pardoned all but 500 former top Confederate leaders pursuant to the Amnesty Act of 1872. President Benjamin Harrison granted amnesty and pardon for the offense of engaging in polygamous or plural marriage to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church). President Theodore Roosevelt pardoned one Servillano Aquino two years after his death sentence conviction for anti-American activities in the Philippines.

Moving right along, in the twentieth century President William Howard Taft eventually pardoned the captain of the General Slocum, an excursion steamboat that had caught fire and sunk in the East River, killing more than 1,000 people. President Woodrow Wilson pardoned Frederick Krafft, who had been convicted of violating the Espionage Act, to wit, making disloyal remarks at a street corner speech in 1917 opposing participation of the U.S. in the First World War. President Warren Harding commuted the sentences of anti-war Socialists Eugene V. Debs and Kate Richards O’Hare for sedition under the same Espionage Act. President Calvin Coolidge commuted or pardoned the sentences of Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey (convicted of mail fraud) and Lothar Witzke, a German spy and saboteur. President Herbert Hoover pardoned the Governor of Indiana, convicted of mail fraud with the help of the KKK.

On December 23, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pardoned all persons who had been convicted during the First World War under the Espionage Act and the Selective Service Act. He also pardoned individuals convicted pursuant to Prohibition after its repeal in 1933.

“There is a long history of presidents granting pardons or amnesty to men still in prison following major wars.”

For example, in 1947 President Harry Truman granted pardons to 1,523 men still in prison for refusing to cooperate with the draft in World War II. (Truman even commuted the death sentence of Oscar Collazo, who had attempted to assassinate him, as well as pardoning Boston Mayor James Michael Curley after various fraud convictions.)

President Richard Nixon pardoned William Calley after three years of house arrest for the former soldier’s murder convictions in the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.

President Gerald Ford stunned the nation by granting a full and unconditional pardon to his predecessor Richard Nixon one month after his resignation as President and just before he could be indicted in the Watergate scandal. A week later Ford granted conditional amnesty to all those individuals who had been convicted in anti-Vietnam War protests.

In addition, Ford posthumously restored full rights of citizenship to Confederate President Robert E. Lee more than 100 years after the end of the Civil War.

Moreover, Ford pardoned Iva Toguri D’Aquino—known as “Tokyo Rose”—for her treasonous World War II broadcasts to GIs stationed in the South Pacific at least thirty years after her conviction. Thereafter, Ford pardoned Ernest C. Brace following his court martial from the U.S. Marine Corps because Brace had served nearly eight years as a Vietnam POW.

Not to be outdone, President Jimmy Carter declared an unconditional amnesty for Vietnam war protesters a day after his inauguration in 1977, and also pardoned over 200,000 Vietnam War draft dodgers, many of whom had established new lives in Canada and elsewhere. Carter even granted clemency or a pardon to Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, G. Gordon Liddy, a convicted Watergate burglar, Patty Hearst, the kidnapped brainwashed heiress who robbed banks, and three people who opened fire in Congress in 1954, wounding five Congressmen.

President Ronald Reagan continued the tradition, pardoning two FBI officials who authorized illegal break-ins during the Watergate era, George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees who had been convicted of making illegal campaign contributions and obstructing justice during the Nixon presidency, and Maryland Governor Marvin Mandel, who had been convicted of mail fraud and racketeering.

Continuing the tradition, President George H. W. Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra participants including Elliott Abrams, Robert C. McFarlane, and Caspar Weinberger, as well as Myra Soble, who was involved in the Rosenberg spy ring.

President Bill Clinton pardoned his brother Roger from a drug offense, completed the pardon of Patty Hearst, and pardoned Marc Rich and his partner for tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran. Clinton also pardoned Illinois Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, Arizona Gov. Fife Symington III for bank fraud, the Clintons’ Whitewater partner Susan McDougal, HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros for lying to the FBI, Rep. Mel Reynolds, CIA Director John Deutch, and sixteen members of FALN—Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional, a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that set off 120 bombs in the U.S.—who had been serving long sentences for conspiracy and sedition.

President George W. Bush commuted the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby for his perjury in connection with the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, and issued a posthumous pardon of Charles Winters, who smuggled three B-17 heavy bombers to Israel during its War of Independence.

President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning for providing classified documents to Wikileaks, and the sentences of several other convicted felons for a variety of federal crimes.

Trump has set the bar at a new low and in record time even before sentence was pronounced on Sheriff Arpaio. We must all therefore ask, what’s next?