WASHINGTON, D.C. – Infowars.com has learned the White House counsel has prepared, at the request of President Trump, a pardon for former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio that is ready for Trump to sign.
The question is whether President Trump will sign the pardon now, before traveling to Phoenix for a rally at the Phoenix Convention Center on Tuesday, May 22 – or if President Trump will sign it at all.
On Monday, Aug. 14, Trump retweeted a Fox and Friends article headlined, “Trump ‘seriously considering’ a pardon for Sheriff Joe Arpaio” – a signal to Trump’s base that he did not intend to travel to Arizona for Tuesday’s rally without having first pardoned Arpaio – or even that Trump might use the Tuesday rally as the stage on which to sign the pardon with Arpaio present, on stage.
Not pardoning Arpaio prior to or during the Phoenix rally could set off a negative reaction among Trump’s base that remembers Sheriff Arpaio as an early and vocal Trump supporter who championed Trump’s rally call during the campaign to “Build That Wall!”
Either way, Trump’s decision will be controversial, especially given Arpaio’s history of enforcing immigration laws the Obama administration wanted ignored, and the divisiveness of the Charlottesville protests with the mainstream media attempting to portray Trump as a white supremacist.
On July 31, U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton found Arpaio guilty of misdemeanor criminal contempt in an opinion she could have written her opinion before the trial even started – an opinion that made clear her prejudice from the start that Arpaio was guilty of misdemeanor civil contempt guilty conviction.
Now at 85-years-old, Arpaio faces a misdemeanor criminal contempt sentence that could include up to six-months in jail.
For Arpaio supporters, this would be a sad end to a distinguished career that includes Arpaio’s service in the U.S. Army from 1950-1953, his service as a police officer in Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas, Nevada, as well as the years he spent working as a top federal drug enforcement officer in foreign countries and the United States.
Arpaio, a former DEA narcotics agent and head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Department of Justice, for Arizona.
Arpaio’s sentencing hearing is scheduled on October 5 – a hearing that will not be held if President Trump pardons him prior to that date.
Arpaio’s attorneys prepare federal ethics charge against District Judge
After filing on Monday, Aug. 14, with the U.S. District Court two motions – one asking for acquittal and the other asking for a new trial, lawyers for Arpaio are preparing to file after sentencing, a federal ethics charge against Judge Bolton.
Arpaio’s attorney, Mark Goldman, Goldman & Zillinger PLLC in Scottsdale, AZ, explained to Infowars.com in an exclusive telephone interview and follow-up email that the judge in the case, U.S. District Susan R. Bolton, was so biased against Arpaio that she could have written her opinion before the trial even started, stating her prejudice from the start that Arpaio was guilty of misdemeanor civil contempt guilty conviction.
“The court, in its findings of fact and conclusions of law totally ignored all of the overwhelming evidence at trial that exonerated the Sheriff,” Goldman told Infowars.com.
“Most importantly, there was no testimony or other evidence produced that in any way proved that the order was ‘clear and definite’ which it must be in order to prove that the order could be disobeyed in the first place,” he continued.
“Not only did the government fail to prove that the order was clear and definite, we proved that it was not clear and definite,” Goldman insisted. “The government’s own star witness, Tim Casey, admitted under cross-examination that the order was ‘ambiguous.’ Just about every witness testified that the order was misunderstood at the time. No one testified that the order was clear and definite.”
Goldman explained that the Obama Department of Justice had charged Arpaio under the wrong statute, both because the statute of limitations had run out on the correct statute and by charging Arpaio under the wrong statute, Judge Bolton could deny him a jury trial.
“There was not testimony that the Sheriff ever told anyone that he was violating or going to violate the order,” he said.
“The government had the FBI and the DOJ working on this case, yet they couldn’t find one person to state that the Sheriff ever suggested that he’d violate the order,” he pointed out.
“Finally, it was proved at the trial that no one at the Sheriff’s department understood the voluminous 40-page order while it was in effect,” Goldman argued. “Only in hindsight did they learn what the order meant after the Melendres court issued a subsequent order!”
Arpaio’s plea to Attorney General Jeff Sessions ignored
Arpaio’s attorney, Mark Goldman, of Goldman & Zillinger PLLC in Scottsdale, AZ, sent to Attorney General Sessions a letter dated June 22, 2017, that was requesting the Department of Justice to consider various pleas before the start of the bench trial then scheduled to begin on Monday, June 26, 2017, before U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton, in Phoenix, Arizona.
Infowars.com has confirmed that several efforts were made to contact Attorney General Sessions directly and through trusted intermediaries in an effort to get Justice Department attention to Goldman’s letter.
Infowars.com can also confirm that Attorney General Sessions was insolated within the Justice Department so that all attempts to communicate with him failed.
Ultimately, Goldman’s letter was ignored, and with the Justice Department’s failure to intervene in the case, Judge Bolton began the bench trial against Arpaio as originally scheduled.
“The criminal contempt allegations stem from an alleged failure of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Offices (MCSO) to comply with an Order of the Court (preliminary injunction) dated December 23, 2011,” Goldman wrote.
“This charge relates back to the prior Obama administration and a time when the Sheriff’s practices were in direct opposition to the Obama administration in regards to immigration policy,” Goldman’s letter continued. “The Sheriff was enforcing the law. The Obama administration appears to have been interested in doing the opposite for apparent political reasons.”
In the letter, Goldman argued the Obama Justice Department allowed Arpaio to be charged with criminal contempt misdemeanor charges under the wrong statute, precisely because the statute of limitations on the correct statute had run out, and the incorrect statute allowed Judge Bolton to deny Arpaio the right to a jury trial.
Goldman’s letter continued:
- “In regards to other aspects of the prosecution, we request that you reconsider the DOJ’s prosecution of this matter because it was incorrectly brought under 18 U.S.C. Section 401. Section 401 relates to a simple criminal contempt of a lawful order. The matter should have been brought under 18 U.S.C. Section 402. Section 402 applies to contumacious conduct that is also a separate crime as more particularly described in the attached Petition. The allegations in this matter compel it to be prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. Section 402 that entitles the offender to a jury trial in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 3691. Additionally, Section 402 offenses come with a one year statute of limitations.
- “Given that the matter was not charged under the correct statute, and consequently the Department of Justice has deprived Sheriff Arpaio of his jury trial right and the applicable statute of limitations, in the interest of justice we request that you move the Court to dismiss the criminal contempt proceedings or, at the very least, move the Court to stay the trial pending a full review of this matter by your office.”
Goldman also argued the Obama Justice Department had timed various announcement coincident with Arizona voting deadlines in 2016, so as to influence voters to defeat Arpaio’s bid for re-election – an effort Goldman claimed was successful.
“The announcements had an undeniable effect upon Sheriff Arpaio’s campaign to be elected to a seventh term in office,” Goldman wrote. “The impact on Sheriff Arpaio’s re-election campaign is clear. He is no longer Sheriff.”
Obama holdovers in the DOJ Public Integrity Section
The irony of the case is that the criminal misdemeanor contempt charge is being pressed against Arpaio by the Public Integrity Section (PIN) of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice – the section within the Justice Department that holds exclusive jurisdiction over the prosecution of alleged criminal official misconduct.
“How can the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department prosecute me when all I did was to honestly enforce immigration laws on the books?” Arpaio asked Infowars.com in an exclusive telephone interview.
“The Public Integrity prosecutors who are still after me are all Obama hold-overs who went so far as to charge me under the wrong statute so they could deny me a jury trial, refusing to drop their open-borders amnesty agenda,” he argued.
“If this is Attorney General Sessions’ idea of ‘public integrity,’ then Sheriff Arpaio is right and Barack Obama is still running the Justice Department,” Arpaio said.
“How is it that Attorney General Sessions ignored a letter Sheriff Arpaio’s attorneys had hand-delivered to his office, when all Sheriff Arpaio requested was that the Justice Department consider insisting the Public Integrity Section would allow me my right as a U.S. citizen to a trial before a jury of my peers?” Arpaio asked.
“It’s ironic that Sheriff Arpaio is being persecuted by an Obama hold-over Justice Department Public Integrity Section that thinks denying him a jury trial doesn’t implicate them in official misconduct for which they should be charged and criminally prosecuted,” Arpaio insisted.
An Obama DOJ “revenge prosecution”
The case against Arpaio began with the 2007 traffic stop that resulted in the arrest of Ortega Melendres, a Mexican tourist who was a passenger in an automobile stopped in Cave Creek, Maricopa County.
Melendres charged the Maricopa County sheriff’s officers were “fundamentally stopping brown-skinned people with the pretext of looking for criminals.”
The case developed into a class action lawsuit that caught the attention of Tom Perez, then in the Civil Rights division of the Obama Justice Department.
Arpaio, a target of the Obama administration for years because of his determination to enforce strictly existing immigration laws, was seen by Perez as implementing in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) a “systematic policy” that set law enforcement rules and procedures to be intentionally discriminatory to the rights of Hispanics.
Perez began his legal career as a LaRaza attorney in Maryland. He currently is Chair of the Democratic National Committee, a major force in moving the Democratic Party in a hard-left direction.
On Oct. 2, 2013, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow ruled that Arpaio and his agency had relied on racial profiling and illegal detentions to target Hispanic.
Snow ordered Arpaio to make mandatory changes in MCSO office law enforcement procedures, requiring officers to radio the basis for each traffic stop before contacting people in the vehicle, the video recording of all traffic stops, increased training for and monitoring of MCSO office employees, and the implementation of comprehensive record keeping.
On May 12, 2016, Judge Snow held Arpaio in civil contempt of federal court, ruling that Arpaio an three of his aides violated the judge’s 2013 order that was meant to curtail “racial profiling” by MCSO officers.
Obama and Perez plan to oust Arpaio from office
Largely as a result of the adverse publicity from facing criminal contempt charges, Arpaio lost on Nov. 8, 2016, his seventh bid to be elected Maricopa County Sheriff.
The challenger, Paul Penzone, a Democrat and a former Phoenix police sergeant who lost to Arpaio in 2012, won the sheriff’s election, 54.9 percent to 45.1 percent, running on a campaign designed to be sympathetic to Arizona’s growing Hispanic voter base.
Throughout the entire case, Perez pursued Arpaio with a vengeance.
On Jan. 5, 2012, when the Department of Justice dropped the initial criminal case against Arpaio in favor of pursuing the civil case, the Department of Justice sent the author an email, explaining, “If MCSO wants to debate the facts rather than fixing the problems stated in our findings, we will do so by way of litigation.”
According to information provided the author by a credible whistleblower, while the Department of Justice was prosecuting Arpaio from 2008 to 2010, the National Security Agency conducted electronic surveillance of the various Arizona-based federal judges on the case, as well as on Arpaio, and on the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
At the same time, Department of Justice attorneys under the direction of Attorney General Eric Holder maintained an on-going telephone back-channel discussion with the federal judge assigned to handle the case.
That the Department of Justice conspired to defeat Arpaio is suggested by the timing of his criminal indictment.
In mid-October 2016, with the election approximately three weeks away, the Justice Department announced that lawyers were preparing to file criminal contempt of court charges against Arpaio for his alleged violation of Judge Stone’s orders in the Melendres case.
Has Arpaio said one damn word about Hammond or Bundy?