day. he says in a statement the pardon reflects the very reason we voted president trump into the oval office. to uphold the rule of law. congressman to uphold the rule of law is that what happened here? i thought the law decide in arizona that sheriff arpaio was in criminal contempt? isn t it interesting that he wasn t a fair aspect of a trial he asked for a jury trial. from that standpoint this was railroaded all the way through. when you talk about a justice system that was so negligent from the obama administration, set up joe arpaio day one, eric holder or loretta lynch, that s hardly an application of the rule of law. we had jonathan turley on with us before, constitutional scholar, george washington university school of law, who says that that interpretation of it, here simply doesn t hold. you know you call it political prosecution. but the courts, were the ones that ultimately decided he was in criminal contempt. they had told him he needed to
that it spilled out into his work performance. that s where the contempt of court is so serious. that s why it s such a large crime. there were other things that the maricopa county sheriff s office was not doing to satisfy his racist urges to round up as many brown people as he could. yes, you re the lawyer. you re the expert on that. i m practicing law. practicing is the key word. the president sees this as the sheriff executing his duties as sheriff. he has always been an advocate for local jurisdictions complying with federal immigration laws. he views this as what the sheriff was doing in this case. right or wrong, and clearly i m telling you this is how the president views it. him issuing this pardon, he believes that sheriff arpaio s lifetime of service, 50 years in law enforcement and dea and serving our country and in the military, he views that as
i m pleased to inform you that i ve just granted a full pardon to 85-year-old american patriot sheriff joe arpaio. he kept arizona safe. immigration hard-liners, obviously, are rejoicing over that decision. arpaio himself, obviously, appreciative. he tweeted back: thank you@realdonaldtrump for seeing my conviction for what it is, a political witch hunt by holdover toes in the obama justice department. while opponents of the president s immigration policy say it is another divisive move, dan balz writing in the washington post today: in pardoning arpaio, the president has again linked himself to the most extreme elements of the immigration debate. but it is not just liberals who are upset over this. a spokesman for house speaker paul ryan writing, quote: the speaker does not agree with this decision. law enforcement officials have a special responsibility to respect the rights of everyone in the united states. we shouldn t allow anyone to believe that that responsibility is diminished
political hurricane up here in washington, d.c., because not only did that happen, as you said, sebastian gorka left. and so it seems that these sort of stories are at odds. on the one hand it looked like the arpaio pardon was, you know, was to his base, to trump s base. people who the bannonites who support that ideology. but on the other hand, here s sebastian gorka, who was hailed by these folks who s now not at the white house. so it s sort of a question of where are they going what s going to happen in september. yeah. what s interesting, sebastian gorka said that he resigned his position. those within the white house do not concur with that, they just say that he is no longer part of the administration. so you ve got to wonder what kind of machinations were going on behind the scenes, perhaps that general kelly was the one who was calling the shots on that. heidi, with regard to the pardoning power here, how is this perhaps a trial balloon of sorts to test the limit of the
including this president, when he s on his way out, whenever that may be, won t initiate prosecution of people running for office strictly for the purpose of defeating them, which is why the timing of sheriff joe s prosecution was commenced when it was commenced. it was so he would lose the election. and he did. that is now how prosecutions should be commenced. it is not how they should be carried forward and now president trump has undone it. and i m dying to ask you what you meant by whenever that might be when you talk about the end of the president s term. hang on for one month. i want to bring in ana navarro right now who has been listening and wants to weigh in. judges in arizona were clear in their finding. this man was convicted. i just think this pardon is all about politics. i think the timing is all about politics. i think when it didn t happen was all about politics. this was a very political move