he s very strong on borders, very strong on illegal immigration. he is loved in arizona. i thought he was treated unbelievably unfairly when they came down with their big decision to go get him right before the election voting started, as you know, and he lost in a fairly close election. he would have won the election but they just hammered him just before the election. i thought this was a very, very unfair thing to do. when i mentioned him the other night, you saw the massive crowd we had. the people went crazy when i said, what do you think of sheriff joe, or something to that effect. the place went absolutely crazy when i was in arizona last week. and as far as pardons are concerned, i actually did this just before the meeting because i assumed somebody would ask me the question. i didn t know it would be you. as you can attest, you didn t even know you would be called. but i thought i would, and sheriff joe is a great veteran of the military, great law enforcement person. somebody
he s done a great job for the people of arizona. he s strong on borders and strong on illegal immigration. he is loved in arizona and i thought he was treated unbelievably unfairly when they decided to go get him right before the election voting started as you know and he lost in a fairly close election. he would have won the election but they hammered him before the election and i thought that was a very, very unfair thing to do. when i mentioned him the other night, the people went crazy, i said what do you think of sheriff joe or something to that effect and the place went crazy when i was in arizona last week. as far as pardons are concerned, i actually did this just before the i assumed that someone would ask me the question. i didn t know it would be you, but i thought i would. you know, sheriff joe is a great veteran of the military. great law enforcement person. somebody that s won many, many elections in the state of arizona.
talking about sheriff joe arpaio, who had served there for a quarter century in law enforcement and for most of that time has been a figure drawing a lot of criticism for racial profiling in the patrols used to try to combat illegal immigration but many say he was simply using discrimination and racial profiling to round up potential undocumented immigrants and then once those who were detained, they were put in harsh tent camps, so he s attracted lots of criticism. at the same time, there are those on the far right who believe he s been a tough law enforcement person, and they stood by him. of course immigration huge issue for president trump, and so he had signaled he would do this. one of the things that makes it so interesting, ali, is that typically pardons go through a department of justice process. the president s power on this is clear, but normally there are lots of channels where people review a potential pardon. it takes time. this conviction of federal
for them this they can t have a proper investigation by the most respected law enforcement person in the country. and so they re going to try to protect it. i haven t had a chance to read the bill to determine if it s constitutional. right. i wrote the original special prosecutor legislation, which had a court-appointed special prosecutor and could only be removed by the court. by the court. right. and that was to ensure independence. there were some problems as it turned out with that legislation, but congress let it lapz. so your point is now reportedly using grand juries to help along that cause, if republicans don t want republican members of congress do not want to be seen as krinting to the impeding of what may be a very valid investigation, regardless. outcome. correct. they want to have an independent investigation. that s what they should want to have, that s the american people in the end are going to demand, an honest, professional p independent investigation b
tweeting against his own attorney general, the acting fbi director and russia election meddling investigation. joining us is barbara mcquaide, former u.s. attorney in mitch machine asked to resign by president trump. good to see you, you don t have to like jeff sessions or donald trump or like them both, president trump s tweet this morning attorney general jeff sessions has taken a very weak position on hillary clinton crimes where are e-mails and dnc server and intel leakers? this is just very strange for a president to be tweeting this at his top law enforcement person. well, it really is. it s i think deeply troubling for anyone who cares about the independence of the department of justice. first, he s belittling a very important position in the united states. the attorney general of the united states for all of the rank in file people who work at the justice department. i think it s demoralizing to see