Trump Spends His First Pardon On A Sheriff Convicted Of Defying A Federal Judge, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Court Orders Still Applied To The People Enforcing Them

The Filing

WASHINGTON. President Donald J. Trump on Friday issued the first pardon of his presidency, choosing for the occasion a former Arizona sheriff who had been convicted weeks earlier of willfully refusing to obey a federal judge, an action the White House described as a long-overdue correction to the unusual notion that law enforcement should follow the law.

The recipient, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, had been found guilty of criminal contempt of court in July for ignoring a 2011 order to stop detaining people based solely on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally, a practice the courts had identified as the racial profiling of Latino residents. Arpaio, who had continued the patrols anyway, faced up to six months in jail and was scheduled to be sentenced in October. The pardon arrived before that sentencing could occur, sparing him the experience of a consequence.

In keeping with the milestone, the President declined to route the request through the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney, the office that ordinarily vets applicants over a period of years for remorse and rehabilitation. Administration officials noted that such review would have been superfluous in the case of a man who had expressed neither, and praised the efficiency of a process that consisted of the President deciding.

The clemency was announced on a Friday evening as Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas, a timing the President later addressed directly. "In the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they would be normally," Mr. Trump told reporters, clarifying that the pardon of a man convicted of defying the Constitution had been scheduled for maximum viewership.

Legal scholars observed that the pardon was historically distinctive in that it forgave not an ordinary crime but the act of disobeying a court, a use of the power that effectively informed every judge in the country that their orders were now suggestions for officials the President happened to favor. The White House characterized this concern as proof that the system was working.

At press time, the President was reported to be deeply moved by how well the pardon had been received, and was already considering who else might benefit from the discovery that loyalty, rather than law, was the relevant qualification.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who debuts the pardon power as a personal loyalty instrument, dispensing it without Justice Department review and reaping the gratitude of his base for a rally promise kept.
§Joseph Arpaio, whose criminal contempt conviction is erased weeks before he could be sentenced, converting a guilty verdict into a closed matter.
§Stephen Miller and the immigration-crackdown movement, whose most aggressive practitioner is publicly rewarded rather than jailed, signaling that harsh enforcement carries upside and little risk.
§The President's law-and-order base, handed a vivid demonstration that the man they cheered at rallies would face no penalty.
§Officials tempted to defy a court order on the President's behalf, who now have a documented example that the consequences can be undone from the Oval Office.
§The theory of an unreviewable pardon power and the conservative legal movement, which gains an early, unchallenged test of how far the clemency power can reach.
§Future presidents, who inherit the precedent that the pardon can be used to reward defiance of the judiciary itself.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment