Fury erupts over Trump’s pardon of Arpaio

 This pardon sickens me and makes my heart hurt. - Molly

Then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is joined by Joe Arpaio at a campaign event in Marshalltown, Iowa on Jan. 26, 2016.

 By MaggieHaberman

NEW YORK — President Trump’s end-of-the-week pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, a campaign supporter who shares Trump’s hard-line views on immigration, touched off a political outcry that did not abate Saturday.

Democrats condemned the president’s decision, which was made public by the White House on Friday night as Hurricane Harvey churned toward the Texas coast. Some Republicans praised the move, and others criticized it, but most remained silent about a decision that further entangles the party in racial controversy.

Critics said the decision amounted to presidential approval of racism by eliminating the conviction of a law officer who the courts said had used immigration patrols to racially profile Latinos.

They said that while it was within Trump’s constitutional power, it overturned efforts to hold Arpaio accountable.

‘‘Pardoning Joe Arpaio is a slap in the face to the people of Maricopa County, especially the Latino community and those he victimized as he systematically and illegally violated their civil rights,’’ Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said.

Last month, a federal judge found Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff, guilty of criminal contempt for defying a court order to stop detaining immigrants based solely on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally.

The order had been issued in a lawsuit that accused the sheriff’s office of violating the Constitution by using racial profiling to jail Latinos. Arpaio had faced a sentence of up to six months in jail.

Trump thus used his constitutional power to block a federal judge’s effort to enforce the Constitution. Legal analysts said they found this to be the most troubling aspect of the pardon, given that it excused the lawlessness of an official who had sworn to defend the constitutional structure.

Noah Feldman, a law professor at Harvard, argued before the pardon was issued that such a move “would express presidential contempt for the Constitution.”

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