At a campaign style rally last night in Phoenix, President Trump gave an angry defense of his response to the violence in Charlottesville, blaming the media for distorting his position.
Trump jumped from topic to topic. He threatened to shut down the government over the border wall funding, and strongly hinted that he might pardon former Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff Joe r Pio, convicted of criminal contempt for intentionally disobeying a judge's order to stop traffic patrols that targeted immigrants. Was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job? That's what he should have had a jury. But you know what, I'll make a prediction. I think he's gonna be just fine. Okay.
Trump said he quote won't do it tonight because he doesn't want to cause controversy. The five year old r Pio became infamous during his twenty four years as sheriff for a litany of misconduct, including aggressive enforcement of immigration laws by unlawful methods, investigations of his legal and political foes, and racial profiling. Joining us as Mark Osler, he's a professor at St. Thomas School of Law. Mark tell us
what our PIOS stands for in the communities he has policed. Yeah, he's very controversial, and he's someone that you know, expressly invited confrontation with the Hispanic community in in the Phoenix area. UM, and he got it. You know that he um organized special projects, for example, targeting areas where people were picking up day laborers we're going to be uh you know. And and then of course enforcing Arizona's laws uh regarding
immigration that were later largely struck down. UM. And so he's someone that invited controversy in the same way that that Donald Trump has and was divisive in much the same way. So if he was just if he was enforcing Arizona's laws, he didn't write the laws and he didn't strike up How what is the trouble that our peo got in? Yeah, Well, you know, the thing about the thing about law is that what's on the paper
is only part of the story. The discretion that police officers, those in law enforcement and prosecutors have is often most of the story. And what what Sheriff Joe got in trouble for is um racial profiling. Uh that they they adopted tactics that made it clear that they were targeting
Hispanics and also um broader systemic projects that targeted hispanics. Um, it really wasn't so much some of the more controversial things that he did, such as the way he ran the tense City jail and things like that, but had to do UM with with racial and ethnic profiling specifically, and there was a pretty damning report from the Department of Justice, uh in twenty back. I think that. And then you had the contempt. There was an order that
was put in place by the court out there. He was held in contempt to that and then held in criminal contempt just back in July. There's a process for presidential pardons. Has that been followed in any respect in our Pio's case? Um, From what our Pio has said, he said that he did not seek a pardon. That means that he hasn't submitted a petition. The rules are are you know, pretty clear about how this is supposed
to work? Now? Of course, it's a constitutional power of the president, and that means that the president has the ability not to follow the rules if he doesn't want to. However, it does UM, definitely, Mark. This is something different than what we usually see with clemency. Well, what normally would happen. Let's he had put in a petition for for a pardon. What what is the process before it actually gets to
the president. Yeah, the process is pretty extensive that it is reviewed by the staff at the Partner Attorney, the partner Attorney's official at the Department of Justice. Then the pardoner Attorney looks at it, passes along to the Deputy Attorney General. The Deputy Attorney General often as a staff member that previews it before he or she looks at it. From the deput Attorney General, it doesn't go all the
way to the Attorney General. It then goes over to the White House to the office of the White House Council. It's reviewed by staff there, then goes to the White House Council, and then goes to the President finally. So there's there's really seven steps potentially a review here. So what kind of a message would it send if Trump
actually did pardon our Pio. Yeah, it's it's significant because what we're talking about here, it's not it's not really the same as Mark rich or Scooter Toby, where there were presidents they're helping out someone who is a friend or a supporter or a Uh, an employee in the case of Libby. Here, it's a statement issue that uh, you know, it would really be perceived and I think correctly as Donald Trump saying, uh, you know, this is somebody like me, This is somebody I support. I support
the values that he expressed in his work. And the reason that's going to be so controversial in a way that the statute, you know when he said Confederate statutes are beautiful things that shouldn't be taken down. Well, there we're talking about. Racism has existed a hundred and fifty years ago, embedded in an institutive slavery with uh, with this issue, with this potential pardon, he's dealing with racism
as it exists today, embedded in the mechanism of criminal law. Well, is our pardons sometimes issued for what seemed to be political reasons like this? Sure, yeah, I mean although very often when we when we label something a political pardon, we're really talking about about favoritism. That George H. W. Bush issued clemency for some of the people who were involved in Iran contra. Uh, you know, we had Scooter Libby, we had Mark Rich, we had you know, we've we've
had that uh, kind of pardon for a while. UM. But what I think is different about this is this political in a way that it's making a political statement about law enforcement. UM. And Trump's been pretty explicit, especially in what we heard in the rally last night, in making it clear that's what he's after. Our PIO is eighty five years old. He faces six months in jail, up to six months in jail, and attorneys who have been following the case doubt that someone of his age
and with no criminal record would actually serve time. Is that Is that your or opinion? And what does that say about what Trump wants to do in pardoning him? Right? I completely agree with that. I can't see a judge giving him even the six months or a fraction of that. I don't. I don't think that's going to happen to a man of his age, and he's lost in election already. He's you know, there's not the danger of him continuing these activities. There's someone new in office who's who's changed
those policies. UM. But uh, you know that does go to given that there really isn't much risk of this five year old man going to jail. UM, what's the message that Trump is really sending and I think it has to do with issues much deeper than any one person. I should say that our Pio told the Associated Press that he wasn't disappointed that Trump didn't pardon him yesterday. He said, they've just decided not to do with tonight. We'll have to see if and when it occurs in the future.