- Donald Trump issued his first presidential pardon to controversial anti-illegal immigration hardliner Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
- Arpaio, known as America's toughest sheriff, has a history of unconventional and inhumane methods, including making prisoners eat rotten food and wear pink underwear.
- Arpaio also used prisoners as props for a reality show and tricked people into arrest for his own amusement.
- Conditions in Arpaio's jails were appalling, with extreme temperatures and limited food.
- Arpaio put women on chain gangs and installed webcams in the jail, which were linked to pornographic sites.
- Multiple large settlements were paid to families of inmates who died in Arpaio's facilities due to incidents of restraint, shocks, and beatings by guards.
- Arpaio's office launched baseless criminal cases against perceived enemies, while failing to properly investigate over 400 sex crimes.

- Joe Arpaio, former sheriff of Maricopa County, was convicted of criminal contempt for racial profiling and violating court orders.
- His department had failed to properly investigate over 400 sex crimes, some involving children.
- Arpaio showed casual indifference towards sex crimes and made baseless charges against his critics.
- His department had a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos, leading to unconstitutional policing.
- Arpaio did not comply with court rulings and continued to detain and turn over suspected illegal immigrants.
- Trump pardoned Arpaio, disregarding the rule of law and the rights of targeted Latinos.
- This pardon sends a message that law enforcement can ignore the Constitution and court orders.

Donald Trump issued his first presidential pardon to the last person who should get one. John Oliver discusses the troubling record of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.

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The only genuine get-out-of-jail-free card.

Pardons are 1 of the most powerful tools available to a president, and they have been used controversially in the past.

Bill Clinton pardoned Mark Rich, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, and as we've mentioned before, Abraham Lincoln once pardoned a man for attempted bestiality.

That's a pretty fuckable horse right there.

I'm just saying I wouldn't kick it out of bed for eating apples.

The point here is, while we were away, Donald Trump issued his very first pardon, and it was a doozy.

A legal lightning bolt from President Trump late Friday.

A presidential pardon for Arizona's controversial anti-illegal immigration hardliner, Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Donald Trump pardons Joe Arpaio, a man who answers the question, what if a decaying russet potato somehow hated Mexicans?

But let's look at that decision, because if the President of the United States is going to use his very first pardon on someone this early in his term, it really is worth knowing exactly who Joe Arpaio is and what the implications of this decision may be.

And you probably may have heard of Joe Arpaio before.

He has carefully cultivated an image over 25 years as a hard-nosed sheriff with unconventional methods that the media has lapped up.

Joe Arpaio is known as America's toughest sheriff.

Sheriff Arpaio, he's been dubbed America's toughest sheriff.

He's known as America's toughest sheriff for his crackdowns on illegal immigration and petty crime.

He brags about making prisoners eat bologna sandwiches so rotten the meat has turned green.

He makes his inmates wear pink, he uses chain gangs.

Inmates are forced to wear striped prison garb and pink underwear.

The pink underwear is fine, but no 1 should be forced to wear horizontal stripes.

Now, Arpaio really didn't mind that coverage.

He actually welcomed it, because he loves being on camera so much that he essentially spent years treating prisoners as props for a reality show.

And sometimes, literally, He actually had a short-lived show called Smile You're Under Arrest, where people with outstanding warrants would be tricked into appearing on a set, only to be pranked in the worst way possible.

These 2 people are actually deputies of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office.

So, dude, you got to smile, because you're under arrest.

Now, for the record, even then, that reference was 15 years old, which is a real wiggity-wack thing to do, dog.

And look, tricking people into arrest for your own amusement is a terrible idea for a reality show.

The only worst idea is not making Peter the Bachelor.

If you are out there, you are and shall forever remain my bachelor.

Now, Alpaia will honestly do anything for a camera.

And if you don't believe me, watch him sing his favorite song, which of course, is Frank Sinatra's My Way, the universal anthem of assholes everywhere.

Watch him sing it for a documentary film crew.

The record shows I took the balls and did it my way.

When Frank Sinatra heard that, he actually climbed out of his grave, walked 400 miles to Arpaio's house, rang the doorbell, and simply said, -"No." -$5,000.

But what does doing it Arpaio's way actually mean?

He touted Arpaio's support on the campaign trail, even having him speak at the Republican convention.

So Trump clearly doesn't seem to have any real problem with Arpaio's way.

And for the record, it is far more than just the eye-catching circus that you've seen so far, and many people were affected.

Maricopa County, where he was the sheriff until just last year, contains over 4000000 people.

That's a higher population than that of 24 states.

And conditions in his tent city weren't just eccentric, they were appalling.

Temperatures there could rise as high as 145 degrees.

Chinese law enforcement officials drop in for some tips from Joe, who just brushed up on his Mandarin.

I hear China very tough on criminal, correct?

I'm asking them, in China, do they put women on a chain gang?

Yes, Arpaio actually put women on chain gangs, so I guess, hashtag feminism?

And look, remember, Arpaio operates jails, not prisons.

And jails are typically for people serving sentences of less than a year, or even just awaiting trial.

Which is not to say that anyone should be subjected to some of Arpaio's treatment.

At 1 point, he actually installed webcams in the jail, 1 of which showed female inmates using the toilet, which wound up being linked to by pornographic sites.

And while the cameras were eventually pulled, the sheriff's office defended themselves with their lawyer saying, they did not show the private parts of any inmates, and no juveniles would have been displayed unless they look older and lie to us.

And just spare a thought there for the attorney who went all the way through years of law school only to have to tell a reporter, don't worry, the women we broadcast taking a shit were probably all adults.

And Arpaio seemed routinely impervious to criticism of any of his tactics.

I have not received any negative comments, other than the Justice Department, or Amnesty International, or the Civil Liberties Unit.

Yes, Joe, but those are the 3 key groups who might criticize you over mistreating prisoners.

You're not going to get complaints from Carl's Jr., the Girl Scouts, and Hootie and the Blowfish.

So, is it frankly any wonder that when a reporter asked inmates whether Arpaio had any nicknames, 1 responded, Hitler, while another responded, Hitler.

And that is a charge that he's defended himself against by saying, my daughter has adopted children of various ethnicities.

I got a black, a Mexican with Down syndrome even, and yet I'm the racist, I'm the fascist, I'm the Hitler.

And look, I'm not gonna argue with him on that 1.

That is why when you play the board game, Guess Who's the Hitler, the first things you ask to narrow it down are, do their daughter got a black?

And do their daughter got a Mexican with Down syndrome even?

Because if their daughter got those, they can't be the Hitler.

--APPLAUSE AND CHEERING weren't just tough and humiliating, they were sometimes deadly.

Over the years, the county has paid out multiple large settlements to families of inmates who've died following incidents in its facilities, including over 8000000 dollars to the family of Scott Norberg, who died in custody after being restrained, shocked, and beaten by guards.

And when 1 officer tried to warn 2 other guards that the inmate was in dire trouble, their response was chilling.

I told him that He was turning blue, I didn't need, I heard purple.

I don't think he was breathing, and he said, -"Who gives a fuck?"

After Spiedel responded to you, who gives a fuck, and you warned Officer Gurney, What did Mr.

Look, you can't see someone dying and say, who gives a shit?

You can't even see something dying and say that, with of course, the sole exception of orchids.

They're high-maintenance little flower cucks and they all deserve to die.

Now, I should tell you, the Justice Department declined to prosecute that case and both Arpaio and the officers insisted they did nothing wrong.

In fact, Arpaio was so unapologetic that both officer who gives a fuck and officer who gives a shit were later promoted, presumably to Lieutenant Whatever-Arsehole and Sergeant Zero-Fucks-Given.

And that promotion, the problem is that promotion sends a pretty clear message to Arpaio's staff.

Almost as clear a message as a president pardoning the man who oversaw all of this.

And remember, Arpaio wasn't just in charge of jails, he was also a law enforcement officer.

Though his respect for the law seemed awfully selective.

Now, over the years, his office repeatedly launched criminal cases against his perceived enemies, be they county officials or even judges, some of which were so shockingly flimsy, they were dismissed or thrown out.

1 civil suit that he brought turned out to be so baseless, it was actually cited in the disbarment of the attorney who brought it, with a member of the disbarment panel saying it was...

Which is not only an amazing statement, It's also actually my favorite Precious Moments figurine.

-...and for America's toughest sheriff, Arpaio seemed to let certain crimes fall through the cracks.

In 2011, it came out that his department had failed to properly investigate more than 400 sex crimes, some of which involved children.

And while Arpaio eventually admitted to that, his apology left a lot to be desired.

If there were any victims out there, I apologize to those victims, if there were any.

If there were any, there were, we know that.

That is a casual indifference to overlooking sex crimes, so egregious, I'm genuinely surprised that Penn State hasn't erected a statue of him.

And amazingly, here's the amazing thing, none of what you have just seen, not the conditions, not the deaths, not the baseless charges against his critics, has anything to do with why he was convicted and needed a pardon.

That stems from racial profiling, which his department has been repeatedly accused of over the years.

And 1 huge investigation made some really troubling allegations.

A three-year investigation by the Justice Department found what it called unconstitutional policing and a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos, who are up to 9 times more likely than whites to be stopped by a Maricopa County deputy.

In 1 incident cited in the federal report, a Hispanic driver was incarcerated for 13 days before his citation was dismissed for not using his turn signal.

13 days for a turn signal infraction, and that is in Arizona, where an old person driving with their turn signal on is literally their state seal.

-♪ ♪ -♪ And not surprisingly, in 2011, a lawsuit alleging his department had a pattern of racial profiling resulted in this.

A federal court in Phoenix has decided Arizona authorities cannot arrest people suspected of being illegal immigrants solely because of their appearance.

If Arpaio does not comply with a court ruling, Arpaio could ultimately be held in contempt of court and face jail time.

Arpaio did not comply with that court ruling.

In fact, over the next 18 months, his office detained at least 171 people without charge and turned them over to immigration enforcement.

And last July, a federal judge found Arpaio guilty of criminal contempt.

He had committed and was convicted of a crime.

You know, the thing that the people he puts in tents and pink underwear had done, and which he felt meant that they had forfeited any right to complain.

He had done that, and he hadn't even been sentenced before Trump started hinting at a pardon for a frankly incredible reason.

Was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?

He absolutely was not just doing his job.

You wouldn't say that John Wayne Gacy was just doing his job, even though he was, by all accounts, a pretty good birthday clown.

It's the stuff he was doing on top of that that needed addressing.

And yet, I do not doubt that Trump thinks that everything Joe Arpaio did was or should be part of a law enforcement officer's job.

That is why this pardon is a slap in the face to Latinos that Arpaio and his department unconstitutionally targeted, and that is why it's a slap in the face to the very rule of law itself.

Because Arpaio broke the rules he was sworn to uphold.

Rules that are put in place to protect citizens from a government going out of control.

And Trump giving him a pass after everything that you've seen tonight and saying he was just doing his job is a loud confirmation that at least as far as this White House is concerned, For the next few years, law enforcement won't necessarily be expected to do their jobs the way the Constitution or the court say they should.

Instead, like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, they should absolutely feel free to do their job...

♪ -♪ ♪ -♪APPLAUSE AND CHEERING♪ Yes.


Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Presidential pardons. The only genuine get-out-of-jail-free card. Pardons are 1 of the most powerful tools available to a president, and they have been used controversially in the past. Bill Clinton pardoned Mark Rich, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, and as we've mentioned before, Abraham Lincoln once pardoned a man for attempted bestiality. That is true.

And in fairness, this was the horse. That's a pretty fuckable horse right there. I'm not saying that you should fuck it. I'm just saying I wouldn't kick it out of bed for eating apples. The point here is, while we were away, Donald Trump issued his very first pardon, and it was a doozy.

Speaker 1: A legal lightning bolt from President Trump late Friday. A presidential pardon for Arizona's controversial anti-illegal immigration hardliner, Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Speaker 0: That's right. Donald Trump pardons Joe Arpaio, a man who answers the question, what if a decaying russet potato somehow hated Mexicans? But let's look at that decision, because if the President of the United States is going to use his very first pardon on someone this early in his term, it really is worth knowing exactly who Joe Arpaio is and what the implications of this decision may be. And you probably may have heard of Joe Arpaio before. He has carefully cultivated an image over 25 years as a hard-nosed sheriff with unconventional methods that the media has lapped up.

Joe Arpaio is known as America's toughest sheriff.

Speaker 2: Sheriff Arpaio, he's been dubbed America's toughest sheriff.

Speaker 0: America's toughest sheriff, Joe Arpaio.

Speaker 3: He's known as America's toughest sheriff for his crackdowns on illegal immigration and petty crime.

Speaker 1: He brags about making prisoners eat bologna sandwiches so rotten the meat has turned green. He makes his inmates wear pink, he uses chain gangs.

Speaker 0: Inmates are forced to wear striped prison garb and pink underwear. Well, that is just awful. The pink underwear is fine, but no 1 should be forced to wear horizontal stripes. They widen the silhouettes. That is a fact.

That's a fashion fact. Now, Arpaio really didn't mind that coverage. He actually welcomed it, because he loves being on camera so much that he essentially spent years treating prisoners as props for a reality show. And sometimes, literally, He actually had a short-lived show called Smile You're Under Arrest, where people with outstanding warrants would be tricked into appearing on a set, only to be pranked in the worst way possible.

Speaker 3: Oh, whoa, whoa, I got 1 more surprise.

Speaker 0: ♪♪

Speaker 3: These 2 people are actually deputies of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office.

Speaker 4: Take them down. Take them down.

Speaker 3: So, dude, you got to smile, because you're under arrest.

Speaker 0: ♪♪

Speaker 3: Oh, ----! Oh, for real?! For real?! Poop, there it is.

Speaker 0: Wait. Wait. Poop, there it is. Now, for the record, even then, that reference was 15 years old, which is a real wiggity-wack thing to do, dog. And look, tricking people into arrest for your own amusement is a terrible idea for a reality show.

The only worst idea is not making Peter the Bachelor. Look at that face! Are you idiots, ABC? Let me just say this, Peter. If you are out there, you are and shall forever remain my bachelor.

Hashtag, Peter is my bachelor. Hashtag, he's a catcher. Now, Alpaia will honestly do anything for a camera. And if you don't believe me, watch him sing his favorite song, which of course, is Frank Sinatra's My Way, the universal anthem of assholes everywhere. Watch him sing it for a documentary film crew.

♪

Speaker 4: The record shows I took the balls and did it my way.

Speaker 0: -♪

Speaker 3: My way.

Speaker 0: -♪ Here's something Interesting there. When Frank Sinatra heard that, he actually climbed out of his grave, walked 400 miles to Arpaio's house, rang the doorbell, and simply said, -"No." -$5,000. -$5,000. -$5,000. But what does doing it Arpaio's way actually mean?

Because Trump didn't just pardon him. He touted Arpaio's support on the campaign trail, even having him speak at the Republican convention. So Trump clearly doesn't seem to have any real problem with Arpaio's way. And for the record, it is far more than just the eye-catching circus that you've seen so far, and many people were affected. Maricopa County, where he was the sheriff until just last year, contains over 4000000 people.

That's a higher population than that of 24 states. And conditions in his tent city weren't just eccentric, they were appalling. Temperatures there could rise as high as 145 degrees. Food was limited to 2 meals a day. And then there was this.

Speaker 5: Chinese law enforcement officials drop in for some tips from Joe, who just brushed up on his Mandarin.

Speaker 2: I hear China very tough on criminal, correct? Huh? I'm asking them, in China, do they put women on a chain gang?

Speaker 4: No. Ah,

Speaker 2: thank you. I am still The first in the world.

Speaker 0: Yes, Arpaio actually put women on chain gangs, so I guess, hashtag feminism? -♪ ♪ -♪ It's a gray area. And look, remember, Arpaio operates jails, not prisons. And jails are typically for people serving sentences of less than a year, or even just awaiting trial. Which is not to say that anyone should be subjected to some of Arpaio's treatment.

At 1 point, he actually installed webcams in the jail, 1 of which showed female inmates using the toilet, which wound up being linked to by pornographic sites. And while the cameras were eventually pulled, the sheriff's office defended themselves with their lawyer saying, they did not show the private parts of any inmates, and no juveniles would have been displayed unless they look older and lie to us. And just spare a thought there for the attorney who went all the way through years of law school only to have to tell a reporter, don't worry, the women we broadcast taking a shit were probably all adults. And Arpaio seemed routinely impervious to criticism of any of his tactics.

Speaker 2: I have not received any negative comments, other than the Justice Department, or Amnesty International, or the Civil Liberties Unit.

Speaker 0: Yes, Joe, but those are the 3 key groups who might criticize you over mistreating prisoners. So, you just went 3 for 3 on that 1. You're not going to get complaints from Carl's Jr., the Girl Scouts, and Hootie and the Blowfish. That's not what those groups do. So, is it frankly any wonder that when a reporter asked inmates whether Arpaio had any nicknames, 1 responded, Hitler, while another responded, Hitler.

And that is a charge that he's defended himself against by saying, my daughter has adopted children of various ethnicities. I got a black, a Mexican with Down syndrome even, and yet I'm the racist, I'm the fascist, I'm the Hitler. And look, I'm not gonna argue with him on that 1. That is just sound logic right there. That is why when you play the board game, Guess Who's the Hitler, the first things you ask to narrow it down are, do their daughter got a black?

And do their daughter got a Mexican with Down syndrome even? Because if their daughter got those, they can't be the Hitler. It's right there in the rules. --And look, look, our payos chaios... --APPLAUSE AND CHEERING weren't just tough and humiliating, they were sometimes deadly.

Over the years, the county has paid out multiple large settlements to families of inmates who've died following incidents in its facilities, including over 8000000 dollars to the family of Scott Norberg, who died in custody after being restrained, shocked, and beaten by guards. And when 1 officer tried to warn 2 other guards that the inmate was in dire trouble, their response was chilling.

Speaker 6: I told him that He was turning blue, I didn't need, I heard purple. I don't think he was breathing, and he said, -"Who gives a fuck?"

Speaker 0: -$

Speaker 7: After Spiedel responded to you, who gives a fuck, and you warned Officer Gurney, What did Mr. Gurney say?

Speaker 6: They said, just, who gives a shit?

Speaker 0: Look, you can't see someone dying and say, who gives a shit? You can't even see something dying and say that, with of course, the sole exception of orchids. Because really, who gives a shit? They're high-maintenance little flower cucks and they all deserve to die. Now, I should tell you, the Justice Department declined to prosecute that case and both Arpaio and the officers insisted they did nothing wrong.

In fact, Arpaio was so unapologetic that both officer who gives a fuck and officer who gives a shit were later promoted, presumably to Lieutenant Whatever-Arsehole and Sergeant Zero-Fucks-Given. And that promotion, the problem is that promotion sends a pretty clear message to Arpaio's staff. Almost as clear a message as a president pardoning the man who oversaw all of this. And remember, Arpaio wasn't just in charge of jails, he was also a law enforcement officer. Though his respect for the law seemed awfully selective.

Now, over the years, his office repeatedly launched criminal cases against his perceived enemies, be they county officials or even judges, some of which were so shockingly flimsy, they were dismissed or thrown out. 1 civil suit that he brought turned out to be so baseless, it was actually cited in the disbarment of the attorney who brought it, with a member of the disbarment panel saying it was... Which is not only an amazing statement, It's also actually my favorite Precious Moments figurine. -...and for America's toughest sheriff, Arpaio seemed to let certain crimes fall through the cracks. In 2011, it came out that his department had failed to properly investigate more than 400 sex crimes, some of which involved children.

And while Arpaio eventually admitted to that, his apology left a lot to be desired.

Speaker 2: If there were any victims out there, I apologize to those victims, if there were any.

Speaker 0: Hold on. If there were any, there were, we know that. That is a casual indifference to overlooking sex crimes, so egregious, I'm genuinely surprised that Penn State hasn't erected a statue of him. And amazingly, here's the amazing thing, none of what you have just seen, not the conditions, not the deaths, not the baseless charges against his critics, has anything to do with why he was convicted and needed a pardon. That stems from racial profiling, which his department has been repeatedly accused of over the years.

And 1 huge investigation made some really troubling allegations.

Speaker 8: A three-year investigation by the Justice Department found what it called unconstitutional policing and a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos, who are up to 9 times more likely than whites to be stopped by a Maricopa County deputy. In 1 incident cited in the federal report, a Hispanic driver was incarcerated for 13 days before his citation was dismissed for not using his turn signal.

Speaker 0: Think about that. 13 days for a turn signal infraction, and that is in Arizona, where an old person driving with their turn signal on is literally their state seal. -♪ ♪ -♪ And not surprisingly, in 2011, a lawsuit alleging his department had a pattern of racial profiling resulted in this.

Speaker 9: A federal court in Phoenix has decided Arizona authorities cannot arrest people suspected of being illegal immigrants solely because of their appearance.

Speaker 10: If Arpaio does not comply with a court ruling, Arpaio could ultimately be held in contempt of court and face jail time.

Speaker 0: You'll never guess what happened. Arpaio did not comply with that court ruling. In fact, over the next 18 months, his office detained at least 171 people without charge and turned them over to immigration enforcement. And last July, a federal judge found Arpaio guilty of criminal contempt. And at that point, he was a criminal.

He had committed and was convicted of a crime. You know, the thing that the people he puts in tents and pink underwear had done, and which he felt meant that they had forfeited any right to complain. He had done that, and he hadn't even been sentenced before Trump started hinting at a pardon for a frankly incredible reason.

Speaker 3: Was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job? That's what... -...-Yeah! You know what? I'll make a prediction.

I think he's gonna be just fine, okay? Yeah!

Speaker 0: But here's the thing there. He absolutely was not just doing his job. He was also doing something illegal. You wouldn't say that John Wayne Gacy was just doing his job, even though he was, by all accounts, a pretty good birthday clown. It's the stuff he was doing on top of that that needed addressing.

And yet, I do not doubt that Trump thinks that everything Joe Arpaio did was or should be part of a law enforcement officer's job. And that is the real problem here. That is why this pardon is a slap in the face to Latinos that Arpaio and his department unconstitutionally targeted, and that is why it's a slap in the face to the very rule of law itself. Because Arpaio broke the rules he was sworn to uphold. Rules that are put in place to protect citizens from a government going out of control.

And Trump giving him a pass after everything that you've seen tonight and saying he was just doing his job is a loud confirmation that at least as far as this White House is concerned, For the next few years, law enforcement won't necessarily be expected to do their jobs the way the Constitution or the court say they should. Instead, like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, they should absolutely feel free to do their job... What's the term? ♪ Anyway... ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪APPLAUSE AND CHEERING♪ Yes.

The time.

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Joe Arpaio: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)