President Donald Trump’s pardoning of Joe Arpaio is a political overture to neo-fascists, said Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer from the Bush Administration and current vice president of the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
In his former capacity as sheriff in Maricopa County, AZ, Arpaio was convicted of contempt of court by a Federal court in Arizona. He was pardoned by Trump on Friday.
Speaking with CNN’s John Berman on Friday, Painter described Trump’s pardoning of Arpaio as an appeal to the “alt-right”:
This is an attempt to appeal to a very small percentage of the American people who favor racial discrimination – discrimination against blacks, Mexicans, and others – and that’s not the Republican Party of today. That may be the direction that the so-called “alt-right” wants to take us, but that’s the neo-fascist element, that’s not the Republican Party of today, that’s not America.
They want to appeal to the far-right base… Maybe they had to throw a bone to the far-right after Bannon and Gorka [resigned from the White House].
Painter described Arpaio as “one of the worst [police officers]” and a “lawless sheriff.”
Painter then pushed the narrative of Arpaio as a racist, crediting Arpaio with fueling “anti-police sentiment”:
He was systematically discriminating against racial minorities , and that’s the kinda thing that stirs up a lot of the anti-police sentiment that we have going on in various parts of the country.
“Ninety-nine percent of police officers are great police officers,” said Painter, describing a small fraction of law enforcement officers as “bad cops.” No such analysis was offered of judges or the broader judiciary.
Painter added that he had not examined the details of Arpaio’s convictions prior to offering commentary on the pardon. He currently teaches law at the University of Minnesota.
Berman offered no challenge to any of Painter’s assertions.
Watch the segment below.
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