Free Republic

PHOENIX — Nearly five years after Joe Arpaio was voted out as sheriff of Arizona’s most populous county, taxpayers are covering one of the last major bills from the thousands of lawsuits the lawman’s headline-grabbing tactics inspired. Officials in Maricopa County agreed last week to pay $3.1 million to cover a settlement with a restaurant owner who alleged Arpaio defamed him and violated his rights when raiding his businesses. The payout takes to $100 million the attorney fees, settlements and other costs the county has paid from lawsuits stemming from Arpaio’s six terms. Arpaio says jail operators are often the...

Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio lost his bid at the Supreme Court on Monday challenging a lower court’s appointment of a special prosecutor in his criminal case. Arpaio earned a national reputation for harsh conditions in the Arizona prisons he ran for a quarter century, before losing his 2016 reelection bid. Arpaio was found in criminal contempt of court in 2017 for not following a judge’s orders to stop traffic patrols that targeted illegal immigrants. President Trump then pardoned the former Maricopa County sheriff. Arpaio, 86, is now attempting to vacate his conviction. At issue in the Supreme Court...

Full headline: Fallout continues over heavily armed FBI raid of Roger Stone: ‘No reason except to intimidate’ and ‘poison jury pool’Fallout is continuing from the FBI’s decision to send 29 heavily armed agents in 19 vehicles to arrest political operative and longtime Trump associate Roger Stone last week following an indictment by special counsel Robert Mueller. “I’ve been busting down doors for 50 Years, and I’ve never sent that many units, not even to the baddest murderers,” former Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio told The Western Journal. In addition to being sheriff of a county that grew to more...

The New York Times and editorial border member Michelle Cottle on Friday filed a motion to have a Sheriff Joe Arpaio's $147.5 million defamation lawsuit against them dismissed. The lawsuit stems from an opinion piece published back in August that the Sheriff said damaged his reputation, Fox News reported. Cottle's OpEd was published after Arpaio lost the Arizona Republican primary for the United States Senate.The defendants argue Arpaio's lawsuit lacks any merit: First, Arpaio is a public figure who has failed to allege facts that could plausibly establish either that the challenged column is substantially false or that The Times published...

Former Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio sued CNN on Monday, arguing the cable outlet inaccurately labeled him a “felon” in a broadcast and has made no efforts to correct its mistake. Mr. Arpaio was found guilty of a misdemeanor contempt of court last year, not a felony — and was quickly pardoned by President Trump. He has asked the courts to expunge his original misdemeanor conviction, in a case that’s still pending. In his lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C., Mr. Arpaio also sued Huffington Post and Rolling Stone, which he says also made inaccurate statements about his...

Martha McSally was a #NeverTrumper before the 2016 election. She refused to attend the Republican convention. But Paul Ryan really liked her. Conservative radio host and author Mark Levin told his audience on Monday that McSally refused to go on his show.

President Donald Trump slammed his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, hours after it was reported that the former First Lady Michelle Obama criticized Trump in her upcoming memoir for his years touting the conspiracy that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. The Washington Post, on Friday, published an excerpt of Michelle Obama’s soon-to-be-released memoir Becoming. In it, she bashed Trump — saying she’ll never forgive Trump for his birtherism. "What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and...

Pretty decisive Only 29% for Ward. Blame Arpaio I guess. Ward is now damaged for the 2020 McCain rerun. We can only hope that turnout was high.

If calling constituents concerned about illegal immigration "crazies" is a term of endearment, what would be an insult? On today's Morning Joe, John McCain refused to apologize to the thousands of Arizonans attending a Trump rally that McCain called "crazies." According to McCain, "crazies" is a "term of endearment" and a "term of affection."

Kelli Ward suggested Saturday that the statement issued Friday by U.S. Sen. John McCain's family about ending treatment for brain cancer was intended to hurt her U.S. Senate campaign. McCain died Saturday hours after her remarks. Ward, a conservative former state senator from Lake Havasu City, is in a three-way race for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in Tuesday's Arizona primary. Ward wrote on Facebook that "I think they wanted to have a particular narrative that they hope is negative to me." Her comment was made under a Facebook post by one of her campaign staffers, who questioned if it...

Hello, America. Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American, here, reporting in from the GOP U.S. Senate primary in Arizona. All month, the Conservative Campaign Committee, my wife Mary, and I have been campaigning all over this beautiful state for great courageous conservative Dr. Kelli Ward. Dr. Ward launched a bus tour to counter the 5 million dollars spent lying about her and to get out the vote. Our Conservative Campaign Committee attended each rally on her tour. As an American who happens to be black, it was a pleasant surprise to see that the opening speaker at Dr. Ward's rally in...

FOUNTAIN HILLS, Ariz. (AP) -- It was five days before ballots will be counted in his bid for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, and former Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio had no idea what he was doing. The final days of a campaign are usually frantic, with candidates' every moment scheduled to ensure they meet as many voters as possible. But Arpaio had nothing planned Thursday until a 4:30 p.m. meeting. "I ought to go to a Mexican restaurant and see how they treat me," Arpaio, 86, said as he sat in his strip mall office. So he and his...

Former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio admitted that he was tricked into giving an interview to Sacha Baron Cohen, becoming the latest political figure to acknowledge becoming part of the comedian's upcoming project. Cohen was in disguise as a Finnish comedian during the October 2017 interview, Arpaio recalled in an interview with Breitbart News. "I felt uncomfortable with some of the words they were using but I had to live through it. I am not the type of guy who gets up and walks out," he told Breitbart. "I never walked out in thousands of interviews. I just take it." He...

PHOENIX (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department says an appeals court overstepped its bounds when it ordered the appointment of a special prosecutor to pursue an appeal involving a pardon of retired Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The appointment was previously ordered by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.{snip} The Justice Department said in its appellate brief that “the government does not abdicate the prosecutorial function when it agrees with a defendant on a legal question.” Arpaio’s attorneys argued that appointing a special prosecutor “raises serious questions about whether the court is actively participating in the prosecution...."

Controversial former Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Wednesday called former President Barack Obama's birth certificate a "phony document" in an interview on CNN. "No doubt about it, we have the evidence, I'm not going to go into all the details, yeah, it's a phony document," Arpaio said on "Cuomo Primetime." Arpaio announced Tuesday that he is running for the Arizona US Senate seat currently occupied by Sen. Jeff Flake, who is retiring from Congress at the end of his term. He was a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump during the campaign, and was pardoned by the President in August. The...

Lotta agita over this on both sides of political media today, I think because Pence is still held to a slightly higher standard than Trump is. He spent most of his career as a dogmatic conservative and even endorsed Ted Cruz (verrrry reluctantly) over Trump before the Indiana primary in 2016. He gets the same benefit of the doubt from the politerati that Kellyanne Conway does: He and she are old hands in D.C. and therefore they’re supposed to “know better.” Trump calling a guy a champion of the rule of law who once referred to his own prison as...

Dissenting judge on panel worries ruling could foster ‘inappropriate… political attacks’ on presidencyA federal appeals court said this week it will appoint a lawyer to argue that former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s contempt of court conviction should remain on his record despite President Trump’s pardon. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that since the federal Justice Department is supporting both the pardon and Mr. Arpaio’s request to have his conviction stricken, someone else needs to argue the other side. Mr. Arpaio argues that the pardon came before he had a chance to appeal his conviction, and even before...

In his decision Friday to pardon a former Bush administration official convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, President Trump telegraphed his open hostility to the criminal justice system and his desire to use the power of the presidency as a personal political tool. As with his controversial pardon last year of a former Arizona county sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who had been held in contempt of court, Trump effectively thumbed his nose at the judiciary by pardoning I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The Justice Department was not involved in either case, officials said.

Arizona’s Republican U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake has announced he’s not running for reelection, so several candidates have jumped into the open race to replace him. There are currently three frontrunners. GOP Rep. Martha McSally, a combat pilot who served in the U.S. Air Force, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and former Arizona State Senator Kelli Ward. Ward made a name for herself launching an unsuccessful conservative challenge to Sen. John McCain in 2016.McSally is the darling of the GOP establishment. She was elected to Congress in 2014, representing a swing district seat formerly held by Gabrielle Giffords. Senate Majority...