Donald Trump may have abandoned birtherism as an official talking point, but his most notable brother in bigotry, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, soldiers on! Soon after Trump said on Friday that President Obama was born in the United States (“Period!”) reporters here quizzed the nation’s highest profile birther lawman about whether he too had given up the con. But, as I wrote last week, Arpaio is having none of it, which he said again yesterday to a gaggle of Tea Party nutballs:
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday vowed to the Surprise Tea Party Patriots, the group that five years ago petitioned him to investigate President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, that he was continuing the inquiry.
“I’m not going to give up, and we’re looking into it,” he said. “I don’t know how it’s going to turn out.”
It was that same group in Surprise, Arizona, after all, that asked Sheriff Arpaio to undertake his investigation of the president, which began in 2012 and continues today, gobbling up deputies’ time and resources but producing nada. Undaunted, even as Trump turned away from the birther bullshit, Arpaio says he’s still not convinced of Obama’s legitimacy. And who better than a county sheriff in Arizona to set the record straight!
So what did county commissioners do today to reward the convicted criminal and conspiracy peckerhead?
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted Wednesday to pay $4.5 million in legal fees to attorneys representing a group of plaintiffs who sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio in a racial-profiling case.
That’s right, this case has already cost Maricopa County taxpayers $48 million, and the Associated Press estimates the final tab will be $72 million. Today we’re on the hook for another $4.5 million, at the same time Sheriff Arpaio runs re-election ads telling us how much money he’s saving the county by keeping Tent City open!
These yuuuge costs all stem from the sheriff’s racist policies, as well as an oversized ego that convinced Arpaio he was immune from the law. If his office had not engaged in racial profiling, which he was convicted of in 2013, there would have been no court orders to clean up his act. If there had been no orders, Sheriff Arpaio could not have ignored them, which he did, resulting in a civil contempt of court finding. If Arpaio had not been convicted of civil contempt, he would not have been sued, which has resulted in this massive $72 million tab, on top of another $142 million he’s cost us in other lawsuits. Next month federal prosecutors will hold another hearing to determine whether Arpaio should be tried for criminal contempt, a conviction that could land his butt in the slammer.
That “fiscal conservatives” in Arizona’s GOP can overlook this expensive, illegal, and unproductive madness shows just how strong the racism is.
Paul Penzone for Sheriff