Wow, if I had a past like this guy’s, I’d stay the hell out of the public’s eye. A Joe Arpaio wannabe, Paul Babeu was elected sheriff of Arizona’s Pinal County in 2008, and immediately went on the immigrant war offensive—appearing often on Fox News to spread fear-mongering stories about all the nasty shit immigrants do.
The national spotlight shone on him even brighter when Babeu appeared in Sen. John McCain’s 2010 “complete the danged fence” ad. Things were looking up! Soon after that, in 2012, he was named chair of Mitt Romney’s Arizona team, and he even decided to run for congress—an apparent shoe-in in his district.
Then news broke that the anti-immigrant warrior had for years been in a relationship with an undocumented Mexican man, who told the press that Babeu threatened him with deportation if he exposed their relationship. Sure enough, after the story blew up in his uber-conservative district, Sheriff Babeu stepped down as Romney’s state chair and his congressional race folded.
So in 2016 Babeu decided to run for congress again, but switching districts did not help him and he lost bigly. This election it wasn’t a story about a gay, undocumented Mexican lover that took him down—no, it was his history as head master at a private school in Massachusetts. Investigators there described the treatment of students with words like “torture.” After a video eventually surfaced of Babeu bragging about the school’s ruthless punishment policies, once again his candidacy took a nosedive.
With a history like that, you’d think he’d learn to keep his head down. Apparently not, as Paul Babeu is one of Trump’s possible nominees to head the Customs and Border Protection agency. Right on time, then, as in his two recent congressional campaigns, a scandal emerges:
Federal authorities have launched a probe of Pinal County's top two former law enforcement officials and whether they inappropriately used profits from seized property for personal and professional expenses.
The essence of this story, which broke today in the Arizona Republic, is that Babeu and County Attorney Lando Voyles misused funds and property that were seized from suspects under the RICO statute. Babeu evidently used a nonprofit organization that he established to funnel RICO assets to his pet projects. The ACLU had in fact filed a lawsuit over the questionable practice in 2015:
The lawsuit accused Babeu and Voyles of exploiting Arizona's forfeiture laws, which provide little to no oversight on spending, plaintiff's attorneys said. Forfeiture laws, in general, created a multimillion-dollar "slush fund available to (law enforcement) with little or no oversight," the lawsuit said.
So again Babeu is up for a new job and, again, a scandal erupts. Given the qualifications of Trump’s appointees so far, however, it’s doubtful stealing RICO funds will land him in the dog house. Heck, that kind of graft is probably an asset in TrumpWorld.