WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's end-of-the-week pardon of former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio touched off a political outcry that did not abate Saturday even as much of the nation was focused on a storm pummeling Texas.
Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt for defying a federal judge's order to stop targeting Hispanics solely because of his suspicions about their immigration status.
Reaction to Trump's decision was sharp and swift.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., signaled his disagreement through his spokesman.
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"Law-enforcement officials have a special responsibility to respect the rights of everyone in the United States," Ryan spokesman Doug Andres said in a statement. "We should not allow anyone to believe that responsibility is diminished by this pardon."
Artemio Muniz, the chairman of the Texas Federation of Hispanic Republicans, said Friday night that he was "beyond disgusted" by the pardon, saying the move essentially placed Arpaio above the law.
"Conservatives who claim rule of law are #fakenews," Muniz wrote on Twitter.
Arizona's two Republican U.S. senators had mixed reactions. Sen. John McCain said that while Trump may have the authority to pardon Arpaio, "doing so at this time undermines his claim for the respect of rule of law as Mr. Arpaio has shown no remorse for his actions."
Sen. Jeff Flake wrote on Twitter that he "would have preferred that the President honor the judicial process and let it take its course."
But other Arizona Republicans were overwhelmingly positive. Kelli Ward -- a Republican who's seeking to oust Flake in 2018 and who attempted to oust McCain in the 2016 GOP primary -- praised the pardon.
"We applaud the President for exercising his pardon authority to counter the assault on Sheriff Arpaio's heroic efforts to enforce the nation's immigration laws," Ward said in a statement.
U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., whose district includes a portion of Maricopa County that was covered by Arpaio when he was sheriff, said the veteran law enforcement officer deserves America's gratitude, "not the injustice of a political witch hunt."
U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said he saw the pardon as a just end to the saga of Arpaio's legal entanglements. Franks' district also includes a portion of Maricopa County, which has more than 4 million people and covers an area more than 11 times the size of Arkansas' Pulaski County.
"The president did the right thing -- Joe Arpaio lived an honorable life serving our country, and he deserves an honorable retirement," Franks posted on Twitter.
Vera Anderson, a Republican organizer and activist in Phoenix, said the pardon was justified, arguing that Arpaio was improperly targeted by his critics.
"There's nothing that can be accomplished by finding Sheriff Joe guilty and putting an 85-year-old man in jail," she said.
Arpaio, who called himself "America's toughest sheriff," regularly held illegal aliens past their court-ordered release dates and, like Trump, questioned the legitimacy of President Barack Obama's birth certificate. The 24-year sheriff was an early supporter of Trump in last year's presidential campaign.
Arpaio lost to Democrat Paul Penzone in his bid for a seventh term in office last year. He could have faced up to six months in jail for violating the judge's order.
Jesse Lehrich, a spokesman for Organizing for Action, the political group that grew out of Obama's campaigns, said Arpaio's pardon "signals a disturbing tolerance for those who engage in bigotry."
He added: "It sends an unsettling message to immigrants across the country. And it's a repudiation of the rule of law. As a massive hurricane is hurtling toward the southern United States, the White House is focused not on saving lives, but on pardoning a man who committed unlawful acts of racial discrimination."
OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS
Arpaio's pardon was not the only announcement as the hurricane approached Friday. Trump, in the space of four hours, also formally announced a ban on transgender people serving in the military, and parted ways with his polarizing aide Sebastian Gorka.
"It was very risky, because if the hurricane is as bad as the experts were predicting, then he's opening himself up to a lot of potential criticism," said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and former aide to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. "But very little that Trump does surprises me any longer. He's proven to be very unpredictable and to not act within the norms of other politicians."
One Republican close to the White House said Chief of Staff John Kelly appeared to be trying to quietly clean up Trump's policy move on transgender troops, which had been left in limbo for weeks after the president announced his decision on Twitter to the surprise of the military and with no formal plan ready to be released.
Gorka's ouster was expected for weeks after Kelly took over, especially after the departure of Gorka's ally, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
"Kelly is really strong right now," said the Republican close to the White House. "He gives his best advice, but he wasn't going to stop the Sheriff Joe thing. Everything else was textbook what a really good chief of staff would do: dump a whole bunch of stuff when there's a hurricane coming."
Democrats and activist groups accused Trump of using a natural disaster as cover for some unpalatable moves that were aimed mostly at rousing his base.
"As millions of people in TX and LA are prepping for the hurricane, the President is using the cover of the storm to pardon a man who violated a court's order to stop discriminating against Latinos and ban courageous transgender men and women from serving our nation's Armed Forces," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., posted on Twitter. "So sad, so weak."
Trump had alluded to Arpaio's pardon during a raucous rally in Phoenix days earlier.
"The president brought justice to a situation where the Obama administration had attempted to destroy a political opponent," Biggs said. "Sheriff Joe Arpaio made many enemies in the judicial system, the media, and the left because he enforced laws that the federal government ignored. He did right by the law -- even as the political consequences continued to mount."
But among legal experts, the pardon raised questions about Trump's willingness to flout long-standing tradition and Department of Justice procedures in a way that undermined the judicial system, said University of Richmond School of Law professor Carl Tobias.
"Certainly the pardon seemed principally political and without much thought about the history of that or the procedures used," Tobias said. "It's a bigger piece of Trump's contempt for the judiciary. Every federal judge in the country knows you can't have those orders violated, otherwise the federal court system won't work. So that's very disturbing."
Hours after the Arpaio pardon was announced, Trump tweeted confirmation that the federal government had approved a disaster declaration for Texas. Fifteen minutes later, he congratulated Arpaio.
"I am pleased to inform you that I have just granted a full Pardon to 85 year old American patriot Sheriff Joe Arpaio," Trump said. "He kept Arizona safe!"
NOT NEW GROUND
Many presidents have issued controversial pardons. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, one of his donors, in Clinton's final days in office.
But Arpaio had yet to be sentenced in his criminal case.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that Trump had asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions last spring whether it would be possible for the government to drop the case against Arpaio. After being advised that would be inappropriate, Trump decided to let the case go to trial knowing that he could grant clemency later if Arpaio were convicted, the Post reported. The newspaper said its sources, who were not identified, were three people with knowledge of the conversation.
The Post reported that when White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about the Trump-Sessions conversation about Arpaio's case, she responded: "It's only natural the president would have a discussion with administration lawyers about legal matters. This case would be no different."
Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist who advised the main super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016, suggested that the pardon offered a different type of signal -- one to people who might be approached by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, as well as possible obstruction of justice by the president when he fired the FBI director, James Comey.
"The Arpaio pardon was awful in and of itself, but I also think it was a signal to the targets of the Mueller investigation that 'I got your back,'" Begala said on Bill Maher's HBO program Friday night.
David Axelrod, who was a senior adviser to Obama in the White House, saw a different motive at play.
"I think this was a nod to the base, post-Bannon, that he's still with them," Axelrod said.
Ari Fleischer, who was a press secretary under President George W. Bush, said that pardoning Arpaio did not "break new ground" in a decadeslong debate over immigration.
But, echoing Begala, he said the concern was the message it sent to others who might receive pardons.
He said Bush used to wonder why presidents had the pardon power to begin with. "It does strike me as a constitutional anachronism," Fleischer said.
"One should not be able to break the law thinking they have a protector in chief," he added. "If mischief is connected to the White House and the president can pardon those who engaged in that activity, it leads to unlimited power."
Information for this article was contributed by Maggie Haberman and Simon Romero of The New York Times; by Darlene Superville and Jacques Billeaud of The Associated Press; by Abby Phillip of The Washington Post; and by Toluse Olorunnipa and Justin Sink of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 08/27/2017