WHO IS JOE ARPAIO, ‘AMERICA’S TOUGHEST SHERIFF’ AND THE MAN PRESIDENT TRUMP WANTS TO PARDON?
Given his reputation as a hard-liner on illegal immigration and his history of calling former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate into question, it’s unsurprising that President Donald Trump has an affinity with Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona.

The 85-year-old Arpaio has styled himself as “America’s Toughest Sheriff”—a sobriquet that forms part of the title of his autobiographical books published in 1996 and 2008—and has garnered a reputation for a tough stance on crime, but he has also faced accusations of racial profiling.

Trump, who repeatedly positioned himself as the law-and-order candidate in the 2016 presidential campaign, appears to have a lot of respect for Arpaio. So much so, in fact, that the president is considering pardoning Arpaio’s recent conviction for criminal contempt in what would be the first presidential pardon of Trump’s tenure.
Then–Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, endorses Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump before a rally in Marshalltown, Iowa, on January 26, 2016.
SCOTT OLSON/GETTY

“I am seriously considering a pardon for Sheriff Arpaio,” Trump told Fox News Sunday. “He has done a lot in the fight against illegal immigration. He’s a great American patriot, and I hate to see what has happened to him.”