Disgraced former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has issued a statement decrying the treatment of former President Donald Trump at the hands of officials in Fulton County, Georgia.
The statement, which was posted by Trump himself on his Truth Social page, accused Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat of booking Trump in a “dangerous jail” and of using “overkill during President Trump’s arrest and book to gather publicity, even plastering his badge and NAME next to President Trump’s face.”
Arpaio went on to allege that Labat is “probably taking his orders from… Fani Willis,” and then penned a tribute to the former president, who was impeached twice and has now been indicted in four different jurisdictions on dozens of felony charges.
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“It took me… 85 years to find my one and only hero in life,” wrote Arpaio. “His name is Donald J. Trump.”
Arpaio in 2017 was found guilty of contempt of court for willfully violating a federal judge’s order to stop a program of racially profiling Latinos, although he would be subsequently pardoned for this by Trump.
In 2011, the former Arizona sheriff was ordered by a federal judge to stop his department’s practice of pulling over Latino motorists on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally. Despite this order, however, Arpaio continued targeting Latino drivers to be pulled over, and an estimated 170 people were wrongfully detained in the 18 months after the order was issued.
