Inquiry Finds No Misdeeds by Sheriff in Arizona
By FERNANDA SANTOS
Published: August 31, 2012
PHOENIX — The United States attorney’s office announced on Friday that it had closed an investigation over abuse-of-power allegations against Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, some of his current and former employees, and the former Maricopa County attorney, concluding that none of them had done anything wrong.
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The announcement was made in a short news release issued at 5 p.m., followed by a letter detailing the reasons the accusations did not rise to the level of a crime. The accusations included claims of misuse of county-issued credit cards and federal money to pay for salaries, trips, meals and other expenses they should not have covered.
Sheriff Arpaio found out about the news as he got off a plane after he returned from the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. “I’m very happy,” he said at a news conference in his office. “I never had any doubt.”
He added, “I send my appreciation to the federal government for their hard work in clearing my office.”
Investigators found “insufficient evidence of criminal intent” and “no evidence of false statements” by Sheriff Arpaio and his former chief deputy, David Hendershott, in explaining the specific shift of federal money destined to cover the costs of one specific program in the county’s jails to another, according to the letter, by Assistant United States Attorney Ann Birmingham Scheel.
Just as serious were allegations against the former Maricopa County attorney, Andrew Thomas, and his assistant, Lisa Aubuchon, of fabricating facts to support a criminal complaint filed against a Superior Court judge, Gary Donahoe. The case led to Mr. Thomas’s disbarment this year.
“We must weigh the evidence and law under a far heavier burden associated with criminal prosecution,” Ms. Scheel said in her letter. “Based on this review, we have concluded that allegations of criminal misconduct under federal statutes are not prosecutable.”
The inquiry is unrelated to the accusations of civil rights violations filed by the Justice Department against Sheriff Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, a case that remains open.
Sheriff Arpaio faces a similar civil-rights lawsuit filed by a group of advocacy organizations on behalf of Latinos, who say they are targeted by raids and other types of enforcement actions his deputies have carried out here and in surrounding communities over the past several years. The case has been tried, and a ruling is pending. |
