Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio on Friday, after his conviction for disobeying a court order. This was cause for finger pointing and scathing remarks from both sides of the aisle, not only that it happened, but that Trump waited until Hurricane Harvey was slamming into Texas to do so.
The more interesting question for me is whether Arpaio has accepted the pardon. It is a fairly long-standing and well-understood principle that if someone accepts a pardon, that person tacitly admits guilt. Since Arpaio always claimed that the law was wrong and the court rulings were wrong he also claimed that he couldn't possibly be guilty. By accepting Trump's pardon, that goes out the window.
"There is solid legal precedent that acceptance of a pardon is
equivalent to confession of guilt. A U.S. Supreme Court case from 1915
called Burdick v. U.S. establishes that principle; it has never been overturned."
Everyone who listened to the news or read a newspaper since Friday night knows Trump pardoned Arpaio, but I haven't seen any reporting that Arpaio accepted yet.
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