I was reading something last night that referenced a SCOTUS decision from 1915 (Burdick vs United States), so I went and looked it up. Burdick was a journalist who refused to reveal his sources to a grand jury. He was convicted of contempt, and President Wilson issued a pardon in an attempt to force him to answer (the theory was that once you're pardoned you no longer have grounds to not answer the grand jury's questions). Burdick declined the pardon and continued to refuse to answer, so he was thrown in jail and fined $500 for not complying with the terms of the pardon.
The court held, among a couple of other things, that the offer of a presidential pardon doesn't have to be accepted and then went on to make a distinction between an offer of immunity and a pardon. An offer of immunity does not imply guilt (because you haven't been convicted of or charged with anything) but the offer of a pardon does, and the acceptance of a pardon amounts to a confession of guilt. Forcing someone to accept a pardon and thereby admit guilt would violate his rights.
So this whole "Was Sherriff Joe convicted for doing his job?" routine is nonsense. By offering Arpaio a pardon, Trump was saying that Arpaio was guilty of contempt of court but the crime could be forgiven; by accepting the pardon, Arpaio was admitting to the crime.
It should also be noted that Congress can still weigh in on this - Ford's pardon of Nixon and Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich were both subjected to Congressional review, so there is some precedent for that.
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