Trump undermines the rule of law with sheriff’s pardon

It wasn’t long ago that a sheriff trading fake badges in exchange for cash would have earned universal condemnation. But that was before the age of President Donald Trump, when a pledge of personal support for the president can be exchanged for a free pass from punishment.

While much of the nation was honoring our war dead last Monday, Trump chose the holiday to announce a full pardon for former Culpeper County (Va.) Sheriff Scott Jenkins, who was convicted in March on federal bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud charges.

“This Sheriff is a victim of an overzealous Biden Department of Justice, and doesn’t deserve to spend a single day in jail. He is a wonderful person, who was persecuted by the Radical Left ‘monsters,’ and ‘left for dead,’” Trump wrote in a social media post. “He will NOT be going to jail tomorrow, but instead will have a wonderful and productive life.”

As with so much of what our terminally online president posts on his social media accounts, this is a radical mischaracterization of what occurred and why a jury of Virginians convicted Jenkins earlier this year.

According to evidence presented at trial, the sheriff, who was elected to office three times, accepted cash donations from several prominent Washington, D.C.-area businessmen in exchange for law enforcement credentials. Jenkins received between $5,000 and $25,000 for the badges, splitting about $60,000 in all between his campaign and personal accounts.

Two of the people who handed Jenkins envelopes of cash to become “auxiliary deputies” in the Culpeper Sheriff’s Office were undercover FBI agents, who testified about the scheme at trial. Jenkins also testified in his defense, claiming that providing law enforcement credentials was a way to circumvent firearm restrictions passed by the General Assembly, which Jenkins opposed.

The former sheriff’s conduct was an affront to law enforcement, who have enough challenges in their work without having civilians with fake badges trying to weasel out of speeding tickets or act in more nefarious fashion. It’s the sort of thing that makes those in uniform, and members of the public, less safe.

But for all his talk of “backing the blue,” Trump doesn’t see how this undermines the important work of policing. Jenkins supports Trump and has become a prominent advocate for unfettered Second Amendment rights; therefore, under the president’s logic, he should go unpunished for his crimes.

This fits into a larger pattern for Trump. Shortly after taking office, he pardoned more than 1,600 people convicted in the attempted insurrection he incited at the U.S. Capitol in 2021. Even those found guilty of serious and violent criminal conduct, including those who savagely attacked and injured policy officers, were given a free pass from the president.

Trump also pardoned Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted in 2015 for operating a website used by drug dealers worldwide to sell their wares and for seeking to have five people killed in a murder-for-hire scheme. The president boasts of bringing back law and order to the United States, but his pardons for people who batter cops, operate an illegal drug marketplace and, now, sell fake badges for cash send an entirely different message.

When Jenkins was convicted, acting U.S. Attorney Zachary T. Lee for Virginia’s Western District said, “We hold our elected law enforcement officials to a higher standard of conduct and this case proves that when those officials use their authority for unjust personal enrichment, the Department of Justice will hold them accountable.”

Trump has undermined that commonsense principle — and the rule of law — with pardons such as this.