Trump’s Pardon for Former Virginia Sheriff Who Exchanged Badges for Cash Makes a Mockery of ‘Law and Order’
“We must maintain law and order at the highest level, or we will cease to have a country, 100 percent,” said Donald Trump, then a candidate for president, at a 2016 rally in Virginia Beach. “We will cease to have a country. I am the law and order candidate.”
It’s a theme that would continue for nearly a decade, up to the present day. “We have to get law and order back,” he said in April 2024, during his third campaign for the presidency. “We have to bring law and order back to our cities, back to our country, and we’re doing it,” he told a crowd in August of that same year. “But when I get back into the Oval Office,” he said the following month, “the madness ends, and the law and order is going to return to our country.”
If the full, unconditional pardon now-President Trump recently gave to disgraced ex-Sheriff Scott Jenkins is any indication, then the madness unfortunately has not ended.
Jenkins, formerly of the Culpeper County Sheriff’s Office, was convicted last year of accepting over $75,000 in cash bribes from several businessmen in exchange for Jenkins appointing them as auxiliary deputy sheriffs, a sworn law enforcement position. He did not train or vet them; for their money, Jenkins gave the bribers badges and credentials, which recipients used in interesting ways, like to get out of traffic tickets and obtain other special privileges.Â
“Sheriff Scott Jenkins, his wife Patricia, and their family have been dragged through HELL by a Corrupt and Weaponized Biden DOJ,” Trump posted on TruthSocial in announcing the pardon. He added that Jenkins allegedly wanted to offer additional evidence in his defense during trial, but the judge “refused to allow it, shut him down, an
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