Joe Arpaio was told during an MSNBC interview that when he accepted a pardon from President Donald Trump, his acceptance was a legal admission that he was guilty of wrongdoing.
Arpaio, who is running for Senate in Arizona, where he was sheriff of Maricopa County, denied wrongdoing in a Jan. 12 interview with Ari Melber on MSNBC's "The Beat."
"You accepted the pardon, and you know under the law that is an admission of guilt," Melber said.
"No, I don't know about that, you'll have to talk to legal scholars about that," Arpaio said.
Melber, a lawyer, cited the Supreme Court decision — Burdick v. United States — which said that a pardon "carries an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it."
Arpaio was found guilty in July of criminal contempt, violating a court order that demanded his officers stop detaining people on the suspicion that they were in the U.S. illegally. Trump issued a pardon for Arpaio in August.
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