TAMPA - Before President Biden bowed out of this year's election, he was hit with a defamation lawsuit by controversial Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio in Florida.
Arpaio targeted the Biden campaign's "Official Rapid Response Page" on X, which on June 6 posted a video with Arpaio and once and possibly future President Donald Trump at a Trump campaign event. It featured a caption written in Spanish that translates to:
"Trump brings to the stage Joe Arpaio, a convicted felon who was pardoned by Trump after he racially profiled and abused immigrants."
The post was made specifically to influence voters in Florida, Arpaio says in his July lawsuit in Hillsborough County Circuit Court. Biden For President, Inc., is also named as a defendant.
"This post was directed at Florida voters as a form of election interference, and in particular at voters in Hillsborough County, which is one of the most important counties in deciding whether Florida's electoral votes will go to Biden or Trump in the 2024 Presidential election," the suit says.
"This is why Defendants chose Hillsborough County to place their Florida campaign office."
Trump did pardon Arpaio, whose methods of law enforcement enraged many but found support with others, in 2017, after Arpaio had lost reelection as the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz. He had been convicted of criminal contempt of court in a lawsuit in which he was found to be racially profiling Hispanics during immigration sweeps and traffic stops.
That case was a class action filed in 2007. The result? Arpaio did not stop his law enforcement strategy, leading to the criminal contempt of court conviction in 2016, during his reelection campaign.
That crime, however, is a misdemeanor and not a felony, Arpaio notes in alleging defamation by Biden and his campaign.
"Falsely labeling someone as a convicted felon, when they were simply convicted of a misdemeanor for contempt of court is extremely harmful to their reputation, and indeed, this false statement was intended to and did severely harm Plaintiff Arpaio's chance of success in his mayoral election," the suit says.
Arpaio unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Fountain Hills, Ariz., this year. When receiving his pardon, Arpaio was called an "American patriot," by Trump.
In the years that followed, he lost the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in 2018, then another primary for Maricopa County sheriff in 2020.
He received 49% of votes in the 2022 Fountain Hills mayoral election. He finished third in a three-person race this year.
In 2019, he filed a $300 million defamation lawsuit against CNN and other media outlets but lost. Last year, he sued a former Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs for defamation for filing a lawsuit against him that called him a murderer and gun-smuggler.
Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch represents him in that case, as well as the one against Biden. The defendants have not yet responded to the lawsuit in court.