Trump pardons former sheriff convicted on bribery charges in ‘cash for badges’ scheme
(CNN) – President Donald Trump pardoned a former Virginia sheriff Monday just hours before the sheriff was supposed to report to prison.
Former Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins was sentenced to 10 years in prison for accepting $75,000 in bribes and padding his sheriff’s department with untrained, wealthy Virginia businessmen.
“You’re scared. Honestly, you’re scared,” Jenkins said of his sentencing. “You may have been a cop all your life but you’re sitting here going, ‘They want to put me in prison for life.’”
Now, instead of going to prison, Jenkins is going free thanks to President Trump.
“This sheriff is a victim of an overzealous Biden Department of Justice, and doesn’t deserve to spend a single day in jail,” the president said. “(He and family) have been dragged through hell.”
It might seem like an odd move, considering Trump’s previous claims of strong for police integrity and the seriousness of the case against the former sheriff.
Last December, a jury found Jenkins guilty of conspiracy, fraud and bribery in what federal prosecutors called a “cash for badges” scheme.
At trial, prosecutors said people gave Jenkins thousands of dollars, and he made them auxiliary deputies with no training.
The jobs didn’t pay, but prosecutors said those people received badges, expanded gun rights and the hopes of dodging traffic tickets and other legal entanglements.
Just like hundreds of rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and other allies Trump has pardoned, Jenkins has been a long and loud er of the president on immigration, gun rights and complaints about an allegedly weaponized court system.
“The noise I was making on those issues, obviously being in lockstep with the Trump istration, I was well known as a strong, conservative sheriff,” Jenkins said.
It’s not incredibly clear that this shaped Trump’s decision. However, what is clear is that Trump pushed the jury’s verdict aside and declared Scott Jenkins “will not be going to jail… but instead will have a wonderful and productive life.”
If Jenkins, who had already appealed the conviction, feels any qualms about how it all played out, he’s not letting on.
“If you don’t like the fact that a sheriff can choose to hire any damn person he chooses to swear in - almost, I mean there’s a few restrictions - change the law,” he said.
Jenkins was elected sheriff in 2011 and re-elected in 2015 and 2019.
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