Viewing the court record and the public record as a whole, it is easy to argue that politics were involved in the Arpaio case. It is less easy to argue politics played a significant role or ran in only one direction.

For example, the Obama administration’s termination of Arpaio’s section 287(g) authority to enforce civil immigration laws carries at least a whiff of politics. But a key to Snow’s decision is that Arpaio’s policy of using race as one factor in assessing reasonable suspicion for detaining motorists to check immigration status was largely a continuation of ICE’s legal interpretation, a view already rejected the Ninth Circuit…

One might also suspect politics were involved in the Justice Department’s decision to pursue Arpaio for criminal contempt. Perhaps so. Local, small-p politics also may have been a factor. Local prosecutors, who will continue to regularly appear before Snow, may well have taken his lengthy, detailed and damning findings of fact, extending beyond Arpaio’s flouting of the injunction, as a message as to how he thought they should proceed.