Disgraced ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio is officially running for Senate

Disgraced ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio was officially pardoned by President Donald Trump last year -- and now he's running for the Senate.

In an interview with The Washington Examiner's David Drucker, Arpaio announced his official intention to seek the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ).

"I have a lot to offer," Arpaio told Drucker. "I’m a big supporter of President Trump. I'm going to have to work hard; you don’t take anything for granted. But I would not being doing this if I thought that I could not win. I’m not here to get my name in the paper, I get that everyday, anyway."

Arpaio was pardoned by Trump last year after he was found guilty of contempt of court for willfully violating a federal judge’s order to stop a program of racially profiling Latinos.

In 2011, the former Arizona sheriff was ordered by a federal judge to stop his department’s practice of pulling over Latino motorists on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally. Despite this order, however, Arpaio continued targeting Latino drivers to be pulled over, and an estimated 170 people were wrongfully detained in the 18 months after the order was issued.

When asked this summer by Univision whether he had any regrets about the way he'd conducted himself, Arpaio responded that he had nothing to apologize for and insisted that "the Hispanics" didn't actually hate him despite his program of racially profiling them.