Guilty Until Proven Innocent?
Did DeSantis weaponize Government to help out his wealthy donor?
Accused Equals Guilty to Ron DeSantis?
Commissioners Oren Miller and Gary Search learned through County Attorney Jennifer Rey of the suspension, effective Thursday, Jan. 6.
DeSantis proclaimed the suspensions are in the “best interests of Sumter County.” The suspensions mean that both men are prohibited from performing their duties as commissioners and are no longer being paid.
Miller and Search were both arrested Dec. 15 on felony charges of perjury. Both men have pleaded not guilty and both men remain free on bond.
Archive Copy: https://archive.ph/SGg1m
Archive Copy: https://files.catbox.moe/kjnzge.pdf
Archive Copy: https://files.catbox.moe/zqi7dx.pdf
Is DeSantis Using Lawfare to Protect the Interest of His Rich Friends?
THE TROUBLE BEGAN in 2019 when residents of The Villages were suddenly hit with a 25 percent hike in their property taxes. In the master-planned retirement community of 130,000 across Sumter, Lake, and Marion counties in central Florida, many are on fixed incomes. The math they had done in plotting out their golden years had not accounted for a massive jump in taxes.
If the new taxes were intended to cover new amenities or upgrades for the Villagers, perhaps a hike would be worth the sacrifice. But the money was instead destined to subsidize further sprawl south of The Villages, ultimately benefitting the entity known locally either as “the developer” or “the family,” which could then escape paying the fees associated with the impact of their development.
“This place has grown like crazy,” said Oren Miller, who would go on to run for a seat on the county commission.
Backed by the Property Owners’ Association, three Villagers stepped up to run: Craig Estep, Oren Miller, and Gary Search. They ran as a ticket under the clever moniker EMS, promising to rescue The Villages.
The higher-up was Gary Lester, vice president of community relations for The Villages…
Lester told Search that he had the personal phone number for DeSantis, telling him he could get the governor on the horn at any moment, Search later told his fellow commissioner Miller, according to Miller. “He indicated that he has the personal phone number of Ron DeSantis and can reach him at any point in time he deems that necessary,” Search confirmed.
In 2018, Brett Hage, then the president of T&D, the main contractor, had been elected to the state House, beating his opponent — Oren Miller — by some 40 percentage points in the Republican stronghold. After his election, The Villages hired Hage directly, paying him $141,000 the first year and $350,000 the next, according to his disclosures, as vice president for residential development. (Previous disclosures had not included such income.)
On January 9, 2021, Hage, still on The Villages’ payroll, introduced legislation to block the proposed impact fee hike. On June 4, 2021, DeSantis signed the bill into law. The governor and the Morse family have close ties, with DeSantis frequently visiting for fundraisers, and The Villages and its executives bankrolling DeSantis. Crucially for The Villages, the law was retroactive.
If the pushback from The Villages, aided by DeSantis, had ended there, it would represent a brazen flow of cash from a developer directly to the personal bank account of a state lawmaker, who passed legislation saving the developer hundreds of millions and instead spreading the costs to tens of thousands of Floridians. If that was all it was, it would be an outsized, unusually lucrative version of politics-as-usual that many cynics expect from their lawmakers, even if they shake their head at it while reading the paper.
“It was a setup,” Fox concluded.
Oddly, the three complaints bypassed typical ethics procedures and went directly to Republican State Attorney Bill Gladson. (A more appropriate venue would be the state ethics commission, housed in Tallahassee.)
Also unusually, Gladson took personal control of the rather minor complaints, which, again, focused on the question of whether Fox was acting as a conduit between the two commissioners. In August, Gladson and a team of prosecutors interviewed Search.
She told him, “I’m not calling you about Commissioner Miller as a wife, I’m calling you as the president of the Lost Pets of The Villages and I’m calling you as a constituent,” Search recalled. “I said, OK, I’ll listen,” Search said.
Under oath, he [Miller] told Bill Gladson the same thing as Search. His wife was her own woman. “I don’t think my wife is a conduit for me. I might be a conduit for her. She was the big animal rights advocate to begin with and I’m kind of supporting her on those issues. She brought those concerns to me, not me to her,” he tried to explain.
Yet in December 2021, Gladson charged both commissioners with felony perjury, punishable by up to five years in prison. DeSantis stepped in and issued executive orders removing them from the commission.
Not a single prosecution witness presented evidence that Search and Miller had talked about commission business on the phone after the time they said the calls stopped.
Source: https://theintercept.com/2023/02/05/ron-desantis-florida-villages-oren-miller/
Archive Copy: https://archive.ph/96uGJ
H/T @RafaelFromBrazil on Truth Social
Sound Like 1/6?
Yes, it does. It sounds like weaponized Government to benefit Oligarchs.
This is the Real Ron DeSantis.