State Attorney Monique Worrell has been living in the shadow of the headsman’s axe for months, with Gov. Ron DeSantis hinting, threatening, sometimes even joking about removing her from office. He’s rallied his allies to attack her, sent accusatory demands for data to discredit her, trampled clear legal boundaries meant to keep politics out of criminal justice and twisted the truth to justify the games he’s been playing.
Wednesday, that axe fell. At 8:30 a.m., DeSantis called a press conference to announce that he was suspending Worrell, effective immediately. It was a practiced performance of political theater, one that — by now — DeSantis has learned to execute almost convincingly. He’s certainly had plenty of practice: From the start of his governorship, DeSantis has been arbitrarily removing officials from office in ways that far exceed his actual authority.
So when he stood up at his now-familiar podium, flanked by sheriffs and echoed by his best supporting actress, Attorney General Ashley Moody, Floridians might have been tricked into believing that DeSantis was duly exercising the authority voters vested in him as governor, and that he took that duty seriously.
Spoiler alert: He wasn’t – and doesn’t
Let us walk through the ways the governor hoodwinked Florida voters, once again. You’ll be surprised to find that his actions have little to do with the facts or the law — or even with how good, or bad, a prosecutor Worrell has been.
Instead — as usual — it’s all about DeSantis.
Does the governor really have the authority to remove duly elected officials based on his whims and policy differences?
No. DeSantis’ powers are restricted to removing elected officials who are guilty of “malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, perma nent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony.” Even if the carefully selected (dare we say cherry-picked?) data DeSantis included in the 40-page press release is true and a fair reflection of Worrell’s performance, it all boils down to a difference in policy.
Discrepancies don’t prove incompetence. Prosecutors, in particular, are supposed to have wide discretion in how they handle the criminal cases that are brought to their offices by local police agencies. That discretion provides a critical firewall against abusive behavior by law enforcement, and a way to ensure that punishments really fit crimes.
Are DeSantis’ accusations against Worrell true?
Unclear. The Sentinel staff hasn’t had a chance to go through them properly yet, but we do know that on numerous occasions we’ve caught the governor bending the truth to the breaking point. For example, when he suspended State Attorney Andrew Warren last year, he included allegations that were clearly deceptive — including an assertion that Warren had neglected his duty, or showed incompetence, for not prosecuting under laws that weren’t even in effect when Warren was removed from office, and for which no arrests had been made. Even if the statistics he provided are correct, it is already apparent that DeSantis is blaming Worrell for some things that are largely outside her authority (such as how juvenile justice officials process cases, or decisions judges make in setting bail for criminal defendants).
We find it telling, however, that neither of the sheriffs playing the role of backup singers at Tuesday’s press conference actually works in her circuit, which includes Orange and Osceola counties. In a terse statement to press, Orange County Sheriff John Mina said he wasn’t invited to speak. (Worrell has, in the past, implied that Mina was working with DeSantis to undermine her. We’ve seen no evidence of that, either — just that Mina seems to be staying in his lane and continuing to work with Worrell even when they disagree.)
Does DeSantis care that he’s established a clear pattern of retaliating against elected officials in a nakedly partisan, self-advantageous way?
Apparently not. This is the same governor, after all, who looked the other way for nearly two years as former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg abused his office in increasingly blatant ways, including using taxpayer equipment to mine bitcoin and make fake driver licenses for underaged girls. That trash finally took itself out when Greenberg resigned — a week after his first federal indictment. DeSantis also left his legislative ally, State Rep. Joe Harding, in office after Harding had been indicted for money laundering, wire fraud and making false statements Harding also resigned.
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DeSantis’ attacks almost always focus on officials that he thinks will burnish his hard-conservative bona fides, often based on cases that stir public emotion — such as the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland (the prelude to DeSantis’ removal of Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel) or this weekend’s shooting of two Orlando Police officers by a man released on bail.
Does the will of the voters who evaluated these candidates mean anything to him?
It doesn’t seem to. We’ve never observed the governor to have any concern for any vote that wasn’t cast directly for him. In the cases of Warren and now Worrell, he’s gone after prosecutors who openly campaigned on the need for criminal justice reform, better community-based solutions against violence and a willingness to challenge the status quo. Orange and Osceola voters knew who they were voting for when they chose Worrell.
What happened to Worrell Tuesday was an outrage and a disgrace, a clear abuse by a governor drunk on his own power. But Worrell was not the real victim: The voters who put her into office were the ones DeSantis really betrayed, as he has so many times before. In the weeks to come, we expect that to become even more clear. Stay tuned.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com
