In the days after his appointment as state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties, Andrew Bain received in-person assistance from one of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ top advisers.
Agency employees have described seeing Larry Keefe, the governor’s public safety czar, working at the State Attorney’s Office in downtown Orlando throughout the latter half of Bain’s first week on the job.
Jason Gunn, a spokesperson for the State Attorney’s Office confirmed Keefe’s presence at the office but did not provide any details about what Keefe was doing to help Bain.
“Larry Keefe … visited the office of the State Attorney during State Attorney Bain’s first week in office,” read Gunn’s statement. “Keefe has extensive background in the legal framework of state and federal affairs and was very helpful to the State Attorney in the first few days on the job.”
In his first interview after taking office, Bain told WFTV-Channel 9 he would not be beholden to DeSantis as state attorney, pledging to act independently from the man who handpicked him for the job.
“The fundamental philosophy that the governor and I share is that there is a separation between each and every branch and each and every office as to what … decisions are to be made … as long as those decisions are legally based,” he said.
But Keefe’s hands-on role in Bain’s transition underscores the extensive efforts undertaken by the DeSantis administration to reshape the administration of justice in Orlando and Tampa, while ousting progressive prosecutors elected on reform platforms.
Keefe, a former law partner of far-right U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz who then-President Donald Trump appointed in 2018 as U.S. attorney for northern Florida, has been central to that effort.
Though he is likely best known for his role in the DeSantis administration’s controversial flight of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in September, Keefe was also instrumental in the suspension of Andrew Warren, the former Hillsborough County prosecutor who was removed from office a year before Monique Worrell’s ouster.
Keefe began the search for prosecutors to target, authored the initial draft of the executive order suspending Warren and provided talking points for Susan Lopez, the judge who DeSantis appointed to be the interim state attorney in Hillsborough County.
‘Soros progressive prosecutors’
After a meeting with DeSantis in December 2021 in which the governor asked about prosecutors who were not enforcing the law, Keefe set out on an informal project to collect complaints about prosecutors from sheriffs around the state, according to his testimony in federal court last November.
“All roads led to Mr. Warren,” Keefe said; however, Worrell’s name came up when Keefe contacted Orange County Sheriff John Mina.
Mina told Keefe that he had heard similar complaints about Warren to the ones he had against Worrell, according to testimony during the trial in Warren’s federal lawsuit against the governor.
“…[Mina] understood that Mr. Warren was of the same mindset [as Worrell] and had the same approach and reputationally had heard the same things,” Keefe said under oath.
According to testimony, Keefe called Mina “to ask general questions about state attorneys that don’t enforce the law.”
Mina told Keefe he “had concerns” that both Worrell and Warren were “Soros progressive prosecutors.”
Keefe was asked by the judge if Mina had actually used “that word ‘Soros.’”
“I believe he did,” Keefe told the court.
The campaigns of Worrell and her predecessor Aramis Ayala each received over $1 million in ad support from groups linked to Soros, the Democrat billionaire fund-raiser and boogeyman to conservatives.
Worrell has previously said she has never spoken with Soros and that the mega-donor had no influence on the way she ran her office.
In Worrell’s suspension by DeSantis, Ayala sees echoes from her own tenure as state attorney
Keefe told the court that his conversation with Mina went beyond Warren, and included talk of Ayala as well as a “very difficult political situation” the sheriff was facing at the time.
“… [Mina] was sharing with me the difficulties he had in light of his position, his role in that community with its demographic … you know, it’s culture,” Keefe said. “… To be a law enforcement sheriff is very difficult in that environment, and that he was doing the best he could to do his job and to enforce the law.”
Michelle Guido, a spokesperson for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, said, the conversation between Mina and Keefe was “very brief” since the sheriff did not know Warren.
Regarding the Soros comment Keefe attributed to Mina in federal court, Guido said the sheriff was referring to “exactly what he read” in an Orlando Sentinel article that had mentioned the ad support Worrell received from groups linked to the progressive billionaire.
Mina also “does not believe he was or is in a ‘very difficult political situation,’ and did not say that,” Guido in a statement said. The sheriff and Keefe did not discuss “culture or demographics or the environment,” she added.
“However, Sheriff Mina has said in the past that it is difficult to continue to see good cases our detectives put together involving violent criminals and repeat offenders dismissed or minimized (pleaded down) by the State Attorney’s Office to the point that those dangerous, violent criminals were free to continue menacing our community,” Guido said.
Keefe’s role in Warren’s suspension
Keefe built a dossier against Warren over the course of months, chronicling cases he did not prosecute as well as the policies that Keefe believed would bolster grounds to suspend the prosecutor.
Keefe sought to keep his communications hidden and asked Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister, who had been feeding Keefe information on Warren, to use the encrypted messaging app Signal, and to send information to Keefe’s personal email address, rather than his state email, court transcripts show.
But it was only after Warren signed a joint statement pledging not to prosecute women seeking abortions or their doctors that Keefe and other members of DeSantis’ office felt they had enough to justify Warren’s suspension.
In late June, Ryan Newman, DeSantis’ general counsel, sent the joint statement that included the signatures of over 90 other elected prosecutors to Keefe.
“Ready to engage,” he responded.
On July 18, Newman called a meeting of the legal office and announced the idea of suspending Warren, according to the deposition of Ray Treadwell, chief deputy general counsel to DeSantis.
Keefe, using his personal email address, soon sent Treadwell a copy of the executive order he drafted.
On July 26, Keefe along with Newman and James Uthmeier, the governor’s chief of staff, first told DeSantis of their interest in suspending Warren.
Warren was removed from office on Aug. 4.
The afternoon before DeSantis’ press conference announcing Warren’s ouster, court records show Keefe sent “revised talking points” to Susan Lopez, who was picked and had agreed to be the interim state attorney in Hillsborough County.
“Love it!” Lopez wrote back to Keefe. “Sounds like me! Thank you!”
Then, just hours before the press conference, Keefe wrote to Taryn Fenske and Savannah Kelly Jefferson, two spokespeople for the governor’s office, suggesting talking points for Lopez to include in her first “internal directive memo,” which would be sent to staff at the State Attorney’s Office after her appointment.
Among Keefe’s suggestions: the suspension of all of Warren’s “prosecution policies” and an announcement that the office would “have no blanket non prosecution policies.”
Included in federal court records was a memo to staff in which Lopez described her plan to “get this agency back to basics.”
“…[E]ffective immediately, any policy my predecessor put in place that called for presumptive non-enforcement of the laws of Florida is immediately rescinded,” the memo said, adding that the nixed policies included ones that did not enforce “mandatory minimums in any felony case or any category of crime that [Warren] told … this agency would not prosecute.”
Lopez’s memo also said, “We will be prosecutors who partner with law enforcement, advocate for crime victims, and follow the law.”
Bain’s first week in office
About a year later, after Bain was appointed to take Worrell’s place, he sent out a memo to staff that was strikingly similar.
“Thank you for your ongoing professionalism and service during this transition. I am confident the team will rise to the occasion,” said Bain’s email, sent less than an hour after his appointment. “We will be prosecutors that partner with local law enforcement, advocate for victims, and never put ourselves above the law.”
Bain’s email, like Lopez’s, said he would rescind a policy maintained by former administrations.
“To achieve these goals, effective immediately, I am rescinding the catch and release policy that has been in place for far too long,” Bain wrote.
In the last week, Bain’s staff has been unable to produce the policy he was referring to. A former State Attorney’s Office chief of staff accused Bain of lying and playing on conservative talking points by employing the term “catch-and-release” – a pejorative used by critics of immigration policy.
During his first week in Office, Bain fired at least four members of the previous administration’s staff, including one who was on maternity leave and suspended all of the office’s diversion programs.
In an interview with WFTV, Bain said he was contacted by the governor about the opportunity to be the Ninth Circuit’s lead prosecutor “about two weeks” before Worrell was removed.
He said he was initially given hours to decide and that “the plan was much shorter.” Then, because of a delay on the governor’s end, Bain was able to prepare for his eventual appointment.
Bain, who was appointed to the Orange County judicial bench by DeSantis in 2020, resigned his judgeship the same day the governor announced he would be the interim state attorney, according to a letter obtained by the Sentinel.
“Please accept this letter of resignation from the position of Orange County Judge, Ninth Judicial Circuit of Florida, effective immediately,” said the letter, addressed to the governor and dated Aug. 9. “…I am grateful for the honor and privilege to continue my service to the people of the Ninth Circuit as I return to the Office of the State Attorney.”
When he resigned, Bain left behind the 8,000 cases, which are being assigned to other civil divisions, according to Karen Levey, the spokesperson for the Ninth Judicial Circuit.
“Because our circuit is so lean, the loss of any judge results in increased workloads for the other judges,” said Chief Judge Lisa Munyon in a statement to the Sentinel. “Before adding the work of a judge who retires or resigns, each county civil judge has a caseload of approximately 8000 cases which is unsustainable. The additional cases exacerbate the problem.”
Bain told WFTV he plans to run for election against Worrell, who has said she plans to continue her reelection campaign while also challenging her suspension in court.
ccann@orlandosentinel.com
