Florida Governor Again Attacks Speech

Governor Ron DeSantis has once again attacked someone for making distasteful political speech in Florida.

DeSantis previously made a hot-headed blunder trying to stop Disney World from maintaining their park, because their manager promised to participate in the Florida political process. DeSantis also sent six sheriffs to threaten to lock up an Okeechobee resident Stephen Murray without cause or being allowed to go before a judge, for making a true and substantiated complaint about a friend of DeSantis to the Florida Inspector General.

Most recently, DeSantis removed Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren, for nothing more than a campaign communication which DeSantis wants to publicly take the other side of.

Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren signed a pledge that he would not prosecute crimes involving abortion or gender medicine. What Warren signed is just a campaign communication, it is not legally binding to prohibit him from choosing to prosecute specific future cases. Like all Florida prosecutors (and politicians in general), Warren will use his discretion to find the most politically convenient path in each case regardless of what he promised and the law. And there is no Florida law that says Warren cannot choose what cases he wants to prosecute. There is also no Florida law that he cannot freely choose how to communicate to voters what his policy will be.

Certainly DeSantis would not choose to remove a sheriff, who makes boastful promises about attacking criminals during a political campaign. Usually without mentioning any details of a judge or due process. Any “Constitutional Sheriffs” promising not to enforce gun laws removed lately?

As proof that this is purely an attack on political speech, DeSantis cited in his Executive Order Warren’s promise to not enforce laws on gender medicine. But there is no such law against gender medicine that has been passed by the Florida Legislature. It is simply a case that Warren likes gender medicine, and DeSantis doesn’t like gender medicine. And so to attack a politician who dared to speak in support of gender medicine, DeSantis took his job. Outside of there being any actual Florida law to support what DeSantis did. What Warren said about gender medicine is pure campaign speech.

DeSantis claimed to take a poll of sheriffs to decide what prosecutor to go after. Those sheriffs then stood behind DeSantis, and called Warren a fraud, and complained about his failure to prosecute Black Lives Matter protestors. So there you have what is really going on. There is no law against gender medicine in Florida, Warren’s campaign promise does not bind him against making future case-specific decisions, and a campaign promise is not a “blanket refusal” or “functional veto of state law” as in the New York law DeSantis cited, until Warren actually refuses to prosecute a series of cases.

There is not even an office or a formal mechanism in the Florida executive branch, to compel reporting or monitor how prosecutors are actually using their discretion. And DeSantis doesn’t want one. DeSantis could create an office to oversee prosecutor conduct today. It would demand reports of all the charges that were dropped and why, all the jailhouse witnesses that were let out of prison for convicting innocents, all the times police were caught lying and not prosecuted for perjury. So DeSantis does not even know how many cases Warren refused to prosecute, and does not want to know.

DeSantis is just once again indulging his bizarre psychopathic impulses to attack speakers from the other political party. And using bizarre contortions to do it “under color of law”.

A prosecutor didn’t prosecute some Black Lives Matter protestors. And DeSantis and the sheriffs are so angry about it – so angry and injured that someone would dare speak against cops in Florida – that they had to get his job. And they invented a bunch of nonsense about a gender medicine law that doesn’t exist, and even cited a law from New York, to do it. Black Lives Matter protestors will not petition their grievances in Florida, and people will not speak in support of gender medicine, so long as DeSantis is Governor.