Ron DeSantis Suspend-Fires Another Prosecutor Because *She* Has 'Political Agenda'
Ron DeSantis Suspend-Fires Another Prosecutor Because *She* Has 'Political Agenda'
Irony, already dead, arises from grave to die again.
Florida’s part-time hobbyist Governor Ron DeSantis returned to the state briefly Wednesday so he could remind his far-right supporters that he is a white Law-n-Order Republican just like them, as long as he’s making the law. Taking a brief break from his flailing presidential campaign, DeSantis showed up in Tallahassee to suspend State Attorney Monique Worrell, the democratically elected prosecutor for Orange and Osceola counties, claiming she was so very weak on crime that she needed to be removed from office the day after DeSantis fired more campaign staff.
At a press conference, Desantis said, with a straight face somehow, “Prosecutors have a duty to faithfully enforce the law. […] One’s political agenda cannot trump this solemn duty.”
As anyone knows, using criminal prosecutions to advance a political agenda is only allowed for governors who send police to round up Black voters on bogus voter fraud charges.
DeSantis suggested that Worrell’s supposedly lax attitude to prosecutions led to the release of at least two bad people who went on to commit horrible murders, but surprise surprise, the cases he’s pointed to were almost entirely out of Worrell’s hands. In one, DeSantis’s accusations could only be true if Worrell had traveled back in time to be harsher to a then-juvenile offender whose arrests largely preceded her time in office. The suspect’s single arrest while she was in office couldn’t be charged because police failed to gather critical evidence.
Worrell held her own presser in Orlando a few hours later, where she said she plans to fight her suspension in court and to run for reelection. She said, "If we’re mourning anything this morning, it is the loss of democracy. I am your duly elected state attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit, and nothing done by a weak dictator can change that.”
Worrell added that the timing of her suspension wasn’t exactly a mystery:
“He needed to get back in the media in some positive way that would be red meat for his base, and he will have accomplished that today,” she said. “He replaced his campaign manager yesterday, and I guess today it’s my turn.”
Worrell was elected in 2020 with 67 percent of the vote, which we guess DeSantis would say just shows what a bad idea democracy is. She was the state’s sole Black state attorney; DeSantis appointed as her replacement for Andrew Bain, an Orange County judge, who is also Black but is a Republican, so that should be fine with the two thirds of voters who chose the Democrat in 2020. Says the AP,
Worrell said she knows and respects Bain and wouldn’t criticize him, adding that the issue is about DeSantis.
“Elected officials are being taken out of office for political purposes, and that should never be a thing,” she said.
This is DeSantis’s second suspension of a democratically elected Democratic state attorney. In 2022, DeSantis shitcanned Hillsborough County's elected prosecutor Andrew Warren for saying he wouldn't pursue criminal charges in abortion cases, because prosecutorial discretion is for loyalists, loser.
Warren sued in federal court to challenge being removed from office; in January, US District Court Robert Hinkle castigated DeSantis for violating Warren’s rights, but also dismissed the lawsuit, explaining that the US Constitution’s 11th Amendment prohibited a federal court from reversing DeSantis’s decision, shitty though it was.
In conclusion, fuckin’ Florida, huh? Good luck to Ms. Worrell, who if nothing else should be the obvious frontrunner in her reelection bid next year.
[Tallahassee Democrat / AP / Popular Information]
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So if Tiny D can fire a local elected official because he doesn’t like how she’s doing her job, does that mean Biden can fire Tiny D?
"Phoenix Irony" is Ron's Drag name.
I know it's true because I read it on the interwebs*
*just now, before non-posting