2020 Election
Prosecutors Outline Why They Cleared Rick Singh of All Criminal Charges
Published
6 years agoon
ORLANDO, Fla. (FNN NEWS) – Prosecutors from the 7th Judicial Circuit Court cleared Orange County Property Appraiser Rick Singh of 10 criminal charges July 17, 2020 on an intriguing technicality: according to their detailed 10-page report, the witnesses weren’t credible.
Assistant state attorneys Melissa Clark and Andrew Urbanak listed three main witnesses in the report, who were not only former OCPA employees, but former OCPA leadership: Willis Perry, OCPA’s former human resources manager, Aisha Hassan, OCPA’s former finance director, and Laverne McGee, OCPA’s former communications director, who the prosecutors list in the report as the mastermind behind it all based on the complaints, reports, and interviews they reviewed.
After reviewing “thousands of pages of documents and many hours of recorded witness interviews” from FDLE as part of their investigation, the prosecutors decided “there is insufficient evidence to establish criminal activity beyond a reasonable doubt.”
But what was the reasonable doubt? According to the prosecutors, the witnesses’ intensions. Particularly McGee’s.
Read the full 10-page report here.
The Case at Hand
Unlike what the media initially made it out to be—with allegations of Singh having strippers in his office and using OCPA funding for lavish trips—the prosecutors investigated the criminal complaints surrounding a 2015 Orange County Comptroller audit of the OCPA for which Singh ordered his staff to alter the name on financial documents to read “staff” instead of his own name on a $74.56 gas receipt. Additionally, the witnesses called into question Singh’s use of an OCPA vehicle while collecting a monthly $540 to $575 stipend for giving over his personal vehicle for office use.
Other questioned transactions included Singh’s use of OCPA funds to take an Orlando Magic representative to lunch at the Tiger Bay Club (which Singh wanted removed to simply reflect lunch) and a contrived photo meant to depict Singh at a Curry Festival in Tampa Bay—with the photo being taken two years after he attended the festival—to justify his attendance there. In actuality, Singh took the photo at a park near his home with a created banner, made to look as if he were at the festival. Singh wanted the language in documents reflecting that he attended the Curry Festival removed.
In their investigation, the prosecutors learned from CPA Farlen Halikman, the accountant Singh called in to review documents for the 2015 audit, that listing “office staff” for the p-card transactions was allowable since Singh also counts as staff. At the time, Halikman advised against Singh altering the documents, and said all that was needed was an attached sticky note to indicate that it was a staff expense.
The prosecutors also stated in their report that if OCPA business was discussed at the Tiger Bay Club lunch, then the expense was justified.
In the end, the prosecutors found no regulations, neither in the Florida Statutes, the Orange County Charter, nor even the OCPA’s regulations, that prohibited Singh from both handing over his personal vehicle for office use and collecting a monthly stipend as well as using an office fleet vehicle. By law he can do both.
In their closing summary, the prosecutors stated, “the alterations were concealing something that he [Singh] could legally do under Florida Law.”
The Other Connected Complaints
Perry, Hassan and McGee filed whistleblower complaints in relation to Singh’s order to alter documents for the 2015 audit. They were all eventually terminated from their positions in Singh’s office, causing them to file civil complaints of racial discrimination, and for the ladies’ part, sexual harassment as well.
Here are the specifics from the prosecutors’ report:
On August 24, 2018, Willis Perry filed a federal complaint against Rick Singh personally and in his capacity as Orange County Property Appraiser alleging:
- a violation of the Florida Whistleblower Act,
- a violation of the Florida Civil Rights Act,
- Retaliation under the Florida Civil Rights Act,
- a violation of Title VII, Retaliation under Title VII, and
- Retaliation under the First Amendment.
This complaint was settled out-of-court.
The ladies’ complaints, however, are still ongoing. Per the report:
On November 6, 2018, McGee and Hassan filed a federal complaint against Rick Singh in his capacity as Orange County Property Appraiser alleging:
- a violation of the Florida Public Sector Whistleblower Act,
- Sexual Harassment in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (two separate counts were filed for both McGee and Hassan),
- Retaliation under Title VII (two separate counts were filed for both McGee and Hassan),
- Sexual Harassment in Violation of the Florida Civil Rights Act (two separate counts),
- Retaliation in violation of the Florida Civil Rights Act (two separate counts), and
- Retaliation in violation of the First Amendment
The complaint is still pending at this time.
Singh hit back in 2020. The report states:
On February 11, 2020, Singh, in his capacity as Orange County Property Appraiser, filed a complaint in state court against Hassan and McGee alleging:
- a “Civil Action for Surreptitious Recording in Violation of section 934.03”,
- Cyberstalking and violation of Florida’s GPS Law,
- Theft of Agency Records,
- Invasion of Privacy, and
- Conspiracy
This complaint is also still pending at this time.
The counterstrike continued. The report notes:
Recently, a criminal complaint was filed by OCPA against both Hassan and McGee. The Orlando Police Department investigated the allegations and completed a charging affidavit with allegations of:
- offenses against public utilities, F.S. 815.061,
- illegal interception of oral communications, F.S. 943.03, and
- theft of documents from OCPA (Hassan), F.S. 812.014 which were forwarded to the State Attorney for the 9th Judicial Circuit. The State Attorney’s Office for the 9th Judicial Circuit declined to prosecute the charges against Hassan and McGee.
The document theft complaint came after Hassan chose to keep the original copies of the documents Singh ordered her to shred.
It Gets Messier
The prosecutors included Perry’s complaint against McGee for creating a hostile work environment from the moment she was hired.
According to the investigation, Perry ended up filing a complaint against her in 2016.
“The work environment at OCPA is disruptive, dysfunctional, and laden with mistrust, resentment, and anger led mainly by Laverne McGee and upheld by the Orange County Property Appraiser. McGee has committed numerous improper and unethical acts, made unsubstantiated claims of me stalking and harassing her, exhibited harassing and threatening behavior towards me, sent defamatory emails to my supervisor and the Property Appraiser, blatantly lied about me, made racist overtones/comments and has gotten into arguments with me (and mostly ever other employee in Admin Services). This has established a pattern of conduct sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of employment…”
Per the report, former OCPA IT employee Vikaash Maharaj disclosed during his interview that McGee instructed him to create the false banner for the contrived photograph.
Singh also said the contrived photograph was her idea, while McGee insisted it was Singh’s.
Additionally, Halikman disclosed in his interview that while he was advising Singh’s team concerning the altered documents, McGee mentioned the contrived photograph to him, saying they should remove it. He wasn’t aware of the photograph prior to her mention of it, and he told her the photograph wouldn’t be a factor in the audit, so including it was unnecessary.
Reasonable Doubt
All told, the charges against Singh have the attached motives of financial gain and reducing political scrutiny.
Here’s where the reasonable doubt comes in.
According to the prosecutors’ report, their investigation revealed that Singh wouldn’t stand to gain any financial benefit from his actions, which eliminated that criteria for criminality. While reducing political scrutiny appeared to be the motive here, the prosecutors still did not believe it held criminal weight in this case: “…both the auditor and accountant [Halikman], as well as statutory law, support the conclusion that this staged photograph did not result in any monetary change in regard to a “benefit.” As far as the benefit being “optics”, the legal analysis is the same. There is no precedent for defining avoidance of “bad optics” as constituting a benefit under the Official Misconduct statute.
“Finally, it is unclear to what extent Singh participated in the decision to stage the photograph. This is based on the conflicting testimony of McGee, Hassan, and Perry compared to the other witnesses.”
Potential Backfire
In their conclusion, the prosecutors pointed back to the source of the complaints, shrugged their shoulders, and clapped the dust from their hands. They closed succinctly:
“McGee, Hassan and Perry made statements that Singh was worried about the appearance of the audit and made these alterations to avoid scrutiny. As discussed, their testimony is in conflict with other, seemingly more reliable witnesses. Their relationships to the office, combined with their current and past litigation creates factual conflicts and motivation to fabricate facts for their benefit.”
Singh held a press conference Monday, July 20, 2020 to set the record straight and answer press questions about the investigation. “I know the truth. I know I did nothing wrong,” he said during the press conference. “He referred to the witnesses as “disgruntled employees.”
_____________________________________
Mellissa Thomas is Editor for Florida National News. | mellissa.thomas@floridanationalnews.com
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2020 Election
4th Resident of Retirement Haven Charged with Voter Fraud
Published
4 years agoon
January 6, 2022
THE VILLAGES, Fla. (AP) — A fourth resident of a massive Florida retirement community has been arrested on a charge of voter fraud.
Charles Barnes, 64, was arrested Tuesday and charged with voter fraud for casting more than one ballot, according to an arrest affidavit filed in court.
The arrest affidavit doesn’t detail the basis for the charge. Barnes entered a not guilty plea on Thursday.
His attorney, Victor Mead, didn’t immediately return an email inquiry.
Online voting records showed Barnes wasn’t affiliated with any political party and that he first registered to vote in Sumter County in 2019.
Barnes’ arrest was the fourth for voter fraud in the past two months of residents of The Villages retirement community in a county that is a Republican stronghold in Florida. Of the three other residents, two were registered Republicans and the third had no party affiliation.
The arrests come after Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pledged to create a law enforcement agency to investigate election crimes, despite there being little evidence of electoral malfeasance by voters in the Sunshine State.
2020 Election
Florida House Public Integrity and Elections Committee Review 2020 Election Physical and Cybersecurity
Published
5 years agoon
February 10, 2021
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (FNN) – Many of the legislative committees are meeting in preparation for the upcoming legislative session on March 2, 2021.
The Public Integrity and Elections Committee met on February 9, 2021, to discuss whether or not Florida’s laws are working to produce secure, reliable, fair, and efficient elections. The presentations during this meeting were intended:
- Give the members of the committee an opportunity to learn more about the nuances of election law
- To appreciate what went right in the 2020 election
- To evaluate areas where there might be room for improvement
Secretary of State Laurel Lee talked about the physical and cybersecurity of the elections, with her main focus being on infrastructure.
On May 22, 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis instructed Secretary Lee to do a review of the statewide elections infrastructure to identify any vulnerabilities and address any vulnerabilities that were identified not only at the state level but across all 67 counties.
To create a baseline, the Department of State needed reliable information and the same information across all counties. The Department developed a plan along with the Supervisors of Elections from across the state. This plan involved sending Department of State cyber navigators to each of the 67 counties to conduct an election specific risk assessment on the individual networks.
This meant for the first time ever, the State Department had statewide visibility on the elections related systems, networks, and physical facilities. They were then able to send resources and personnel to the areas most in need and to work side-by-side with each county to address and mitigate any vulnerabilities.
Secretary Lee said that with the help of our federal partners, which included the US Attorney, FBI, and Homeland Security all critical intelligence and threat information was passed along in a timely manner and these partners helped in the fight against election-related misinformation.
Another new thing for this election was that the state joined the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) in order to enhance election security and maintain accurate voter rolls. Membership in ERIC allowed the state and the Supervisors of Elections to cross-check their rolls with those of all other member states to find deceased voters, duplicate registrations, or other list maintenance activities in order to maintain more accurate and up-to-date rolls.
The State Department also used ERIC to conduct the state’s most sweeping effort to date to register new voters. 2.2 billion postcards were sent out to potential voters. Within 10 days of the households starting to receive those postcards, the state saw 300,000 new registrations with a total of 14.4 million registered voters this year which is an increase of 1.4 million.
Secretary Lee applauded Judge Pete Antonacci, former Supervisor of Elections in Broward County for his and his team’s work on correcting the many problems plaguing Broward County elections. She said that in 2020, Broward County was truly a success story.
When asked by the committee about the breakdown in the online voter registration site this year and in past years, Secretary Lee said that her office had made improvements to the system but they were only expecting to handle 100,000’s of thousands of new registrations on the last night of registration but instead they had millions of voters trying to register. Her office immediately began to upgrade the system and she extended the deadline for another 24 hours, giving voters time to register online. Secretary Lee said that improvements have been made to the programming as well as the system capacity so that the online registration system now will be able to handle huge numbers of voters who may try to register online.
Judge Antonacci offered his observations to the committee from his time as Elections Supervisor. Judge Antonacci said that his biggest concern is with mail-in ballots. Broward County received 475,000 mail-in ballots over a 32-day period in the 2020 election. He said that verifying signatures is definitely an area that needs improvement. Antonacci also said that vote by mail request lists are available to certain political entities which makes ballot harvesting possible because these entities can now show up at a voter’s home and this should be addressed by the legislature.
Judge Antonacci also said that he was concerned about the people who came to the dropbox sites and deposited large numbers of mail-in ballots. He feels that there should be a limit to the number of ballots that are allowed to be dropped off by one person.
Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley disagreed with this observation by pointing out that because of the pandemic, many neighborhoods had one person designated to pick up all the mail-in ballots for the neighborhood and drop them off at a dropbox location. He also said that he knew of many families in his county that did the same thing.
The committee appeared to have their concerns and questions addressed. There were a few questions posed to Secretary Lee that she did not have the answer to but she promised to get those answers for the committee.
_________________________________________________________
Lynn DeJarnette is a reporter for Florida National News. | info@floridanationalnews.com
ORLANDO, Fla. – On January 6, 2021, the United States witnessed more history in the making. As United States representatives and senators went to work to confirm the electoral college votes for the duly elected President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, thousands of people showed up to persuade congress to overturn the election results. All of this overshadowed the historic victories of United States Senators-elect Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of Georgia.
To be clear, this was not a protest, this was an insurrection put together with leaders of QAnon and white supremacist organizations such as the Proud Boys at the forefront. These were terrorists. After the insurrection died down, 66% of Republican House members voted to overturn the election results and eight Republican Senators – including Rick Scott of Florida – voted to overturn the election results. 147 Congressmen effectively voted in favor of terrorists. The worst part of this insurrection is that it was led by a powerful leader: President Donald J. Trump.
2020 broke many records, including the Black Lives Matter protests. Between 15 and 26 million protestors gathered, possibly becoming the largest protest in the history of the United States. Of the tens of thousands of BLM demonstrations that took place, 93% of them were entirely peaceful, meaning not one brick was thrown. However, the peaceful nature of BLM protestors did not stop law enforcement from using unnecessary force against them, it was common to see the use of rubber bullets and tear gas. In fact, President Trump condemned BLM protestors numerous times and even had peaceful protestors tear-gassed just so he could get a photo-op in front of St. John’s Church around Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C.
When far-right Trump supporters with confederate flags and Trump flags barreled into the United States Capitol breaking glass, assaulting officers, calling black officers racist slurs, erecting nooses, and breaking into congressional office buildings, the presence of officers were low. There was a large contrast between the officer response to peaceful BLM protests and the violent insurrection that got blood in the halls of the nations’ capitol. Instead of seeing violent arrests or racial profiling that occurs during BLM protests, people saw officers helping terrorists and members of guerilla movements walk down the stairs of the Capitol building and even take selfies with them.
Don’t be mistaken. This discrepancy between the response of law enforcement for left-leaning protests involving climate change or racial justice and right-leaning “protests” such as the so-called “Stop the Steal” protests and Wednesday’s violent riot are not completely unintentional. Over a decade ago, the FBI expressed concern about white supremacy in law enforcement, but those fears were not taken seriously by the U.S. government and over the past four years with a racist President Trump in office, law enforcement has only doubled down on racial bias.
For far too long, right-wingers have stood up for what they refer to as “blue lives” against the calls for reform and accountability in the law enforcement system to counteract efforts of social justice. The primarily white terrorists who launched the insurrection at the nations’ capitol were significantly more comfortable breaking glass and hurling insults at officers than BLM protestors were when they peacefully marched the streets. This comfort was caused by a sense of entitlement among right-wingers.
Since BLM protests first started, right-wingers flooded their social media pages with seven-point stars, placed thin blue hearts on their cars, and flew thin blue flags on their homes. This allegiance to police officers was viewed more as an alliance, so when the time came for them to start protesting, police officers would inevitably be on their side. Even when some officers retaliated against these terrorists, it was met with shock and anger.
If the pandemic didn’t get citizens thinking about how developed the U.S. is, this insurrection certainly should. The United States is supposedly one of the wealthiest and most developed countries, but the wealth inequality is high, right-wing demagoguery is on the rise, and more evidence is pointing to the idea that members of the Capitol Police colluded with terrorists to possibly harm members of Congress along with their staff. The U.S.’s status as a developed democracy is at risk, but it could be fixed.
The members of Congress who constantly voted to appease this dangerous president over the past four years and the members who chose to vote against certifying the results of a democratically held election must be held accountable. This means removing them from committees and even expelling those members, including Senator Rick Scott. The U.S. should also do more to hold law enforcement officers accountable and make them follow the same laws that ordinary citizens follow by getting rid of qualified immunity. There must be a stronger movement to shift funding to mental health resources in local communities to counter this large increase in white supremacy in law enforcement.
Democracy is at risk and the United States must do everything it takes to protect it from the same people who damaged it by placing this dangerous and corrupt administration at the top.
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Nathaniel Douglas is a newly elected Supervisor on the Orange Soil & Water Conservation District Board, making history as the youngest to ever be elected to that board, and was the youngest to be elected to public office in the state of Florida during the 2020 election. He is a Florida National News political contributor. | info@floridanationalnews.com
