(bright music) - [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Coming up next, on WEDU, an interview with Hillsborough County's elected state attorney, Andrew Warren, who was suspended from office by the governor last week.

The FBI searches former President Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago for documents removed from the White House.

And a Republican congressional candidate attacks Florida's former Republican Secretary of State, for failing to do a forensic audit of the 2020 election.

All coming up right now, on Florida This Week.

(intense music) Welcome back.

It's been more than a week since governor Ron DeSantis, in an unusual move, suspended Hillsborough County's elected state attorney, Andrew Warren from office.

The governors removed other officials from office before, but most of those officials were accused of committing a crime, Andrew Warren has not been accused of any crime.

The governor said, "Warren was nullifying state laws, thereby eroding the rule of law, encouraging lawlessness and usurping the role of the legislature to define criminal conduct."

DeSantis removed Warren for opposing Florida's new abortion law and opposing the governor's planned future edict on transgender youth but no abortion or gender cases have reached Warren's office yet.

Several current and past law enforcement officers, including sheriffs from Pasco and Polk counties stood next to the governor as he announced Warren's suspension saying, Warren had not been tough enough on crime.

For his part, Andrew Warren is vowing to fight his removal from office and calls the governor's actions illegal and a dangerous abuse of power.

Joining me now is Andrew Warren, the elected Hillsborough County state attorney, currently suspended and Andrew, thanks for joining us.

Good to see you.

- Thanks for having me here.

- All right.

So the governor used the words, neglect of duty and incompetence in removing you from office, he said you were nullifying laws.

What are you saying?

- Well, the governor, wasn't able to identify any specific examples of laws that we hadn't followed, this is really about my opposition to two of his pet culture war issues, abortion and transgender healthcare.

None of those issues have had cases come before me.

And the abortion law was held to be unconstitutional.

The gender affirming healthcare law none exists, it's as if I'm being accused of having robbed a bank, except they're acknowledging that I haven't taken any money and the bank doesn't exist.

- George Orwell had this term thought crime, and then there have been movies about futuristic crimes.

You feel like you're being charged in advance for something you didn't do?

- Absolutely, I'm being punished for talking about my opposition to two potential laws.

Laws that weren't even on the books yet.

And again, one of them still isn't on the books and one of them was held to be unconstitutional.

This has nothing to do with the job that I've done as state attorney.

And we know that because we've done a good job here.

Not only because I've been elected and re-elected but because crime is low in Hillsborough County, it's lower than any surrounding area in the Tampa Bay, any surrounding county in Tampa Bay, lower than any other large county in the state, it's come down every year I've been in office.

The proof is in the pudding.

Unfortunately, at the press conference last week, truth had left the building that was just a political circus.

- There were three sheriffs at that press conference last week, the Polk County sheriff, the Pasco County sheriff and Hillsborough County sheriff.

Sheriff Chronister in Hillsborough County said, that there was a crime in which there was a victim and you weren't prosecuting the crime and he made a pretty strong statement against you.

- Yeah.

Look, Cherry picking one case where we weren't able to obtain a conviction is such a silly argument.

First of all, when we can't prosecute a case, we don't obtain a conviction, it's because we don't have the evidence to do that.

Let's not forget that key word, evidence, but it's like pointing out Tom Brady through a couple incompletions and saying, oh look, clearly he doesn't wanna win football games and that has nothing to do with anything that they're talking about.

What they're really doing is connecting my opposition to a couple issues in my standing up for Roe V. Wade.

And the fact that, that law's on the books, in Florida's Constitution, we have an expressed privacy right.

They're connecting that to the fact that we don't have a 100% conviction rate and trying to con-.

That dog don't hunt.

The argument makes no sense.

- Let's put up some crime statistics.

- Sure.

- From the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and they compare crimes in some of the bigger counties to some of the nearby counties like Polk and Pasco and Hillsborough County.

Hillsborough County per 100,000 people has the lowest crime rate of all these counties that you see on the screen.

This is up to 2020, the year 2020.

All right, so we're in 2022, could these numbers be out of date?

- Well, first of all, this is based on the latest data available.

This is from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

It's their index crime rate, which is the broadest measure of serious crime.

It includes violent crime and serious property crimes too.

The 2021 data hasn't come out yet.

We know that across the country in urban areas, suburban cities, every crime's gone up a little bit.

Yes, it's gone up in Hillsborough County but those numbers really aren't gonna change into 2021.

Our crime rate is lower here than it is anywhere else.

It's gone down every year since I've been in office almost 30% since I took office.

We've done a good job here.

The governor just doesn't like the way I've done done it.

- Why do you think the governor removed you?

- Well, this was a flagrant abuse of power and the sad part is, it's because the governor is trying to further his own political agenda, his own political ambition.

This was a political sideshow.

He's talking about things that are going on in Portland and in Seattle and in other parts of the country, he has other sheriffs up there who have no business moseying into Hillsborough County when their crime rates higher than ours, frankly.

And they're talking about things that have nothing to do with what's going on in this community.

It's about the governor wanting to run for president, not paying attention to what the voters of Hillsborough County want.

And the biggest thing is he's nullifying an election.

He's overthrowing the results of a fair and free election.

The voters put me in office and if they wanna take me out, if they don't wanna vote for me, that's fine, I can live with that.

But the governor doesn't get to steal the right to vote away from the people, that's not how democracy works.

- Before the COVID crisis or as the COVID crisis began, I interviewed one of the sheriffs that was at the press conference and the sheriff said, he's not going to enforce the eviction laws at the time because he was worried about people running out of money because they couldn't get to work because of COVID.

Sheriffs have the discretion to enforce laws and sometimes-.

So let's talk about it.

- You say that but this is what we have to be worried about.

This is not about me.

This is not about one elected official being removed from office, this is an attack on democracy in the state of Florida.

Think about it, if the governor's allowed to do this, to suspend an elected official from office based on something the official said, that means a candidate running for office, you can have a sheriff running for office and saying, I really think we need to build trust in the community, we need to issue more warnings in fewer speeding tickets, that sheriff can win the election based on that platform.

And on the first day in office, the governor's gonna remove the sheriff saying, well, you said you're not gonna enforce the law every single time.

And then what?

Install, the person who lost the election.

That's where we are.

It was really hard to overstate the significance of this in terms of throwing out elections, undoing democracy and stealing people's votes.

- The governor said during that press conference that he had surveyed the whole state asked the 67 county officials around the state and he said, you were the worst one.

(andrew chuckles) - Well, the worst one based on what?

Certainly not the worst one based on getting votes.

I got 370,000 votes in the last election in Hillsborough County, the governor got 50% fewer than that.

Certainly, not the worst in terms of the crime rate.

Certainly, not the worst in terms of innovation ideas.

We've done so much here with the coordination of law enforcement.

Some of the things they're talking about, we have diversion programs that they don't like, law enforcement signed onto that.

We have built this over years now in office to create a model for a 21st Century criminal justice system that prioritizes public safety, efficient use of resources, reduces recidivism.

And we are succeeding on it, the governor just doesn't like it because the letter after my name on the ballot, nothing to do with what I've done, it's about who I am and what I've said.

- Do you think the reforms that you put in place were working?

Is that why you have a lower crime rate in Hillsborough County than the other counties?

- Absolutely.

Now I can't take credit for all of it.

The crime rates' affected by many things, it's affected by law enforcement, it's affected by the economy but the reforms we've put in place, working with law enforcement have been targeted to reduce certain types of crime and they've worked.

Again, you can't argue with the truth and the truth still matters.

- [Rob] How are you fighting this?

- How am I fighting it?

- [Rob] Yeah.

- Well, look, we're going to wage a vigorous defense in court.

This is clearly an illegal unconstitutional order.

We anticipate the courts to throw it out relatively quickly and install me back in office.

The problem with this is the disruption that it's caused to the criminal justice system in Hillsborough County.

You have an unelected official now, serving in the position of an elected official, doing things that the people do not want, undoing programs that have been put in place and that are working.

And of course there's the bigger issue of the erosion of democracy that we're seeing by the governor's overreach.

- But if it goes to the courts, the Florida Supreme Court is controlled by the Republicans.

Do you really think that you've got a chance, if it goes all the way to the Florida Supreme Court to win?

- Rob, I hear what you're saying but actually the Florida Supreme Court last I checked is controlled by the rule of law.

And that's what this is about, the rule of law.

The governor likes to stand up and talk about law and order and rule of law, well, he's violating the law here.

He's created disorder and perhaps the most fundamental rule of law in our democracy is that, the people get to elect their representatives.

That's the law he's violating above all.

- Andrew Warren, thanks a lot.

We'll pay attention as this case continues.

- Thank you.

(bright music) - Joining me now in our panel this week, Sheryl Wilson is the former chair of the Manatee County Democratic Party.

William March is an independent political correspondent.

Aakash Patel is founder and CEO of Elevate Incorporated and a Republican and Howard Simon is the former executive director of the, ACLU of Florida.

Thank you all for being here.

Great to have you here.

Howard, I wanna get your response to what Andrew Warren told us.

The governor of course suspended him because the governor said Warren was nullifying state laws.

What do you think about what Warren said and what the governor said?

- Well, I think what the governor has said and what he's done is a clear abuse of his authority.

The Florida Constitution does give him the authority to remove officials.

Not every state constitution does that but I think unfortunately, our state constitution gives the governor that authority but there's got to be some mechanism to review the accuracy of the governor's charge that Andrew Warren has neglected his duty because I think that nothing could be further from the truth.

I think what really is going on is that, the law enforcement, the types, the sheriffs and the police chiefs that support DeSantis have complained to DeSantis about some of Andrew Warren's policy decisions and the criminal justice field.

I think Andrew Warren, frankly has embarrassed the Tampa police and the Hillsborough County sheriff by his conviction review unit that has uncovered people who have been wrongfully convicted and some in one case, in prison for 37 years and so on.

But I think the key thing that's going on that I think makes the governor's action outrageous is that he basically has thumbed his nose at the voters of Hillsborough County.

Andrew Warren was twice elected.

You may recall just a few years ago, when Rick Scott was governor, the Orange County prosecutor, Ms. Ayala said she would not seek a death sentence in any particular case.

Governor Scott, no flaming liberals, certainly everybody understands that but governor Scott removed those cases from the state attorney in that case and gave it to another attorney.

He did not remove the county prosecutor, the state attorney.

And so, I think that the governor DeSantis has gone way over the top.

I don't hold out any hope that the Florida Senate, which I think has become a wholly owned subsidiary of governor DeSantis is gonna stand up to him at all but I think the courts should.

The courts should recognize that the basis for Andrew Warren's removal is completely fictitious and wrong.

- All right.

Aakash Patel, what would you say, the governor said that, that Warren was nullifying state laws.

What did you think about what the governor did and also how you respond to Howard Simon?

- Well, if you follow governor DeSantis one thing, you know, he's very confident in his decision making process.

He didn't make this lightly.

He called other sheriffs, he called other law enforcement officials and they all said the same thing what we know.

And state attorney Warren has prosecuted cases that he thinks he can win.

And yeah, he was elected by the Hillsborough County but the governor wants to make sure we have an elected official that is fair.

And so, the governor he's got the constitutional right to step in and he has.

Now, the courts are gonna tie this up and it's gonna be a long process as we know and to what Howard just said, the Senate has the right to overturn the governor.

Now, let's see the play out.

But as far as the governor's surprise, I'm not surprised because the governor is very convicted that elected officials have to do the job that they're elected to do.

- All right.

Sheryl, what would you say about Andrew Warren?

- Well, my take on all of this is usually very much from the eye of the voter and I think Howard hit on that correctly.

That is the two elections have been nullified.

And I also think the Tampa Bay Times hit on it quite correctly in their editorial, when they said, "Governor DeSantis, you were not king of Florida," and he is not king of Florida and neither is he an emperor of Florida but he's certainly assuming that persona.

And he's getting the people behind him who will agree that he has claws on and is getting the people who will support him in that.

It's just an indication and more of what we're seeing in our democracy being challenged.

And he had a 10 page reason for removing the state attorney but he didn't cite any cases or any evidence in doing it.

And he, again, just presented it in front of and with people who would support him in that.

The timing can't be overlooked.

- William, what do you think of the removal?

- Well, one thing that strikes me about it as a political reporter is seeing those sheriffs back there, lined up behind Ron DeSantis is a pretty good illustration of the ironclad grip that Ron DeSantis has on the Republican Party of Florida, of course, those sheriffs are all Republicans.

As to whether Andrew Warren has failed to do his duty, I have seen research reported showing that he's got pretty good, better than average rates of conviction and of prosecution in cases that are referred to him.

Chad Chronister's involvement is interesting to me.

Chronister has made a strong point throughout his career of being nonpartisan and moderate and has supported Democrats politically, including Andrew Warren.

Chronister also has the diversionary agreements that Warren referred to.

There are several of those agreements between Chronister sheriff's office and Andrew Warren's office and those diversion agreements are in essence agreements not to prosecute certain crimes under certain circumstances.

Putting it all together, it's one of the weirdest things I've seen in politics, covering politics in Florida for 30 some years.

- All right, well, we'll see how it turns out.

Well, unarmed FBI agents searched Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida on Monday is part of an investigation into whether he improperly took classified records from the White House.

(whooshing noise) - [Reporter] After the raid, Trump expressed concerns that FBI agents or Department of Justice Attorneys had planted stuff in his mansion because they would not allow his lawyers inside the 128 room estate during the search.

Senator Rick Scott said that the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was akin to the actions of the Gestapo, the secret police in Nazi Germany.

But democratic Congresswoman, Debbie Waserman Schultz condemned Senator Scott's statement, calling it repulsive and said the senator should apologize.

Senator Marco Rubio tweeted, that the FBI search was akin to, "Something we have seen many times from third world Marxist dictatorships."

And governor Ron DeSantis tweeted, "The raid is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the regime's political opponents."

He likened the search to what happens in a banana republic.

The democratic candidates for governor fired back at DeSantis.

Agriculture commissioner, Nikki Freed said, DeSantis appeared to be stoking division Freed also pointed out that DeSantis has said little about the Trump fueled insurrection attack on the US capitol on January 6th of last year.

Congressman Charlie Chris said that DeSantis comments were harmful and were aimed primarily at ginning up the GOP base.

Chris said, "Healing and uniting our state and nation starts with respecting the rule of law.

If Ron DeSantis can't understand that or refuses to, he's not qualified to be governor of Florida."

Newsweek reported that the FBI search was based largely on information from a confidential human source apparently, someone close to Trump who was able to identify what documents Trump was still hiding at Mar-a-Lago and where they were located.

- So, Aakash were finding out what the FBI was looking for.

The Wall Street Journal reports that they remove classified documents, including some marked as top secret and meant only to be available in special government facilities.

Politico is reporting that possible violations of the Espionage Act are possible in this investigation.

What do you think about the raid or the search of Mar-a-Lago?

- I was shocked as most people because from what I've been reading, that Trump administration has been cooperative with law enforcement and I didn't see any subpoenas come out where they were asking for these documents.

Generally you try to answer a subpoena and then if it doesn't work out then you kind of do a flash raid.

And again, I think this could be a political stunt and the elected official said so, because the timing of it is unique.

- Okay, Sheryl, what do you think?

- This is another example, I think of, President Trump, you are not the former king and you are not the former emperor.

We've said all through these sessions that I've sat in with you on that It keeps getting worse and we're always surprised by what we're finding.

but we may be getting to the point of why we're all in such danger with what we're seeing uncovered there.

And my understanding is that, there was a subpoena issued back in June or early July and that Mar-a-Lago and the Trump staff complied with some of that but there was still a lot of responses that were not received.

The attorney general I've been somewhat critical of his timing but my impression now, is that he is getting to where he wants to be and he just doesn't talk about it.

And I think we're we're gonna continue to be surprised by how serious it is.

- William ,his raid was unprecedented, nothing like this has happened to a former president.

- Well, there probably never been a former president who illegally took classified nuclear secrets out of the White House when he left, which apparently is what happened here.

- [Rob] We're not sure yet.

- Well, we would know everything about this.

Donald Trump has had that search warrant in his possession since Monday.

He could have told us all about what it was about on Monday.

He chose not to instead he let his allies go out and make these inflammatory comments about the Gestapo and third world countries at a time when nobody knew anything.

Now, we're about to find out but I think it's also worth noting that Donald Trump he and his lawyers have been arm wrestling the Department of Justice and the archives for close to a year, over the documents that he took out of the White House and they've been fighting against returning them.

Plus, he has let's face it, a long history of simply ignoring laws and rules and procedures on the handling of government secrets.

- Howard, I wanna ask you about the potential for political violence.

We saw some violence taking place on the part of a Trump supporter in Cincinnati on Thursday and the pushback against the search or raid was pretty tough by top level Republicans.

- Well, I don't know for the life of me, why Republicans continue to twist themselves into a pretzel to defend this?

This is pretty indefensible conduct, and there are some Republicans, Ari Fleischer, the former of press secretary to George Bush has come out and against it, other media outlets but look to steal classified materials out of the White House and not return it, some of which are the most highly top secret, I think is just outrageous.

And I don't see the life of me why any Republican would continue to defend that.

What is worse are the comments by Rubio Scott and DeSantis talking about Gestapo and Marxist dictatorship that only I think is insane and inflames violence.

- All right, let's see if we could squeeze in-.

- I hope they stop it.

If they don't have anything to say, they should shut up.

- We'll try to squeeze in one more topic.

According to Politico, a new ad is running in the Republican primary race for Florida's new 15th congressional district, which includes parts of Polk and Hillsborough counties, a super-PAC backing state Senator Kelly Stargel is out with a TV ad, which says, one of her primary opponents, former Secretary of State, Laura Lee failed as Florida's Elections Chief because she refused to do a forensic audit of the 2020 election.

An election that Ron DeSantis had bragged was smooth and better than those of other states where results came in slowly.

(captivating music) - [Reporter] Laurel Lee failed as Florida's Elections Chief, refusing a forensic audit of the 2020 election, even after reports that felons and sexual predators voted.

So, if Nancy Pelosi must have a Republican, she'd rather have Laurel Lee.

Real conservatives like sheriff Grady Judd support Kelly Stargel, a fighter, helped pass legislation on election integrity and that scares the hell out of Nancy Pelosi.

Kelly Stargel, the conservative choice, paid for by Conservative Warriors Pack, not authorized by an candidate or Candidates Committee.

- We only have 30 seconds.

William in 15 seconds, is that an effective ad for Kelly Stargel?

- Yes, it probably is.

This is a race to the right, among a group of Republicans running for an open seat, no, no incumbent in it and they are battling to make themselves the most Trump loyalist, hard right candidate on the ballot.

- All right.

And Aakash is that gonna help Kelly Stargel's chances?

- Not at all.

Secretary Lee is the clear choice for this race and she's got all the right endorsements and support.

And this is just an overreach by Senator Stargel and I think we'll see the results very soon.

- Aakash, Sheryl, Wendy, Howard, thank you so much.

I wish we had more time.

Thank you for joining us.

Send us your comments at FTW@wedu.org, you can view this and past shows online at wedu.org or on the PBS App.

And from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend.

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