Finally, the third time is the charm.
After two reset hearings, accused Hialeah boletero Sergio “Tio” Robaina will be in court Wednesday — but only to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges in exchange for a year’s probation.
Oh, and prosecutors will drop the felony charges stemming from his tampering with the ballot of a woman with dementia. Their case seems to have suffered a blow when the elderly victim died and the son became reluctant to testify, according to a Miami Herald story by David Ovalle.
But the story doesn’t address why on Earth the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office would do such a thing.
Especially after giving the aide of a Miami-Dade commissioner immunity for her now shelved testimony against Robaina.
Especially since they know that Robaina’s attorney is now going to challenge the county ordinance that makes it illegal to carry more than two ballots at once.
Oh, wait. Maybe that’s why. Nobody likes that pesky ordinance. Not even State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle. Especially State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle, whose own campaign was embroiled in the absentee ballot investigation last year and who surely wants it all to go away.
This means there will be no trial. No public venue in which to present the evidence, which, admittedly, is no smoking gun. There should have been more. And Ladra fully believes there could have been more. But it just seems that prosecutors are not that interested in getting to the real root of the widespread absentee ballot fraud in Hialeah: the elected officials that benefit from it and the campaign consultants who coordinate it.
Because Robaina, 75, wouldn’t have been the only one on trial. Not really.
The case could have shone a light on the absentee ballot collecting operations that have been a staple of Hialeah elections for years and put a spotlight, hopefully, of the involvement on Miami-Dade County Commissioner Esteban Bovo, who cut his political teeth in the AB fraud-rich City of Retrogress.
That’s because Robaina, uncle to former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina (which may suggest previous experience in such matters), was caught delivering ballots to Bovo’s district office. And the testimony of the commissioner’s since-resigned aide, a young woman who was caught stuffing 164 ballots into a mailbox, seems to indicate that her AB collection activities were more organized and sophisticated than independent.
In all, Anamary Pedrosa says in her sworn statement that Robaina and four other people dropped ballots off at the district office, which became boletero central during the 2012 primary. That seems to indicate more collaboration and conspiracy than just one elderly uncle volunteering to bring in ballots for his more elderly and frail neighbors and friends, as Robaina says he did.
Pedrosa says that Robaina visited the district office every day or every other day, yet that he only brought ballots about five times. Well, later in the affidavit we find out she collected the ballots in a span of five days.
She says El Tio delivered a total of about 40 ballots, or almost a quarter of what she was nabbed with.
“I have these ballots ready to go and I need you to place the stamps and take them to the post office because I trust you and I know that you’ll do it,” she said Robaina told her the first time.
The prosecutor, Assistant State Attorney Tim Vandergeisen asks her how Robaina gets there. She says walking. He asks if he lives nearby. She says about a block away. How did he deliver them? In bags. Grocery bags.
Even Pedrosa knew it was wrong, as you can plainly tell from testimony that will not come out in a trial now. While it is no smoking gun, like Ladra said, it makes for an interesting read that, again, indicates more beneath the surface.
She tells Vandergeisen that she told Robaina to take the bags of ballots to her car and put them in the trunk.
“Why did you instruct him to put them in your car,” she is asked.
“Because I didn’t want to leave them in the office,” Pedrosa says.
“Why is that?”
“Because I didn’t want to bring any problems for the commissioner.”
So she knew that having those ballots there would bring Bovo problems.
“And why did you think that they may bring a problem for the commissioner,” Vandergeisen asks, getting the same feeling that you and I are getting now.
“Because I… that was… even though it was just me taking it to the post office and putting the stamp on them, it was still considered politics,” Pedrosa says.
“Okay, and was that policy, that you were supposed to keep certain political issues out of the office?”
“No. That was just my train of thought. It’s just, you know, I was like — I mean, that’s just how it is?”
That’s just how it is? Really?
Vandergeisen — who seems to spoonfeed Pedrosa at times and gives her an easy way out — got it, too.
“So, if I may, I’m going to try to simplify your answer, but if I’m wrong, correct me or I don’t want to put words in your mouth,” he seems to go out of his way to give her an out. “You were under the impression that because they were somebody’s ballots and the commissioner is an elected official, that it may not be proper for him to have people’s ballots…”
Well, duh!
But that’s where her attorney objects. And it was none other than our local lawyer to the pols JC Planas, a former state legislator who has also represented Bovo and his Hialeah allies in the AB conspiracy, including State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez.
“I think what she’s stating is actually what the law is. You can’t have politics in a government office.”
Okay, Vandergeisen will bite.
“Is that what you’re stating?”
“Yes,” Pedrosa says.
“Is there a law that you’re aware of that says you can’t have politics in a government building?”
“I have never read it, to tell you the truth,” Pedrosa says, although she is supposed to be telling the truth throughout. And then she contradicts herself again.
“Okay, so is that what your thinking was then?”
“Yes, that’s what my thinking was.”
So she was thinking about a law that she never heard of or knew existed?
Pedrosa says she never would have done anything had she known the county ordinance prohibits the collection of more than two ballots by anyone. Yet, when another person brought her ballots, a woman named Milagros Guerrero, she took the ballots to her car in the woman’s purse in a covert manner, like she knew it was illegal.
“I opened the trunk, I took the stuff out very discreet, and I went back with the purse,” she explains the process to the prosecutor. Key word: discreet.
Another boletero, Manolo Lago, brought her his ballots wrapped in newspaper. I mean, if there’s nothing wrong with what you’re doing, why conceal them?
Pedrosa picked up another 30 to 33 ballots from another boletera named Caridad Varsena, a woman she had visited before when she cooked black beans for the commissioner’s aide, she said in the sworn testimony that we now do not get to hear in a courtroom. From another woman named Claribel “Beba” Ferrer, she picked up about 20. Both times, after work hours.
Oh, and Pedrosa doesn’t count the ballots. The commissioner’s aide — who also served as a district secretary when he was a state rep — can tell how many there are, basically, from the weight she feels in her hand. That’s called experience, ladies and gentlemen.
“She went to the office, because she goes to a senior center two blocks from the office and she goes to visit me,” Pedrosa said of Varsena. “So she went and she told me what she had and then I told her that… that… that I couldn’t at the moment because I was full of people, that I would see her later.”
Couldn’t what at the moment? So does that mean that Pedrosa didn’t want to receive the ballots at the district office because there were too many witnesses there? That’s what it sounds like to me.
And “she told me what she had“?? Really? That doesn’t deserve a follow up question? Like how did she describe what she had?
Pedrosa also couldn’t remember what order the five different people delivered ballots in. “There’s too many people,” she said. It’s five, chica. Or are there more that we don’t know about?
The commissioners aide says the boleteros trusted her with the ABs because there is a fear that ballots will be stolen from Hialeah mailboxes. “I don’t know who [steals them], but that’s what they told me.”
Or that’s what they told her to say.
But Pedrosa seems to have been more than an innocent bystander in all this. Working off hours, hiding ballots in her trunk, she seems to be a willing conspirator in an effort to ensure her boss’s friends got into or stayed in office.
Dedicated girl that she is, she also collected ballots from her mother, her grandmother and ex-boyfriend. She let her mother and legally blind grandmother make the choices, but assisted in filling out the ballot. Her ex filled in the bubbles himself, she said, but she told him how. “Because he has no clue of politics,” she said.
She also told a man named Juan Picon who came to the office how to vote. “He had no clue on who to vote for.”
Generous girl that she is, she also paid out of her pocket for the postage on about 120 of those sealed ballot envelopes that came without stamps.
Again, she indicates that she knew she shouldn’t have been collecting ballots in the trunk of her car over the course of a five day period and “prepping” them before taking them just before midnight to the main post office way outside the city.
“Not even my mother knew that I had them,” she says. Then, later, when she says she didn’t count how many were in the “big bag,” she said, “I just wanted to get rid of them.”
But we won’t get to see her questioned in court in front of a jury about why she wanted to get rid of them and all these other things. And despite the inexplicable offer of immunity to someone who obviously and knowingly violated the law — I mean 164 is waaaay more than the two ballots anyone is allowed to carry at once — Pedrosa’s testimony is not as shiny as it should be. You’d think she’d have given authorities more.
But even as is, there is what certainly seems like logical reason to at the very least get a sworn statement from Bovo. He has been cleared without ever having to answer any questions about any of this and Pedrosa’s seeming contradictions.
In fact, Robaina’s plea deal may be designed to keep Pedrosa off the stand and Bovo separated from this mess as much as possible. Why on Earth would the prosecutors agree to that after everything they’ve gone through? Were they trying to spare this young woman, who wants to be an attorney one day, the burden of criminal charges?
Pedrosa said, under oath, that she resigned on July 27, days after she was nabbed, of her own accord so she could study to take the LSAT Oct. 8 and go to law school. (Good luck with that, lady).
But it seems she was still working for Bovo when she made this statement on Aug. 9.
Or is it someone else’s job to protect him?
This stinky plea deal protects Bovo from any further implication in a scheme that he was likely involved in.
Ladra hears that the other busted boletera, Deisy Penton de Cabrera, won’t see her day in court either after she makes a plea deal to keep her off the stand before her October hearing. She will likely get probation too and, despite logical conclusions that other electeds could be involved in that case, nobody else will be charged or even questioned.
And they call this justice?
Sergio Robaina’s plea protects Commissioner Steve Bovo added by Ladra on
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