5 things to know about the Jeffrey Garcia AB fraud plea deal

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As expected, Congressman Joe Garcia‘s former chief of staff pleaded guilty Monday to soliciting absentee ballots illegally without the voter’s permission in a deal where he agreed to serve 90 days in jail.

Jeffrey Garcia, who was the congressman’s campaign consultant when he came up with the hair-brained scheme to send absentee ballots to low-performing voters in last year’s primary, turned himself in immediately after the 11 a.m. hearing and will likely do far less time for good behavior, which he has displayed by telling the truth from the moment he got caught.

In fact, Ladra expects he’ll be home by Thanksgiving.

He will be on 18 months probation after that, including three months under house arrest, a sentence that seems excessive when you compare it to the slap on the wrist given to Hialeah boleteros Sergio “Tio” Robaina and Deisy Cabrera. (I hear even Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle was second guessing herself.)

Still, Garcia apologized and admitted wrongdoing. Joe Garcia, who was never implicated in the scandal, issued a statement.

“Today is a difficult and sad day. It is painful to watch a friend go through this very difficult ordeal,” the congressman said. “As we all move past this investigation it must be noted that while these actions were wrong…   No ballots were touched or manipulated in anyway and no voter had their votes interfered with or impeded in any way.”

But before we all move past this investigation — one of the less egregious ones, for sure — it seems important to Ladra to point out some details that should not be forgotten:

1. No ballots were ever actually touched, as they were in the Hialeah cases. These were hundreds of absentee ballot requests made online from the homes of relatives of two campaign operatives — Campaign Manager John Estes and volunteer Giancarlo Sopo, who later became the congressman’s communications director. The fact they referred the work to relatives indicates that Estes and Sopo — who were told by a lying Jeff Garcia that he had a legal okay — did not think they were doing anything even remotely wrong. Ladra fully expects them to be cleared without charges, especially now that Jeff Garcia signed on the dotted line. After all, the confession prosecutors used to nail Garcia states that he acted completely alone in this matter. It’s an internal email Jeff Garcia sent the other congressional staffers in June. “This was brought on by my own doing and personal failure and I am solely responsible,” he wrote.
2. The online requests in this campaign were not rerouted through a third country — like some 2,000 or so requests for the primary in House District 103 were — and in fact were not rerouted at all, indicating that they were not trying to hide anything. And the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office has seemingly shrugged their shoulders at the foreign IP requests, even though IT experts tell Ladra that they might be traced with a little effort.
3. The actual voters’ emails were used for the campaign-generated requests, not invented, bogus emails, indicating that this was not a “sophisticated scheme” as some in the media have portrayed and that Jeff Garcia had no intention to defraud the voters of their right. They would have been notified of the requests. None of them were disenfranchised because they could still vote in the election. In other words, there were no real, breathing victims as there were in Hialeah, where elderly and infirm voters have had their ballots stolen from them on a regular basis.
4. There is no law that addresses submissions of absentee ballot requests — whether they are made in person, by mail or online. In fact, the statute is silent on online requests. “It doesn’t talk about it at all,” said Gus Lage, Sopo’s attorney. I mean, why require a signature on a written AB request if you can get one online without signing? This is something Ladra fully expects to be addressed in next year’s legislative session.
5. Former Congressman David “Nine Lives” Rivera got away without facing a single day in court on a sealed, 52-count Grand Jury indictment because the statute of limitations ran out and is probably laughing his flat ass off as he watches his true nemesis — because Jeff Garcia is the one who dug up all the mud that was later investigated — get locked up in a cell.

Chew on that. And then tell me justice has been done.

  absentee ballots, Jeffrey Garcia, Joe Garcia