Miami Commissioner Crazy Joe Carollo tries again to derail his recall in court

Like a rabid dog with a bone that’s too big for him to chew, Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo filed yet another lawsuit Thursday seeking to stop the transfer of the 1,900+ recall petitions against him to the Miami-Dade Elections Department post haste, as ordered by not one but two courts already.

This is actually Crazy Joe’s fourth bite at the apple and one might make the argument that he’s abusing the system.

Carollo, represented by the city at taxpayer expense in the last three rounds — and Ladra would like to know how many hundreds of thousands that cost residents — lost the first round when Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Alan Fine ruled in favor of the Take Back Our City political action committee March. They had to sue to have the city turn the petitions over to Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Christina White. Judge Fine found that the city clerk only has a ministerial duty to turn the petitions over to the county.

Then Carollo lost his appeal when a three-judge panel upheld Fine’s ruling in May. And he lost an appeal to that appeal when the Third District Court of Appeals refused to rehear the case before the full bench. They said enough already. Go home.

So Carollo did — most likely to his real home in Coconut Grove — and right into the loving arms of his personal attorney Ben Kuehne, who is representing him solo this time back in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. Which would mean that Carollo is going to be financially responsible for the rest of it, right?

Well, maybe.

Because the injunction filed by Kuehne cites, in paragraph eight, the same precedent case that was researched and cited by City Attorney Tricky Vicky Mendez on how to get Carollo’s personal attorneys’ fees paid by the city.

It was part of her “recall cheat sheet” — you know, the one that she and several of her assistants spent a month on preparing in order to challenge and/or stop the recall, while the petitions were still being collected. The one that seems to have Carollo’s back, but not the city’s or the taxpayers’.

The new complaint filed this week is not really anything new. It’s the same ol’ bogus argument about the timeline, with Kuehne again saying that the petitions were delivered late. But the city’s own “cheat sheet” shows that a deputy city attorney had come to the same conclusion that the political action committee had come to — before Mendez asked her to take another look and come up with a different interpretation to protect her boss.

It’s obvious and unseemly (Ladra wonders why nobody has investigated this already) and unlikely to fly by a new judge now either.

But Carollo and Kuehne seem to know that. Because there are two other reasons cited to deem the recall illegal. One is that the reason does not fall into the seven reasons, as stated by Florida statute, which allows for seven reasons: Malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties and conviction of a felony.

Incompetence might be very subjective. And the bar is not set real high in the 305. One could argue that the reasons on the petition — that he used city resources (funds and staff) to both harass a political enemy and help out a friend who was running for another office — is malfeasance and just plain, good ol’ fashioned abuse of power anyway. Carollo really should be in criminal court.

Kuehne doesn’t have much faith in that argument either. That’s why he has a plan C. The recall petition should also be thrown out because it was only available in English. And a plan D. The recall petition is also illegal because canvassers were paid to collect signatures.

JC Planas, one of the PAC attorneys, said that’s not going to fly after Citizen’s United. Not only does every other petition that can be collected — to put someone or some question on the ballot — allow the paying of canvassers, but the law doesn’t say that this invalidates the petitions. A judge is going to have a hard time disenfranchising 1,900 plus voters on an election year. And she or he might not feel like it after Carollo and his attorney abuse the system like this.

Planas told Ladra late Thursday that Carollo is grasping at straws: If they thought they had a good case on the petition being late, they wouldn’t be throwing everything but the kitchen sink at them.

“This is his Hail Mary,” Planas said, adding that the legal maneuvering — which included much research and manpower at the city attorney’s office, also known as the Law Office of Joe Carollo and Associates — never been about winning, only slowing down the process. “His plan has been to delay and delay to the point he can say ‘Why are you recalling me? I have an election in less than a year.'”

David Winker, the other attorney on the PAC side, said lo mismo. He said Kuehne is going to have a hard time convincing a judge that “it would do irreparable harm if you let these petitions go” to the county.

“It’s just a method of delay,” Winker told Ladra. “They didn’t come up with anything new and they’re going to lose.

“He is 0-3 so far.”

JC Planas, Joe Carollo, Joe Carollo recall, Victoria Mendez

Miami Commissioner Crazy Joe Carollo tries again to derail his recall in court added by Ladra on July 10, 2020
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