ORLANDO, Fla. — Bank statements, phone records and a credit report belonging to a former state lawmaker accused of bribing a friend to run as an independent candidate in a South Florida state Senate race will be released as public records, a judge ruled Friday.
Attorneys representing former state Sen. Frank Artiles tried to prevent the release of those documents, which the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office collected as evidence, arguing they contained irrelevant personal information and could hamper Artiles’ ability to get a fair trial.
But several media organizations, including the Orlando Sentinel, argued the documents should be available to the public, as state law typically requires when prosecutors provide evidence to a defendant’s attorneys during a criminal case.
Circuit Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan determined during Friday’s hearing the records should be partially redacted, including scrubbing all but the last four digits from phone numbers appearing in Artiles’ call records.
Artiles has been accused of paying a friend nearly $45,000 to file as an independent candidate in a South Florida Senate race in 2020 to siphon votes from his Democratic opponent. Though Alex Rodriguez did no campaigning, he received more than 6,000 votes, while Republican Ileana Garcia defeated Jose Javier Rodríguez by 32 votes.
The South Florida election was one of three key state Senate races that year — including one in Central Florida won by Republican Sen. Jason Brodeur of Sanford — in which so-called “ghost” candidates filed to run as independents but did no campaigning.
Two political committees that received all of their funding from a dark money nonprofit organization called “Grow United,” sent ads promoting the independent candidates, portraying them as progressives in an apparent attempt to undermine the Democrats in those races.
Artiles’ attorneys also objected to the public release of files stored on his laptops, saying they contained information about Artiles’ clients unrelated to the state’s case. Fajardo Orshan said Artiles and his attorneys have until Feb. 15 to review the computer files and notify people that information about them might be publicly released.
Those clients will then have until March 1 to object to the release of information about them stored on Artiles’ computers.
Attorneys representing a nonprofit organization connected to the case called “Let’s Preserve the American Dream” also filed a motion seeking to block the public disclosure of the organization’s bank statements after the Sentinel submitted a public records request for the documents.
Prosecutors in the Artiles case recently informed Let’s Preserve the American Dream that it is being investigated for potential violations of elections and campaign finance laws. Releasing the entity’s bank records would publicly reveal its donors.
Fajardo Orshan did not determine Friday whether to release the bank records for Let’s Preserve the American Dream, which in 2020 contributed nearly $1.1 million to Grow United, the dark money entity that paid for the ads promoting the independent candidates.
Let’s Preserve the American Dream, which is closely linked to the big-business lobbying organization Associated Industries of Florida, also was paying Artiles for consulting services at the same time he was paying his Alex Rodriguez to run for the Senate seat.
Tim VanderGiesen, a public-corruption prosecutor in the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office, acknowledged last week during a hearing that the bank records aren’t relevant to the case against Artiles.
Rather, he said, they’re part of a “parallel investigation” into Let’s Preserve the American Dream and several people who have “a business relationship” with Artiles. The Sentinel has requested several other documents that are part of that related investigation, which have not yet been made public.
Those records include transcripts of statements from Abbie MacIver, who helped coordinate contributions to Grow United; and the chief financial officer for Data Targeting, a top Republican political consulting firm that paid $15,000 per month plus expenses to Artiles to work on South Florida state Senate races in 2020 and oversaw the GOP’s state Senate campaigns.
In addition to Let’s Preserve the American Dream, three people have received “prior to” letters alerting them they are the targets of a criminal investigation.
Those people are Alex Alvarado, who ran the political committees that sent ads championing the apparent spoiler candidates; Richard Alexander, the chairman of Grow United; and former Democratic fundraiser Dan Newman, who raised nearly $1 million into Grow United in 2020.
———
