TAMPA, Fla. — Days after a federal judge declined to give him his job back, suspended Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren had a message for Gov. Ron DeSantis, who removed him from office last fall:
Take back your suspension, like the judge suggested.
Warren’s email to Tallahassee, sent Wednesday morning, comes less than a week after U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle ruled that he did not have the power under the 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to return Warren to state office.
But the judge’s decision was also critical of DeSantis, who he said violated Warren’s free speech rights as well as the Florida Constitution. The governor’s allegation that Warren had blanket policies against prosecuting certain cases was “false,” the judge wrote, and “any reasonable investigation would have confirmed this.”
“The court’s findings were crystal clear — I’d done my job extremely well without any hint of misconduct. The governor’s allegations were totally false and illegal,” Warren told the Tampa Bay Times on Wednesday. The judge “called on the governor to (rescind the suspension), and we think he should do so.”
DeSantis’ motives were central in Warren’s three-day trial to try to get his job back. While the governor said the state attorney neglected his duties, Warren, a progressive Democrat, called his removal “a political stunt, a cheap trick to add one more misleading line to the governor’s stump speech” in DeSantis’ expected run for president.
In his ruling, Hinkle said a governor “cannot properly suspend a state attorney based on policy differences” and issued a challenge to DeSantis — one that spurred Warren’s email.
“If the facts matter, the governor can simply rescind the suspension,” the judge wrote. “If he does not do so, it will be doubly clear that the alleged non-prosecution policies were not the real motivation for the suspension.”
The governor’s office could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday morning.
In a surprise move on a workday morning last August, Warren was escorted from his offices by a sheriff’s deputy. DeSantis pointed to pledges Warren signed with other prosecutors against pursuing cases involving abortion and transgender health care — neither of which had come before him.
The governor also took issue with Warren’s office policies against pursuing specified nonviolent misdemeanors as well as arrests stemming from police stopping bicyclists. That tactic has been linked to racial disparities as evidenced in a 2015 Tampa Bay Times investigation and is known locally as “biking while Black.”
Warren countered that prosecutors in his office made charging decisions on a case-by-case basis.
Wednesday, Warren suggested in the email that while the governor may not have understood how the state attorney’s office functioned under him, they now had the full record and sworn testimony from the federal trial, plus the judge’s conclusions.
Following last week’s failure to get reinstated — and presuming the governor does not plan to immediately restore Warren to office — Warren has other legal options: He can pursue a federal appeal, file a state court lawsuit in Hillsborough or Leon County, or take his case directly to the Florida Supreme Court.
Local politicos have also speculated about Warren running in 2024 for the job voters elected him to twice. Susan Lopez, appointed by DeSantis to replace him, has already said she intends to run.
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