WHY I CONTINUE TO BASH THE MIAMI HERALD

On Sunday morning, the Los Angels Times, one of the country’s last remaining major newspapers that continues to strive to meet the expectations that major newspapers have to report the news posted a story about the activities of the Los Angeles District Attorney accepting $10,000 worth of gifts over a 4 year period of time from “individuals who might have an interest in influencing her decisions.”

For the last 6 years I have been reporting on the actions of Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle’s – who I’ve labeled The Queen Of Swag – doing the same thing, only in a volume that makes the actions of the Los Angeles District Attorney look like an piker.

In my story posted on January 23, 2015, I documented how Fernandez-Rundle had accepted $62,611.75 in gifts over seven years, which averaged out to $8,800 a year.

The Los Angeles Times said that Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey had accepted “jewelry, wine, clothing and sports tickets,” and I documented that Katherine Fernandez-Rundle took $1550.00 in tickets to Heat playoff games from lobbyist Jorge Luis Lopez.  She’s also taken Super Bowl party tickets worth $1950.00, $150.00 in flowers from Mayra Trinchet, a former prosecutor who is now a private criminal attorney who represents “drug related offenses, homicide cases, in addition to misdemeanor charges,” and she’s also taken thousands and thousands of dollars in food and wine from numerous individuals and businesses, including $2,544.46 from the owners of Court Options, one of the two pre-trial diversions programs who operated for years through a sweetheart “Memorandum Of Understanding” arrangment, that I revealed in my 9 Part series on the wholesale corruption and abuse of power series: corruption, chicanery and mismanagement inside miami-dade’s criminal justice system.

In addition to flowers from lawyers and her society pals, I revealed in 2011, that Fernandez-Rundle also took flowers from Tom Scotto, OJ Simpson’s best friend in Miami:

          Tom Scotto was OJ Simpson’s best pal during his Miami

          years, as well as being OJ’s frequent golf partner. It was

          Scotto’s wedding in las vegas, where OJ was supposed

          to be the best man, that led to the fateful encounter in the

          hotel room that resulted in OJ currently serving 33 years

          in a Nevada prison for armed robbery.

          Being OJ’s pal didn’t make him a bad guy, in fact it takes

          some gumption to be pals with a guy like OJ, just like

          it takes some gumption to be my pal on occasion.

          When I asked him if he was the same Tom Scotto who

          gave Fernandez-Rundle the flowers and candy, he said

          that he was and that while he didn’t consider her a close

          friend, “She has helped me out a few times.”

          When I asked him to explain what he meant by that, he

          hung up.

In addition to this, she’s taken tens of thousands of dollars in tickets to fancy galas and Black Tie Balls, as well as multiple tickets over the years to such events as the South Beach Food and Wine Festival valued at  hundreds of dollars each, and all of these tickets have been given to her not only by her society pals, but also from other groups including criminal defense lawyers and law firms, and from groups who received “grants” from the Miami Foundation from the money she extorted from the individuals that her office authorized to enter the pre-trial programs under contract to her office, and who were then required to make “donations” to the Denise Moon Memorial Fund as a condition of successfully completing these programs.

Above and beyond the gifts and extortion of donations from participants in the pre-trial programs, a look at Fernandez-Rundle’s campaign reports reveal a pattern of contributions from the employees of the State Attorney’s office that support a conclusion that these employees were subjected to solicitation for donations to her campaigns, and that that solicitation might very well have taken place on the job.

Here is a single screen grab from her campaign contribution list this year. A review of all of her previous campaigns show the same kind of reporting that points to employees making donations on the same day.

You would think that at some point the Miami Herald and what passes for the “real” news media might want to look at the activities of a State Attorney who, as I’ve written before, acts like some bimbo TV starlet with an exaggerated sense of entitlement strolling through the “gift room” of a show biz award show and comes out with all the swag she could stuff in her bra, or drag out the door in a “Gift Bag.”

But then again, because this is Miami where we try to excel at being at the top of every list that involves sleazy, unprincipled or unethical behavior by our elected officials, the fact that our State Attorney is a lot sleazier than the Los Angles District Attorney when it comes to collecting “swag” is something we should be proud of.