Judge in ‘ghost’ candidate case shields contacts

The names of former state Sen. Frank Artiles’ contacts, obtained by Miami prosecutors investigating an alleged vote-siphoning scheme in a 2020 state senate race, will not be released publicly, a South Florida judge ruled Tuesday.

The contacts, found on Artiles’ phone and other personal devices, were collected as part of the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office’s investigation into the former lawmaker, who is accused of paying a friend nearly $45,000 to run as an independent candidate in a Miami-area Senate race in an attempt to siphon votes from his Democrat opponent.

It’s the second time in recent weeks that Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan has decided to shield records that would otherwise be subject to public disclosure: Last month, she blocked the public release of communications between Artiles and roughly two dozen people and organizations that were also obtained by prosecutors at the urging of Artiles’ attorneys.

The exception: Fajardo Orshan agreed to release messages exchanged between Artiles and Alex Rodriguez, who Artiles is accused of bribing to run in a competitive South Florida Senate race two years ago.

The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office has obtained a voluminous cache of records, including messages and contact names, from Artiles’ personal laptops, phones, tablets and other devices. Those records, which have been provided to Artiles’ defense attorneys, would typically become public, as state law requires in a criminal case.

But Artiles’ attorneys argued during a hearing last month the records should not be made public because they are unrelated to the case and releasing them would subject their client’s personal and business contacts to unwanted scrutiny. Artiles, who resigned from the state Senate in 2017 after a racist tirade against Black colleagues in a Tallahassee bar, now runs a political consulting business and has other ventures.

“In balancing the right to public records against the privacy rights of third parties, this court cannot reach any other conclusion than that which requires the protection of the right to privacy of innocent third parties,” Fajardo Orshan wrote in the ruling released Tuesday.

In particular, Fajardo Orshan cited concerns about Artiles’ use of a “virtual ‘cloud’ ” that stores “a huge amount of data” from several devices over a span of several years. While she acknowledged that evidence turned over to the defense would typically become public, she said the use of that technology has led investigators to obtain records that are irrelevant to the case.

“Because the law is always behind technology, a search for evidence in this case amounted to a windfall of information that even the government acknowledges would be out of reach for a normal search.” Fajardo Orshan wrote. “The electronic data in this case is so voluminous that the government has not even been able to review all of it, nor does it intend to do so.”

She added that prosecutors had confirmed none of Artiles contacts were part of their investigation or had “any reason for their names to be on law enforcement’s radar.” There was nothing in the records, which included emails and text messages, to indicate the people in Artiles’ contact list were involved in illegal activity with him.

“The problem with this windfall of electronic data is that innocent third parties were caught in this net and they do not want their names and the content of their communications disclosed in the defendant’s case.” Fajardo Orshan wrote. “Frankly, the media has written many articles about this case and in each of them, whether intentionally or inadvertently, anyone associated with the defendant is portrayed as suspicious.”

The South Florida race in which Artiles is accused of paying Rodriguez to run was one of three key state Senate races in 2020 — including one in Central Florida won by Republican Sen. Jason Brodeur of Sanford — in which candidates filed to run as independents but did no campaigning.

Two political committees that received all of their funding from a dark money nonprofit called “Grow United” sent ads promoting the independent candidates, portraying them as progressives in an apparent attempt to undermine the Democrats in those races.

Another nonprofit organization called “Let’s Preserve the American Dream, Inc” that has close ties to big-business lobbying group Associated Industries of Florida gave $600,000 to Grow United that was used to pay for the ads.

Last month, Fajarado Orshan also agreed to redact bank records for Let’s Preserve the American Dream, after the group’s leader resisted their disclosure. The records show large sums of money changing hands between key figures in the ghost candidate scandal in fall 2020, weeks before the election.

In December, Let’s Preserve the American Dream, the chairman of Grow United and two other individuals received “prior to” letters indicating they are targets of the state’s investigation. No one except Artiles and Rodriguez, who accepted a plea agreement in August and agreed to testify in the state’s case against Artiles, has been charged in connection with the scheme.