The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - #BecauseMiami: Top Cop

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

The office of Miami Dade County's State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle is in big trouble. Miami Herald investigative journalist Brittany Wallman explains why a deal the office made with a murderer may now set a lot of prisoners free. Friend of the program, Joshua Epstein, can't seem to stay out of trouble. First, he was falsely arrested in Surfside when former vice mayor Jeffery Rose claimed that he pushed him (he didn't). Two months later at New College, Joshua may have his degree withheld due to an incident at his commencement ceremony. Joshua joins us to talk about it. And Billy Corben goes on a rant about Miami Dade County mayor Daniela Levine-Cava. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. That's the sound of unaged whiskey transforming into Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around 1860, nearest green taught Jack Daniel how to filter whiskey through charcoal for a smoother taste, one drop at a time. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at TNVacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. This is a paid advertisement from BetterHelp. As a podcast listener, you've heard from us before. Bounds perfect. for the first time in weeks. You deserve to invest in your wellbeing. Visit betterhelp.com to see what it can do for you.

That's betterHELP.com. Catherine Fernandez Rundle has been the state attorney in Miami-Dade County for more than 30 years. Rundle's office was seeking the death penalty against Corey Smith, but on the eve of resentencing, a Miami-Dade judge disqualified two of Rundle's top prosecutors, accusing them in a written order of misconduct and alleging they were manipulating witness testimony in a death penalty case.

Listen to this recording between Michael von Zomt, one of Rundle's most senior and trusted prosecutors, and Gltravis Galashaw, a convicted killer who is going to testify for von Zonft at the re-sentencing hearing for Corey Smith. If I call her and she refuses, then I will find a way to make her unavailable, and then I can read her whole testimony. You want to do that? No, I don't want to do it. I'd rather she testify and did a good job. But can I count on it? No.

Judge Andrea Wilson, a respected former prosecutor herself, described this phone call as a smoking gun for prosecutorial misconduct. ["The Daily Show Theme"] That was our friend, award-winning CBS journalist Jim DeFede in a story last month about a sensational prosecutorial misconduct scandal that has engulfed the office of Catherine Fernandez-Rundle, the Miami-Dade state attorney, since Janet Reno Roy left for the Clinton administration 31 years ago. Since then, she's had an extraordinary record of corruption, a lack of accountability, basically given a free pass to the public sector to be as corrupt as they want to be, including

never once in 31 years, prosecuting a law enforcement officer for an on-duty killing, never once in 31 years. And if you wonder why Miami is so backwards and upside down and corrupt, it is because our top cop abdicates her responsibility to prosecute substantive public corruption cases. Every once in a while, you hear about a petty corruption case, but here's a big corruption case. Her top prosecutor

for 28 years, Michael von Zampf, we've talked about this on the show some time ago, Roy, was caught on jail recordings on phone calls, in this case with a man, an informant in a case where he's talking about making a witness, quote, unavailable, unquote, to testify in a death penalty case. And the conversation, the guy he's talking to, this Galashaw character, he is in prison for murder in a case involving witness elimination. So he's talking about making a witness unavailable with a guy who is a professional, apparently,

a convicted professional, and helping to make witnesses unavailable. Hashtag because Miami. I told you at the time that this scandal broke, that this was going to be the tip of the iceberg of the 31 years of corruption and dysfunction in Kathy Rundle's office. And the Miami Herald,

which I hope is just the first of many stories, dropped another bombshell this week about Miami-Dade prosecutors, specifically this Michael Von Zempf character, who resigned in disgrace, or I should say retired with full public pension in disgrace after he was removed by Judge Andrea Wolfson from this death penalty case for a two-decade long record of prosecutorial misconduct, including allegedly

plotting the murder of a witness with a witness murderer. They have a deal with the devil with another jail informant. This guy is a multiple murderer, I believe, of women and children, a man who is responsible for what is known as the Liberty City Massacre, one of the largest mass shootings at the time in the history of Dade County. And the guy got a sweetheart deal and has been working on the inside. Brittany Wallman is a veteran South Florida journalist, spent a quarter of a century at the Sun Sentinel in Broward, has recently joined the Miami Herald as an investigative reporter

This is her byline along with Sarah Blaski a friend of the show Brittany. What the hell happened here? What is the connection to the Corey Smith case? And you know one of the things I said a couple Months ago when this broke is a lot of people are gonna go free now Because of this now it might very well be guilty people that have to go free now because of this. Now, it might very well be guilty people that have to go free because of how the prosecutors have behaved here. What happened here and what is going to be the net effect

of this in terms of cases that are blown as a result of this? Right, right. You do have two attorneys seeking new trials for murder defendants. But what happened was, you know, of course, that removal of the prosecutors got our attention. That's pretty unusual. And the judge's order was just scathing.

And so if you zoom in on one of the characters that they were plotting to have on the yard with these witnesses, Lil Bill is his nickname. Lil Bill and Corwin. Different Lil Bill, sorry. The other Lil Bill. The other Lil Bill. Yeah, it's just a shocking scenario where this guy confessed to multiple murders 10 years ago.

It was never disclosed. The Liberty City massacre, that was before the days when, you know, massacres took place once a week. It was a big deal. It was a big national story. It was assault rifles. And this guy confessed

and it was never told to the public. The parents of the victims never knew that the state attorney's office then made this deal with the guy, that he would have full immunity from prosecution for that and another murder. And they wanted him to flip on some co-defendants. To be clear, this guy is confessed to murders

that would conceivably carry the death penalty? Oh, absolutely. You know, he killed teenagers. And he also was already facing two first degree murder charges. So he was facing the death penalty in both of those, you know, life sentence or the death penalty. So, I mean, do you get him in a situation now

where he's so beholden to the state attorney's office? Cause they have given him 25 years with the potential of a reduced sentence. And instead of shipping him off to prison to start serving that while they wait for the trial that he's going to flip on his co-defendants, he has just, they've kept him in the Miami-Dade jail, where he has helped them. They can ask him to find out information for them, because his plea deal says that if he doesn't cooperate, he gets a life sentence. So it's an interesting dynamic where he has to. So in audio that we listen to, you know, it's, hey, can you make some calls on this? And who do you think

this person would use if he was gonna make a hit on someone? And so some of that might be okay, but where you run into trouble constitutionally is, it's like deputizing an inmate and going in there. If he's talking to people that have lawyers, but he's not saying, hey, I'm actually collecting information for the state attorney's office in Miami PD,

they have the right to remain silent. They have the right to a lawyer. It's just fraud. And you know, there are ethical issues as well. Right. There's ethical issues. There's constitutional issues, as you said, because this guy is not just an independent operator. He's on the phone, you have the recordings of him with prosecutors. He called them quite a bit. And he also called a Miami detective

quite a bit. And it's just interesting. And so that's how we learned that in this meetup in the Corey case that he has nothing to do with. I mean, most informants, you know, they're, they're flipping on someone that they were involved in the crime with. This is something that he has nothing to do with. It's, Hey, can you, he says, Hey, I'll, I'll pick his brain. You know, I'm his, I'm your ears, I'm your eyes. And was able to obtain information

about what the defense was doing, which is very problematic from everyone that we talked to. And now, as you said, put some of these very serious murder cases in jeopardy. Whether these people are innocent or guilty, that's not the point. The point is there's a constitution of the United States, there are ethics, there are laws,

and the prosecutors that are supposed to be upholding those laws and defending those laws and enforcing those laws may very well be breaking those laws, and I'm really, I know this all happened in a pre-Marcy's law time, when now victims and survivors and families have different rights now, but this guy was able to strike little Bill.

Little Billy Corbin. Was able to strike a secret deal where he confessed to murders, whereby the public doesn't know that these are solved cases. In fact, you mentioned that Crimestoppers even featured the case pretty recently as unsolved homicides when in fact, the state attorney's office has theoretically solved it

because this guy has confessed and the victims, you said the victims, because some, not all of them were killed, but the victims of the shooting as well as the families and parents of some of the dead victims of the shooting had no idea, they didn't tell. We saw the kid we found your you know your child's murderer and we're going to give him a sweetheart deal is going to live large in

the the jail for the next decade. Well, we reach the parents of one of the the teens and they knew the name William Brown little bill, but they did not know that there they had never seen the confession, they hadn't read it, they didn't know that a deal had been made for this killer and that he would never be prosecuted. And we actually went round and round with the state attorney's office.

They tried to maintain that they had not given him full immunity from prosecution and they did. And it's sad because the mother had always wondered, why was my son shot? Like, was it, you know, and the circumstances of it were in the confession, you know, he was not targeted. You know, they were going after someone else

and shot up a bunch of young people playing dice and just a sad situation. And this guy, I mean, there's also the murder of an eighth grade girl, Sabrina O'Neill, that this guy was attached to, or may have helped to order or instigate an attempted hit that she was the collateral damage of. And these are the kind of stories, Roy,

that have brought outrage around this community, around the country, about gun violence, and around young people dying, particularly in black communities in Miami. And it turns out that the state attorney has been protecting at least one of the killers responsible for the very violence that really Kathy Rundle has exploited, in my opinion, to increase her profile, to get out on the street, to pretend like she cares, to get Roy.

She was just reelected unopposed for her seventh or eighth, I've lost count, consecutive four year term. It's so extremely frustrating, but before we go, Brittany, we talked a lot about Kathy Rundle, we've talked a lot about Michael von Zampft, who's now gone, he gets to live in his vacation home in retirement and the taxpayers of Miami-Dade

are paying for it despite... He does have a bar complaint too. Well, yes. So what they're going to disbar him? He's not practicing anymore. The damage has been done. We're talking about gangs in Liberty City. There's not a gang more dangerous or deadly than the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office when it comes to their power of depriving citizens innocent or framed of life, liberty and property. My question though is it's not over because Michael von Zampf is gone. There are other characters in the state attorney's office.

You just talked about them lying to you and trying to cover this up in your effort to investigate this. And you've got this character, Stephen Mitchell, who was also removed from the Corey Smith death penalty case for participating or at least enabling and doing nothing about the prosecutorial misconduct for decades in that case. But this guy is still employed by the state attorney's office. He's like a, he's a mucky muck. He's a big guy in the office still. And it sounds

like he's involved in more of this misconduct. Is that right? It's unclear. You know, we tried to really parse out what, you know, who was responsible for what. And it appears that when it comes to Mr. Mitchell, the judge was incensed with his, he just so strongly defended Bonzamp saying nothing unethical happened here. And she's saying, you know, you know, maybe it's an act of omission going along with that. We know that he, you know, he's on the cases with Bonsam that where, you know, we've talked about these, this hijinks with the informant, but there were also allegations of important Brady,

you know, when they call Brady material that's important to the defense being withheld, incentivized witnesses. So it's, there are parallels. And so he still has the one of the murder cases, and the lawyer that represents that convict would like to see him removed. And then there are also the criminal defense lawyers say that they have a, you know, what's being called a binder of corruption. A binder containing 15 examples of what they said was clear misconduct by prosecutors that they handed over to Rundle's office. And we've requested that. It's been

a couple of weeks. We don't have the binder, but we will get it. Let me make it clear. This Bobby Dade State Attorney's Office has certainly railroaded people and convicted innocent defendants. But what we're talking about now is even the possibility that guilty people may go free because of this prosecutorial misconduct. You're talking about people who may very well be murderers will be set free to walk the streets because you can't frame anybody. You can't frame an innocent person and you can't frame a guilty person. It is unconstitutional.

And as I call it Kathy Rundle's office is the injustice department here in Miami-Dade County. Brittany Wallman find her journalism at MiamiHerald.com. Please go and check it out. This is one of those stories that every paragraph your jaw drops again and you just gasp at the next revelation. Brittany I hope this is not the last of these investigations into the state attorney's office because this work is perhaps some of the most important that the Herald does. We plan to continue this rolling investigation. Of course, it

relies on tips and sources, you know, so my cell is 305813 4050. Oh wow, that's what she just doxed herself live on the air here. I don't think we've ever had that happen before. And if you have any information about little Billy Corbin, please call Brittany Wallman at that number and let her know. And if you have any complaints or comments about the show, call Brittany. Leave her a voicemail, text her, whatever you want. Whatever you want.

Hashtags. Because Miami. Backstreet's back. All right. Because Miami. Backstreet's back, alright! Since the dawn of mankind, we've cooked our food over an open flame and debated the best way to grill. One thing not up for debate, grilling and beer always go together. But not just any beer would do. Whether you barbecue, text in style, or just celebrate Wednesday with burgers and dogs. I love Miller Lite. Every single time my team plays on television, I am sitting behind that television screen with a Miller Lite or three. Miller Lite keeps it simple, undebatable quality, taste as great as your barbecue.

It's the beer that strips away everything you don't need and holds on to what matters the most. With the Miller Lite in hand, grilling doesn't just taste great, it tastes like Miller time. To get Miller Lite delivered right to your door, visit MillerLite.com slash Dan. Or you can find it pretty much anywhere that sells beer. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories per 12 ounces. It was March 1st when Joshua Epstein was arrested by Surfside Police. He's the teenage son of Eliana Saltsauer, a vocal critic of then Surfside Mayor Shlomo

Danzinger. Surfside Police charged Epstein with battery on an elected official after he was accused of pushing then Vice Mayor Jeff Rose. Keep pushing me, John. But there was never any video of the alleged push. And now the charges against Joshua dropped. Two months later. Tonight a group of New College students may potentially lose their college degrees for allegedly disrupting their graduation ceremony.

New College President Richard Corcoran has told the Wall Street Journal that students could face serious consequences including having their degree withheld if they fail to write a letter of apology or take a mandatory class on civil discourse. Joshua Epstein is one of those new college students. The Last Time We Saw Joshua Epstein Roy, the last time we saw Joshua Epstein, you'll remember the charges were dropped against him after his false arrest by corrupt Surfside police officers

who were acting at the behest of a corrupt vice mayor who trumped up these phony baloney charges that Josh had pushed him at a public meeting. It was all pushed by a corrupt Mayor Shlomo Danzinger. It was pushed by a corrupt police chief, all of whom are out of office now, or out of the job now, as you know. And we had Josh on the show to talk about it

and his mother, a former Surfside commissioner, to talk about it and his mother a former Surfside commissioner to talk about it and at that time Josh told us that you know I'm just I want to just finish college at new college and I want to just you know get my degree and lie low and quietly go on with the rest of my life hey Joshua how's that going dude not well no I don't have a degree or a transcript or anything since we booed at graduation. There was booing at graduation, and that's not allowed apparently at New College. I don't want to be like another Jewish parent.

You've got two of those, but what did you do? What did you do now? What did you do? What is happening? I mean, we've heard about this. New College obviously is famous for having been, like basically been the subject of a hostile takeover by Ron DeSantis.

He put one of his cronies, Richard Corcoran, a man with no legitimate education or administration experience. He became one of the highest paid college presidents in the country. I think he makes more than the Harvard president. He makes as much as the president of U.F, but New College has less than 700 students. And it now has the lowest retention rate, New College, of first-year students in the college's history, the departure of more than a third of the faculty. And while they had this newly established athletics department at the college, which

has raised enrollment slightly, it's also led to a decrease Roy and overall grade point averages and test scores And as a result of all of this chicanery new college has dropped 24 spots in the US News and World Report rankings this was once kind of a Small gem a pride of the Florida public college system And now it's basically been a laughing stock and an embarrassment And what happened was a few weeks ago Joe Ricketts the I guess the he you know him Ricketts Chicago Cubs. Yeah, they own the Chicago Cubs. He was a stockbroker I guess right was like TD Ameritrade

So he's also one of the biggest donors to the Trump campaign and he was the official commencement speaker at New College. Apparently some of the students weren't happy about that. What exactly happened dude? Because what I'm it seems like there might have been like some technical problems because you couldn't really hear him on the mic then then the the audience started to get a little ornery which is to be expected when you got a guy talking and nobody can hear him. Like what exactly went down? So essentially nothing happened at the graduation. They had, so in all of new colleges history, they let the students be part of choosing the commencement speaker. But as has been

come part of the course in the last year and a half, the students are no, not part of the decision process. It's a very heavy handed, this is what's happening approach, even though obviously this is a commencement ceremony for the students that's supposed to celebrate the students. So students are not very happy that they've been given as a commencement speaker, the man who's funded and explicitly and implicitly endorsed the takeover of our school, the ruining of our of our only home. This man's given a million dollars to Ron DeSantis and millions of dollars to Trump. And these people came in, ruined our school, forced out a third of our of our faculty and really made us feel unsafe, unwanted, unwelcome in our own home and on our own campus. So they made the big bully as our commencement speaker.

And obviously, students weren't happy to begin with. I was there to listen to this guy because I was there with my commencement ceremony. I was going to listen. But the school is so incompetent that their microphone system did not work. So they had months to prepare and they just couldn't come up with a microphone system that works everywhere in the country somehow has microphones that work except for the new college of Florida. The million plus dollars that Richard Corcoran gets a year was not enough to go to Home Depot and get a microphone at work.

Does Home Depot sell microphones, Roy? No, not even mic stands. I'm sure they could have found someplace to buy microphones to your point. Well, microphone from Home Depot would have worked better than what they had. You see Sam Ash still a thing? Mars music is gone. Is Guitar Center still open? Yeah, Guitar Center is still open. Maybe we can get an amp, something. Joshua, faculty advisors were kind of ignored in this graduation process. The student body was ignored in this process.

The students had their own, in fact, graduation, right? Like a day or two before, like kind of a student organized event. That was the unofficial event, but that was right, like kind of student propagated. Yeah, yeah. Since when they took over the school for the past two years,

the students have had their own little commencement ceremony on their own terms with a commencement speaker that we get to pick, because that's how it typically is at events celebrating you. You get to have it input in the event. So the night before was a night and day difference. We had our own unofficial graduation where students were happy and we got to hear from speakers that the students chose. Kind of like at your wedding, you get to pick who talks. Their students got to pick who talked. Then the next day we had this official graduation. And this official graduation was where they had all the people that had been bullying

us for two years speaking at our graduation. And even though the faculty unanimously voted against giving Ricketts an honorary degree, the administration said, screw all of you, we're giving him a degree. But going back to it, I wanted to hear what he had to say. The microphone system goes out. They let him talk to himself for 15 minutes because I guess they couldn't figure out. I don't know what they were doing, honestly. But all the students didn't want to hear from the guy and we couldn't hear what he was saying. So students start booing.

We start talking to ourselves. At one point they start playing Marco Polo with each other. Obviously this guy is very embarrassed afterwards because he's a billionaire and I'm sure he's surrounded by people that want money from him. So he's probably not used to being booed. So I'm sure afterwards he read the administration, the riot act said, what is this? You flew me down, I flew all the way down here and no one could hear me? What is this? Obviously, the school, the big guy, not being able to handle some blows said, oh no, it wasn't us, it was the students.

That's why you couldn't, that's why no one could hear you. So now six students don't have degrees and they're withholding our transcripts because apparently cheering, the students that cheered are completely fine. But any students that booed are going to hell and don't have degrees. So, wow, they really made him look like Forrest Gump over here talking from talking from all the people about the war and they just unplugged the mics. Well, what happened was so when you watch the YouTube, you can hear them because they they were getting sound into the soundboard from the mic. But the amplification in the actual venue, I think

was what was not functioning. So like if you were watching streaming or watching YouTube, you could hear him kind of mumbling into the microphone, but apparently in the room for some time, they couldn't hear him. So as you would not being able to hear your speaker, they got on a ring. There was a there was booze, there was cheers, there was some free Palestine because it is a graduation in America in 2024. But here's what's interesting about it is that like, there's been a lot of talk, I mean, you've you seem to learn about this this trouble from an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that Richard Corcoran wrote. And there's a lot of letters going around talking about the chaos around the country at college campuses, about commencement ceremonies being disruptive.

This is like a 90-minute-plus video of this commencement. This disruption, as it were, like takes all of less than two minutes and everything just goes on as normal. Like the students come up and accept their diplomas and shake hands, like everything seems to be like totally copacetic. Like I'm not really sure what the chaos is here or what the disruption was, but I don't get it.

I'm not really sure I understand what the causes, what violations you or the other students committed. So I'll answer those two questions. One, we don't know what exactly we did that rose to the level of a student code of conduct violation. Anyone who watches the graduation would very much see that there was nothing that rose to the level of student code of conduct violation. And remember, they had beefed up security at this event. They had trigger happy security that would have made their week to get to throw one of the liberal students out. Zero students were thrown out. Why? Because the security on the ground understood

that no one was disrupting anything. The microphone system wasn't working. And unless you could throw out the microphone system, like, unless that was the only thing that deserved to be thrown out of the event was the microphones, but the security guys throw those out. So they didn't throw anyone out of the event. It wasn't until afterwards when Ricketts, I guess, feelings were hurt, then they decided that they were going to try to do something to make him happy and retaliate against the no good horrible students that didn't want to hear from this guy who had bullied him for two years.

But the second point, I'm actually very pro Israel. I'm pro releasing the hostages, pro. My grandfather's Israeli, fought in the Israeli army. I dedicated my thesis to Eli Cohen, an Israeli Syrian spy that was killed by the Syrians, in addition to my extended cousin who died fighting in Gaza during this war for the Israeli army. So I'm not pro-Palestinian at all.

And I think part of the reason why they included me in the students being targeted, because they're targeting a few students that chanted a pro-Palestinian at all. I think part of the reason why they included me in the students being targeted, because they're targeting a few students that chanted up pro-Palestinian chant, but also me. The reason they're doing that is to send the message that no matter what your views are on other subjects, no matter if you're their model student on a pro-Israel issues or if you're conservative or if you don't drink and don't smoke, if you speak out against new college, if you speak out against Ron DeSantis, your degree is not safe. Your place at our college isn't smoke. If you speak out against new college, if you speak out against Ron DeSantis, your degree is not safe, your place at our college isn't safe. And the school's biggest

threat, the biggest threat to Richard Corcoran's money is the students, because if the students don't like him, maybe he won't be able to stay and keep making millions of dollars. So how do you stop student protests? How do you stop students from speaking out, you scare them. And that's what they're doing here again. That's what's kind of interesting about this is that it is political retaliation, and it is

stifling free speech, which I know that's when you all started. I mean, I don't know of you, but when the students really started jeering when Rick had started talking about freedom is so important, and someone yells out, What about freedom of speech, which was kind of a highlight of the moment. But again, that was kind of the only sort of heckling that I remember kind of hearing at that point. Obviously they could hear him start to talk about freedom. I guess the mic was working again. But the political retaliation was not for this sort

of small group that very briefly chanted free Palestine, but it was like you said, the line in the sand is, are you pro the takeover and hijacking of new college or are you against it? And you obviously have been very vocal about this has ruined the school, which I think by all objective measures is actually, is true, is accurate.

And that is why I guess they've included you in these five or six students that are being punished. And I do want to say Roy, for the record, if anybody wants to give us or Josh shit about his position on the Middle East, they can text Brittany Wallman who gave her. Nah, don't do that. Text Brittany, text Free Palestine to Brittany Wallman

who gave her a cell phone. No, no, no, no. She's, please, only legit tips to the Miami Herald. Joshua Epstein, I do just wanna say, I hope to never hear about you again. I wouldn't mind seeing you again, but I hope to never have to like get news alerts about you or hear about any Hazari or any kind of trouble

that you're in. I don't want any more mug shots. I don't want to hear about you not graduating or getting your diploma. Wherever there's trouble, there he is. I mean, he's like Danger Mouse over there. I feel he's like the Forrest Gump of Florida history here, just popping up wherever there is f***ery.

But there's a F-bomb, sorry, Roy. Why would you? I'm sorry, I just, I wanted to slide it in while we had the college. He's in college now, it doesn't matter. Oh, I'm a graduate, I'm sorry. Did you graduate, are you a college graduate? What do we call you now?

I don't know, maybe I'm going back to college, but no, I did graduate. I wrote my 90 plus page thesis, but there was booing, so now I'm, I don't know, a college graduate. Well, Magatav, thesis, but there was booing. So now I don't know if I'm a college graduate. Well, Magatav. And here's what I will tell you, Roy, is that I love this idea that booing briefly is disruptive. Cheering is not disruptive.

I mean, noise is no, this whole thing is just so silly. And it's so trivial. And it seems pretty apparent that in order to save face with this obviously very wealthy donor, they are scapegoating a bunch of college kids who got a little excited at their own graduation in response to not just a controversial speaker, but the fact that they're in competent administration and AV department can't even get amplification from a microphone in their own graduation. That said, Joshua Epstein, hope to never hear about you ever again.

Please stay out of trouble, and if you're not, continue making good trouble. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me on, putting the attention on what New College is doing right now. Good morning, Miami-Dade County. I hear your voices. I read your letters, your emails,

your social media posts, and not just the nice ones. Well Danielle Levine-Cover, you've surely got some go. And I thought that you'd be different, but you, you're not at all. You picture me, Morales, an amoral racist dope, to be your COO, though you'd say you won't. But one time, and you'd be gone, Daniella If we knew how to vote, we'd say bye-bye You sold out your morals and now you scare We all know that you're just Christian Olbert's puppet, yeah

His strings you cannot hide Flip-flop into your cross-eyed. We'd take a train, take a bus to MIA if any of it worked. Well, everyone loves a train. Oh, my, we just can't get out. One time and you'd be gone, Cruella. If we knew how to vote, we'd say adios. I'm responsible directly. I was a full throated endorser of Daniela Lavinkava when she ran for Miami-Dade County

mayor in 2020. She is now running for re-election this year with not a little, she's got some challengers. And now your throat is completely closed. Oh my throat, yeah my I mean my is like strep throat closed right now. At best Miami-Dade mayor Daniela Levine Cava has been indecisive and incompetent. Her tenure has been a comedy of errors marred by dirty deals by her consultant cartel puppeteer, the shadow mayor, Christian Olvert, and corruption from her highest ranking appointees. Her hypocrisy and reckless mismanagement of this 12 billion dollar

a year county budget with over 30,000 employees has been nothing short of a total embarrassment and nothing she says on Monday, Roy, matters by Friday. She was going to be different from Carlos Jimenez, whose wife's cousins owned MCM, the builder of the FIU bridge that collapsed. And then she gave them a $70 million airport contract, along with multiple multimillion dollar contracts to work on vital infrastructure for water and sewer.

She was totally for a recommendation to reject all bids for another $50 million airport contract and then she totally changed her mind on that too. She was not going to hire Jimmy Morales, the worst city manager in the history of Miami Beach to join her government. She told me in personal text messages, I'll make you proud. And then she hired him to be the chief operations officer in charge of all the most crucial public-facing departments of the county. Water and sewer, transportation and public works, the Department of Parks, Recreation, Solid

Waste Management, the airport, the port, all the important stuff. She was for the Miami Wilds water park, Roy, you remember Ron McGill was hair on fire about this. They were going to use the water park for that. They were going to destroy this endangered Pine Rocklands adjacent to Zoo Miami for a water park. She was all for it until she was against it. She launched the Better Bus Network saying, well, exactly what it says. The bus network's gonna be better.

And then the whole operation was plagued with delays, they cut people's routes, it was taking elderly people hours to get to work. So then they're like, oh, let me backtrack on that. It was not better, it was worse. And then she had to backpedal on that. She was against free fares to promote the launch of the Better Bus Network.

She in fact even suspended her transit director for announcing it prematurely, scapegoating this guy. It was like the third or fourth director of a department that she appointed that she had to mode her discipline. And then 10 days later, she announces free fares. The same thing this guy did that she disciplined him for. Wow. Danielle Levine Cava was for a 2.5 billion dollar bond initiative that would raise all of our taxes.

And then she was totally against it because it was wildly unpopular and she's trying to run for a second term. I mean we're talking about grand opening grand closing here. Then she was for a real estate deal whereby taxpayers would overpay for a piece of property over payroll by over $100 million. It was nine figures overpriced. They had someone come out, appraise the property, and they agreed to pay over $100 million more,

over twice as much for the property. Then when it got exposed, like the next day, she backed off. She goes on second thought, maybe we should renegotiate this. Oh, you think? And then guess what happened, Roy? Just this week, they passed this real estate hustle

where instead of paying $100 million more, they're only paying about $70 or 80 million dollars more. And it turns out over the 30-year life of the bonds that are being financed to borrow the money for this, it's gonna cost 500 million dollars to Miami-Dade taxpayers to buy a property. This was a 1970s office building that only had 20% occupancy during a time when nationwide commercial office space Going through the floor and we still managed to get screwed on the deal. Thanks to Danielle Levine Cava Lightning round it was discovered. Thanks to a glitch in

the system Danielle Levine Cava was overpaying county employees by over three million dollars Money that we can perhaps never find a way to claw back. She also had to demote somebody there because she had to scapegoat somebody there because it's her fault. Then Danielle Lavincava's administration forgot to renew the gas tax costing Miami-Dade taxpayers $17 million. Now arguably it's saving us that money but it's also that much less money that we have in the budget to take care of things that

our county needs which it means that was $17 million less arguably that they can steal from us but still absolute incompetence. And finally this week a really great Miamian, Jenny Lee Molina, she's a communications expert, she is the founder of 305 Cafecito of 305 Day every March 5th, which has basically become a holiday and right up there with kind of like, you know, Cuyocho here in Miami-Dade. And she works as a communications expert and social media expert for Mayor Danielle Levine Cava. She wanted to run for this seat, which is one of the bluest districts for the Florida House that has a Republican in office who is running. And Jenny Lee wanted to run, asked Danielle Levine Cava for permission. She gave her her blessing.

And then when she filed, I mean, the shit hit the fan. Frantic calls from the shadow mayor, Daniella Levine Cava's puppeteer, Christian Olvert, basically the unelected mayor of Miami-Dade County, Daniella Levine Cava's chief of staff, Joanna Cervone, who's supposed to be doing policy in the work of the people of Miami-Dade, instead is working on politics and her campaign.

And they bullied Jenny Lee Molina out of the race days later and basically are endorsing the Republican. Here's the thing, these local races in Miami-Dade are non-partisan but every single one of these candidates is the member of a party and is representative of that party and I will tell you, Daniela Levine Cava, the first female, the first progressive mayor ever elected in Miami-Dade County in modern history, she is setting back the Democratic Party

in progressive politics by decades, thanks to her corrupt advisors. And what she's also doing is, out of pure selfishness and political greed and for her own power. This is about as cynical and gross as it gets. She is bullying other Democrats and other potential future leaders of this county

who wanna do better, who wanna work for the people of Miami-Dade. And that's the thing about politics. The second that it becomes about you, the second that it isn't about some greater good, whether it's your party, your community, your constituents, you are lost. And Daniela Levine Cava is a lost soul

who is doing untold damage to this community. Just look at the airport. Roy, have you traveled through Miami International Airport lately? How was that? I did, I did last week going to New York. How was that? It's a long walk, very long walk. last week going to New York. How was that? It's a long walk.

Very long walk. And what airport in New York did you fly into? LaGuardia and I left JFK. Speaking of LaGuardia, Daniela Levine Cava is probably the second worst Miami-Dade County mayor in my lifetime. She makes Jimenez look like LaGuardia and Carlos Alvarez was the worst mayor. Remember Carlos Alvarez? He got recalled in 2011 thanks to David Sampson and the Marlins Park boondoggle. But can I ask you this? How beautiful is LaGuardia Airport? Is that nuts?

It's better than in my head, to be honest. But I mean, like talk about most improved. I mean, it took like 20, 30 years. It was Joe Biden who decades ago referred to it as a third world airport, LaGuardia. And he was right. The first time I guess during or after the pandemic, I flew into LaGuardia after it was like redone. It was a super early flight.

I was exhausted. It's one of those flights, you know, you don't sleep the night before you get up, you kind of roll off the plane. I thought I flew to the wrong airport. I thought I got on the wrong plane. When I got off the airport at LaGuardia, I was looking around going, oh shit off the airport at LaGuardia, I was looking around going,

oh shit, this isn't LaGuardia. So I'm like frantically looking for signage to indicate where the hell, I was too embarrassed to go up to somebody and say, where am I? It's like, I just, you know, I woke up all cracked out on the plane and I'm like, oh shit, this is LaGuardia.

It's gorgeous, I can't believe it. And I'd like to think that one day we may live long enough to see Miami International Airport have a water feature. Did you see the water feature? No. You didn't see the water feature? There's like a water show, it's like Vegas. Dude, I had to get the bags in Squirrel Garden, man.

I got there pretty much late. I didn't get to look around or anything. Someone's gotta ride that Zamboni. Someone's got to clean that ice Roy Yeah, someone's got to do it. Hey, yeah, go cats, huh? Yeah, go Panthers. Don't be a hater Roy We're going all the way baby. I'm not hating celebrating. Cocaine's Backstreet's back. All right Backstreet's back, alright! Since the dawn of mankind, we've cooked our food over an open flame and debated the best

way to grill. One thing not up for debate, grilling and beer always go together. But not just any beer would do. Whether you barbecue, text in style, or just celebrate Wednesday with burgers and dogs, I love Miller Lite. Every single time my team plays on television, I am sitting behind that television screen with a Miller Lite R3. Miller Lite keeps it simple, undebatable quality, tastes as great as your barbecue, it's the beer that strips away

everything you don't need and holds on to what matters the most. With the Miller Lite in hand, grilling doesn't just taste great, it tastes like Miller time. To get Miller Lite delivered right to your door, visit MillerLite.com slash Dan. Or you can find it pretty much anywhere that sells beer. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories per 12 ounces.