The left-wing, George Soros-backed state prosecutor in Orlando suggested sexism and racism — and not her soft-on-crime policies — are leading Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to remove her from office.
Democratic State Attorney Monique Worrell told the Ocala Gazette on Friday that recent requests for information from DeSantis’ office and others about her handling of certain cases are setting the stage for her possible removal.
Worrell suggested the Republican governor was on a “witch hunt” to take her down in part because she is black and female.
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“I think that a lot of the legislation that he’s passed shows where he stands with his views on cultural diversity and women in positions of power,” Worrell, who was in Ocala to speak at a Marion County NAACP function, told the Gazette.
“I think that in a democracy, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, you should be very concerned that, you know, the democracy is being undermined.”
DeSantis would likely argue that it’s public safety that’s being undermined.
The governor coyly hinted at Worrell’s anxiety while speaking to reporters in Titusville on Monday.
“I think she was making rummagings [sic] about that,” he said during the press conference. “If she thought somehow she was going to be removed, why is she thinking that? Is she doing something that deserves removal?”
The controversy stems from the murders of three people, including a 9-year-old girl and a journalist, in the Pine Hills area of Orange County.
The suspect, 19-year-old Keith Moses, had a criminal record that included 19 arrests, eight of which were felonies.
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As The Free Press reported in March, Worrell’s office let Moses free on a 2021 arrest for marijuana possession after deputies found him and two other men in a car smoking pot. One of them reportedly threw a gun out the window. The gun turned out to be stolen.
Deputies noted that Moses and the other two men had multiple previous firearm possession charges, including attempted first-degree murder and armed robbery. All three also had ski masks either on them or in the car.
Worrell in March, defended her office from not prosecuting Moses. She said the Florida Department of Law Enforcement would refuse to test the small amount of marijuana recovered, which meant she could prove her case.
“Nowhere in the state of Florida when a child is arrested, that the result of that arrest is a conviction,” she said at the time.
After the triple homicide, Sen. Rick Scott, DeSantis, Sheriff John Mina and others criticized Worrell for her approach to handling crime.
Soros, a left-wing billionaire, has a long track record of electing prosecutors who in city after city, in the name of social justice and equity, routinely return violent criminals to the streets.
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In Ocala, Worrell played up the victim angle. She noted that a Republican official from Orange County had requested information from Worrell about human trafficking cases that her office had dropped. The official reportedly told Worrell’s office that she wanted to share the information with DeSantis.
Worrell told the Gazette the incident was part of “an ongoing attempt by Tallahassee to build a basis to remove her.”
“I think that they always had an agenda to try to figure out how to get me out of office as quickly as possible,” she added. “And it’s just become more obvious within probably the last six months or so by different interactions that we’ve had.”
Worrell also suggested again that racism and sexism were part of the equation.
She told the Gazette that DeSantis and other GOP leaders have ignored cases involving violence committed by juveniles with long criminal records in Marion and Brevard counties because the elected state attorneys in those areas, Bill Gladson and Phil Archer, are Republicans. They also happen to be white men.
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