Your duly elected state attorney for the 9th Judicial Circuit
and nothing done by a weak dictator
can change that.
This is an outrage, but under this tyranny,
elected officials can be removed simply for political purposes and
by a whim of the governor.
And no matter how you feel about me,
you should not be OK with that.
That is Monique Warrell, who was an elected Florida State
attorney slamming Governor Ron De Santis after he abruptly
suspended her yesterday. This is now the second time in
one year that De Santis has removed an elected official
from their position.
An elected official, An elected official.
Both are Democrats who were replaced by Republicans.
His executive order accuses Warrell of under prosecuting crimes,
but she says this is an attempt to jumpstart his
presidential primary bid.
Monique Royal has vowed to run for her position again,
but before she does that,
she joins us now right here on Morning Joe.
It's good to have you on,
Mr. Royal. Thank you so much for being the with
us.
I have to admit, I mean,
I've been
my family moved to Florida like
over 40 years ago. I've been involved in politics
and and intimately involved in politics for a very long
time.
I just say, I've got to say,
despite all that, even I am shocked
that a governor can can just boot out somebody who
was elected by the people.
That's what everybody needs to understand.
You weren't appointed by anybody,
you were elected by the people.
And as you said this,
this, this sort of dictator move
is, is it really is shocking.
What's been the response for your constituents and the people
who voted for you just three years ago?
Well, you know, you're right,
it is shocking and and the nation should be shocked
by that because essentially we are dealing with a dictator.
We're dealing with someone who is overreaching his political authority
and removing a little,
removing elected officials simply for not being politically aligned with
him.
Typically, the removal rules were used to remove individuals who
had been arrested or convicted of crime,
or individuals who had fallen into addiction and weren't able
to properly perform their duties.
But now this governor is using these rules to remove
people who simply are Democrats,
or remove elected officials in Democratic counties,
which he's retaliating against because they didn't support him in
the election.
This is a sad day in Florida.
It's a sad day in America and the whole country
should be watching because if we're not careful this could
become the next president of the United States.
Well and and The thing is that's there's nothing conservative
about this guy.
I'm a I'm a conservative I'm a small government conservative.
We believe the power starts at the local level and
and anything the local level can do you give it
to the local level.
If they can't do it,
the state level does it.
If they can't do it the federal government does it.
Everything is upside down with the sad as he's like
he's like a a centralized state like like authoritarian.
Whether he's banning small businesses from running their businesses the
way they want.
During COVID are banning
are are are going after baseball teams.
But now here this seems to be an even greater
breach.
I'm curious, what do your constituents,
what do the people of of of your district think
about you being elected, you campaigning,
you debating, you running against another candidate,
you winning the election and then him just unilaterally deciding
to fire you,
to push you to decide for a campaign talking point?
Well, people are upset. There's no,
you know, doubt about that.
I ran on a very specific platform,
and I kept my word.
I stood by the things that I said that I
would do based on research and analysis of the criminal
legal system over my 20 years of practice.
I talked about mass incarceration in this country and how
Florida leads the nation in incarceration.
And I ran on a platform of implementing things that
would change that,
using the strong arm of the law when necessary,
but also implementing programs that would.
People from the criminal system and the constituents are upset.
They are angry because their votes have been stolen from
them.
They elected someone to govern according to their values
and that's been stripped away.
And he didn't put in someone who was close in
ideology or anything like that because there was some,
you know, malfunction with my way of doing things.
He put someone in who was completely opposite of what
the people elected and what the people wanted all at
a time when crime is down in Central Florida.
So there is no public safety reason for him to
take this step.
There is strictly a political reason and you said it
best to jumpstart his failed presidential campaign.
Mika. Mika doesn't matter whether people agree as she said,
as the state attorney said,
it doesn't matter whether people agree with her her philosophy
on on crime or not.
I suspect, I don't know all all the details.
I suspect based on what she said that maybe I
would disagree with some parts of it.
Maybe. But make no mistake,
if Republicans can basically fire elected officials because they disagree
with their philosophy,
don't Republicans understand that a Democratic governor in the future
can fire somebody because they think that they're too much
of a,
quote, law and order official?
This is such a dangerous,
antidemocratic step that, as a state attorney said in her
press conference,
views and ideology don't matter here because the people already
endorsed them with their vote three years ago.
Understood. And Miss Royale, aside from speaking out on platforms
like this,
do you have any other options or are there legal
options?
And how does this, I understand you intend to
run again? How does this change what you're fighting for
in the state of Florida?
So
with your question towards our legal options,
we have assembled a legal team and they are currently
reviewing the executive order and making determinations about what the
next steps are legally.
I filed for re election in March and that hasn't
changed.
I am still running for re election and what I'm
running for hasn't changed.
The people voted for it by an overwhelming majority,
by 67% of the vote I won in
2020. So,
and I trust that they will speak again,
despite the backdoor efforts that the governor's currently making to
gerrymander the court circuit in the same way that he's
gerrymandered the voting districts.
Gene Robinson with the Washington Post is next.
Gene, the state attorney, won with
2/3 of the vote, and she won on a platform
far different than Ron De Santis's.
He has replaced a state attorney that won with 2/3
of the vote.
Now with somebody who is a Federalist Society member who
I suspect wouldn't get
14% of the vote, this is,
this is just so anti democratic.
It's it's really shocking. Yeah,
it is shocking and shocking to me.
Ron De Santis is like,
you know, tin hat would be emperor at this point
with, I guess a Napoleon complex or something.
It's incredible.
State's Attorney Warrell, I'm curious as to,
first, are there others of your colleagues,
other state's attorneys in Florida who might be subject to
this same sort of
whimsical and political ouster by Ron De Santis?
Or did he just zero in on you
for various reasons? You know,
because you're so popular, because you were pursuing
policies that he didn't like,
and frankly, perhaps because you're an African American woman,
but, you know, for political reasons.
But are there others who are also in danger?
Yep.
Well, I think that, you know,
you can look at the democratically elected prosecutors across the
state,
and each of them are in danger.
But I think that as it comes to me,
all the reasons that you stated Gene are factual.
I think that I am unapologetically opposed to his way
of doing things.
And because he is a bully,
because he is a weak
authoritarian, he has decided to retaliate against me by my
removal.
He's not stated 1 valid legal ground for my removal
because we still have prosecutorial discretion in this state.
But I believe that if you look around,
I believe there were three democratically elected prosecutors out of
the 20 circuits in the state of Florida.
I think each of them are in jeopardy.
But also something to watch for is the gerrymandering of
the judicial circuits,
because in doing that, he'll be able to essentially wipe
out all democratically elected prosecutors by merging them with red
counties.
Governor Ron De Santis picked on the wrong democratically elected
Florida State attorney.
That's just my gut.
Monique Warrell, thank you very much for coming on the
show.
And thank you for knowing your value.
I have a feeling. See you once again.
Madam State Attorney, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having me.
Monique for state attorney.
OK, here we go.