Ron DeSantis' ‘Election Police’ Didn't Prosecute Republican Sex Offenders Who Voted Illegally

As part of Ron DeSantis' crackdown on former felons voting in Florida, several sex offenders from a deeply Republican district were identified as having voted illegally in an election. In spite of this, the US Attorney in the area REFUSED to prosecute the individuals, just months before DeSantis made a big showing at a press conference announcing the arrests of 20 individuals who "illegally" voted. The difference is that the ones DeSantis boasted about were in Democratic areas of the state - unlike the sex offenders. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

I'm sure everybody remembers last summer when Ron DeSantis down here in Florida went and did his big press conference announcing that his state election police had arrested 20 individuals in the state who had allegedly voted illegally in the 2020 election. Now, these individuals were predominantly African American. They were from predominantly democratic areas of the state, and they were all former felons who under a law, passed by DeSantis and his Republican allies in the States, uh, Congress, they weren't allowed to vote even though they had been given their right to vote back by an amendment to the state constitution passed by the voters just a couple years before. So DeSantis went out there, arrested all these individuals. Most of the arrests, by the way, have been tossed because they cannot find any intent with these individuals, which has of course now sparked a change in the law saying you don't have to have intent.

You voted illegally. Even if you think you're allowed to vote, we're gonna arrest you in the future because DeSantis got so embarrassed. And I'm telling you that story, rehashing it to tell you a new story that just a few months before DeSantis gave his lofty little press conference, haha, look at all these democratic voter frauds we caught in a Republican controlled county with predominantly Republicans. A Republican state attorney refused to prosecute six registered sex offenders who voted illegally in the 2020 election. That Republican state attorney was Bill Gladson, and he confirmed in a May, 2022 letter obtained by the Orlando Sentinel that the six offenders voted in Lake County, but that they couldn't be prosecuted because their fraud wasn't willful after they were mistakenly given voter registration cards. Now, that scenario, by the way, is identical to the scenario of the 20 people that Ron DeSantis did arrest and did try to prosecute, but at the end, most of them fell apart because like Gladson said about the other six, you couldn't find the willful intent.

These people were given their voter registration and they voted. So the difference between these two cases is that one of them is a group of Republicans and the other is a group of Democrats, a group of predominantly black Democrats. And DeSantis said, I don't care that we don't have intent. Let's prosecute these people anyway. And when that fell apart, he said, okay, then let's change the law to say we don't have to have intent, but these six Republican sex offenders, ah, don't worry about those guys. Just a bunch of good old boys who forgot they weren't allowed to vote. No harm, no foul, right? This is so

Painfully obvious what these Republicans at every level are doing here in the state of Florida, whether it's the state attorneys, whether it's the State Congress, or whether it's Ron DeSantis himself, they don't actually care about voter fraud. They're actually trying to create new laws to make legitimate voting into fraud, because that's what happened in both of these instances. Actually, technically with the sex offenders, I don't think most of them would even be eligible to vote even with the constitutional amendment.