It may have not been illegal, but it was unethical. The investigation absolved Fernandez from criminal behavior. By the way he is celebrating the legality of the actions, indicates that he actually did them. There may have been no crime, but can we trust him ? Let's keep in mind, as we get close to the November elections.
What makes this whole saga so darkly funny is that Ariel is now treating a prosecutorial declination memo like it’s the Magna Carta crossed with a papal indulgence.
“Baseless.”
“No wrongdoing.”
“Complete vindication.”
That is…not what the memo says.
What the memo actually says is that prosecutors decided they weren’t going to stretch existing criminal statutes into a politically radioactive gray-area digital conduct case absent further compulsory process. Which is a far cry from “Congratulations sir, you are the Nelson Mandela of Coral Gables.”
And the irony here could power the entire city grid.
A man accused of running anonymous surveys through fabricated civic entities to secretly gauge and potentially track constituent responses is now giving speeches about authoritarianism, suppression, and political intimidation. This is the rhetorical equivalent of a raccoon lecturing us on proper trash disposal.
Even the memo itself quietly ducks the central factual question. It explicitly says it was “not necessary to determine who conducted the polling.” Think about that for a second. Ariel is out here doing victory laps while the State Attorney essentially said: “We’re not even going to bother conclusively figuring out who did it because we don’t see a clean prosecutable path under the statutes reviewed.”
That is not exoneration. That’s prosecutorial triage.
And none of the underlying factual weirdness disappeared:
the shared infrastructure,
the redirects,
the overlapping hosting environment,
the vanished surveys,
the refusal to definitively deny involvement for over a year,
and the continued absence of the one thing an innocent person would presumably sprint to provide: the access logs that could conclusively support a hacking/frame-up theory.
Those questions remain exactly where they’ve always been.
The funniest part, though, is the performative outrage from the same crowd that spent years cheering anonymous complaints, political whisper campaigns, coordinated hit pieces, and scorched-earth tactics whenever it suited them. Suddenly now we’re deeply concerned about civility, reputational harm, and “biased narratives.” Amazing how quickly the First Amendment becomes sacred once the criticism starts landing in your own backyard.
Turns out FAFO season eventually reaches everyone’s zip code.
And politically, this “I have been persecuted by authoritarian forces” strategy feels like an absolutely brilliant idea. Please continue. Put it on mailers. Turn it into a slogan. Maybe workshop “Phished But Not Defeated.”
Because nothing says “ready for reelection” quite like spending two years insisting you are the victim of a vast municipal conspiracy while refusing to answer the simplest factual questions directly.
At this point, the scandal itself may be less damaging than the spectacle of the response to it.
For the lady that said that she needed the facts , READ. You will not only see the facts but why Mr. Fernandez will not be re-elected…Even with a “papal indulgence “
I can’t get through this whole email. I’ve read enough of Aesop’s Gables undignified smear campaigns. All I need is facts and from your tone, I don’t trust you to learn them. In the absence of facts, relying on “he said, she said”, what you say is diminished by your sandbox bully language.
Susan, it’s pretty ironic to demand ‘facts’ while openly admitting you couldn’t even get through the post where the facts were laid out. Calling everything you don’t like a smear campaign without engaging the substance is laziness. Maybe this blog is just a little too real for you, and it’s easier to dismiss it than deal with what it says. Get a sense of humor on the way out.
Susan, I actually agree with one thing you said: tone matters. But satire and criticism are not automatically “smear campaigns,” especially when public officials spend years accusing everyone else of corruption, conspiracies, censorship, and political persecution every time they face scrutiny.
The key fact here is simple: the State Attorney did not declare Ariel “innocent” or the allegations “false.” They basically said they didn’t see a clear criminal case worth pursuing under the statutes available. That’s very different from the victory parade Ariel’s press release tried to stage.
And honestly, calls for “dignified discourse” ring a little hollow when the same people comparing local critics to authoritarian regimes were running anonymous “People Count” surveys and trying to identify residents in private WhatsApp chats.
At some point, Coral Gables politics stopped resembling city government and started looking like a community theater production of Game of Thrones with worse scripts and smaller dragons.
It may have not been illegal, but it was unethical. The investigation absolved Fernandez from criminal behavior. By the way he is celebrating the legality of the actions, indicates that he actually did them. There may have been no crime, but can we trust him ? Let's keep in mind, as we get close to the November elections.
What makes this whole saga so darkly funny is that Ariel is now treating a prosecutorial declination memo like it’s the Magna Carta crossed with a papal indulgence.
“Baseless.”
“No wrongdoing.”
“Complete vindication.”
That is…not what the memo says.
What the memo actually says is that prosecutors decided they weren’t going to stretch existing criminal statutes into a politically radioactive gray-area digital conduct case absent further compulsory process. Which is a far cry from “Congratulations sir, you are the Nelson Mandela of Coral Gables.”
And the irony here could power the entire city grid.
A man accused of running anonymous surveys through fabricated civic entities to secretly gauge and potentially track constituent responses is now giving speeches about authoritarianism, suppression, and political intimidation. This is the rhetorical equivalent of a raccoon lecturing us on proper trash disposal.
Even the memo itself quietly ducks the central factual question. It explicitly says it was “not necessary to determine who conducted the polling.” Think about that for a second. Ariel is out here doing victory laps while the State Attorney essentially said: “We’re not even going to bother conclusively figuring out who did it because we don’t see a clean prosecutable path under the statutes reviewed.”
That is not exoneration. That’s prosecutorial triage.
And none of the underlying factual weirdness disappeared:
the shared infrastructure,
the redirects,
the overlapping hosting environment,
the vanished surveys,
the refusal to definitively deny involvement for over a year,
and the continued absence of the one thing an innocent person would presumably sprint to provide: the access logs that could conclusively support a hacking/frame-up theory.
Those questions remain exactly where they’ve always been.
The funniest part, though, is the performative outrage from the same crowd that spent years cheering anonymous complaints, political whisper campaigns, coordinated hit pieces, and scorched-earth tactics whenever it suited them. Suddenly now we’re deeply concerned about civility, reputational harm, and “biased narratives.” Amazing how quickly the First Amendment becomes sacred once the criticism starts landing in your own backyard.
Turns out FAFO season eventually reaches everyone’s zip code.
And politically, this “I have been persecuted by authoritarian forces” strategy feels like an absolutely brilliant idea. Please continue. Put it on mailers. Turn it into a slogan. Maybe workshop “Phished But Not Defeated.”
Because nothing says “ready for reelection” quite like spending two years insisting you are the victim of a vast municipal conspiracy while refusing to answer the simplest factual questions directly.
At this point, the scandal itself may be less damaging than the spectacle of the response to it.
Ariel, Yes go ahead and run again lets have some real dialogue
🍌🍌🍌
Crafty Claim of Innocence and even Craftier Claim of Being “Residents Champion Of Free Speech”
The truth, and rather THE FACTS will be widely known shortly Ariel
Well said.
For the lady that said that she needed the facts , READ. You will not only see the facts but why Mr. Fernandez will not be re-elected…Even with a “papal indulgence “
I can’t get through this whole email. I’ve read enough of Aesop’s Gables undignified smear campaigns. All I need is facts and from your tone, I don’t trust you to learn them. In the absence of facts, relying on “he said, she said”, what you say is diminished by your sandbox bully language.
Susan, it’s pretty ironic to demand ‘facts’ while openly admitting you couldn’t even get through the post where the facts were laid out. Calling everything you don’t like a smear campaign without engaging the substance is laziness. Maybe this blog is just a little too real for you, and it’s easier to dismiss it than deal with what it says. Get a sense of humor on the way out.
Susan, I actually agree with one thing you said: tone matters. But satire and criticism are not automatically “smear campaigns,” especially when public officials spend years accusing everyone else of corruption, conspiracies, censorship, and political persecution every time they face scrutiny.
The key fact here is simple: the State Attorney did not declare Ariel “innocent” or the allegations “false.” They basically said they didn’t see a clear criminal case worth pursuing under the statutes available. That’s very different from the victory parade Ariel’s press release tried to stage.
And honestly, calls for “dignified discourse” ring a little hollow when the same people comparing local critics to authoritarian regimes were running anonymous “People Count” surveys and trying to identify residents in private WhatsApp chats.
At some point, Coral Gables politics stopped resembling city government and started looking like a community theater production of Game of Thrones with worse scripts and smaller dragons.
Read the facts; but it seems that you do not read