First things first, if you haven't watched the four-minute clip above, which is from a February 2023 airing of the now-defunct AM 1040 Spanish-language radio show Contacto Directo, go no further until you have. In fact, watch it once, then read this post, then watch it again. It's worthwhile on a couple of levels.
For starters, it demonstrates why radio becomes exponentially more interesting when paired with a video feed. The vast majority of Contacto Directo's former listeners, tuning in live by radio alone, couldn't have known anything was amiss when this segment aired that fateful day. Only those watching the video feed would have seen the hosts' silent panic, the gesticulations, the throat-slashing gestures aimed at their producer as if to say 'cut this fucking guy off before he destroys us all.' Only they could have spotted the exact moment a massive liability bomb detonated in real time.
But more importantly, and as that last sentence indicates, this was the spark that ignited Vince Lago's recently settled defamation suit against Contacto Directo's broadcaster, Actualidad Media Group. You've probably read about this at some point during the past couple of weeks thanks to coverage from Political Cortadito, the similarly objective Miami Herald, and various other sites and publications. And most of what you read, no doubt, did its level best to leave you with the impression that this suit was little more than a fizzled-out attempt by a thin-skinned and hyper-combative politician to use lawfare to intimidate, harass, and silence his enemies.
Elaine De Valle, for her part, went as far as to incorporate the story into her favorite pastime of drunk-tweeting conspiracy theories on X:
For those who don't know, "Ladra" is the alter ego De Valle invented for herself after getting canned by the Herald. It's a pseudo-personality that facilitates her being both extra sassy and wrong about everything—but mostly just wrong about everything. So what she's saying is that she doesn't believe the rumors that Lago settled for a hefty amount, which is precisely how you know he did.
And that’s what makes this story so compelling. The desperate scramble to dismiss this as mere lawfare is revealing in itself. When I originally learned of Lago's suit over a year ago, I thought meh, this one's all sizzle and no steak. Defamation claims are notoriously difficult to prove, especially when the plaintiff is a public figure. But then I began poking around under the hood, chatting with people close to the matter, reviewing the evidence and testimony in the public record, and it wasn't long before I realized this was no run-of-the-mill defamation case, but a counteroffensive against a carefully coordinated political hit job, the latest chapter in a complex and fascinating tale of political espionage and public corruption.
As such, I’m confident that by the time I’ve taken you through the paces, you’ll understand precisely why Lago is walking away from this with not only a public apology, not only the scalp of the now-off-the-air Contacto Directo and its principal host, but a monetary settlement that, if the rumors are accurate, is large enough to put Lago’s daughters through college and then some.
All of which is to say I plan to properly dissect this thing for you, because God knows no one else will. But because God also knows I need a good 3,000 words just to explain something as simple as the rules of Tic-Tac-Toe, there's no hope of getting through this unless I slice it into digestible pieces. Hence why we're starting with the clip above. It's the match that lit this entire powder keg.
Today, we won't dive into the weeds on the lawsuit per se, as that will come later. Instead, we’ll analyze the spectacular act of self-immolation that prompted it, while noting that at the center of this whole sordid affair, like a gravitational singularity of political chicanery, sits the one person who somehow always manages to be at the center of these things: Ariel Fernandez.
What you’ve been told
The central claim in Lago's defamation suit against Actualidad was that during the February 27, 2023 edition of Contacto Directo (shown in the clip above), host Robert Rodriguez-Tejera falsely and with actual malice reported that Lago was under investigation by the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics (COE) for submitting a false affidavit. Specifically, Rodriguez-Tejera's segment perpetuated the false narrative that Lago had lied when attesting that neither he nor his immediate family held any interests in Little Gables, which was then being considered for annexation. Lago's position was that this claim was demonstrably false and that even minimal due diligence by the host would have revealed the truth, which is that someone had filed an anonymous ethics complaint with the COE, and at the time the segment aired, the commission was merely conducting a preliminary review to determine whether the complaint warranted investigation. The COE would ultimately determine it did not.
In its defense, the station argued this was mere semantics, that Lago was splitting hairs over a distinction without a difference, that it had corroborated its reporting with not one but two confidential sources, and that the substance of its coverage was essentially accurate. But much to Actualidad's chagrin, soon after Lago filed suit, then-COE executive director Jose Arrojo told the Miami Herald that there is indeed a difference, and a critical one at that:
Okay, so this much you probably knew already, or at least vaguely understood, thanks to the watered-down and selective coverage of this story by other outlets. In fact, you could be forgiven for thinking this was all much ado about nothing, a simple matter of an overly sensitive local politician getting litigious over a technically inaccurate but not particularly egregious bit of wordplay by adversarial political commentators, which is a lot like suing a cow for mooing.
For what it's worth, based on the synopsis above, and even with Arrojo's caveat and the COE's determination that Lago's affidavit was clean, I'd be inclined to side with Actualidad at this point. Lago has every right to be upset, but clearing the ‘actual malice’ threshold for defamation is a steep climb, and from what I've laid out so far, I don't see him making it.
But then you review the evidence and testimony (which we'll do in subsequent posts). You analyze the clip above (which we'll do now). You lift the veil of strategically depthless media coverage to behold what lies beneath. You do this, and mark my words, you begin to see something far more interesting than the narrative you've been fed.
Is it defamation per se? Maybe. Is it one of the dirtiest and most malicious political hit jobs I’ve seen at the local level? Probably. Does it vindicate everything I've been telling you about a certain cast of characters for the past two years? Absolutely.
What actually happened
So without further ado, I’ll get to it and start at the most logical place—the beginning. Let’s take a quick pass through that four-minute clip and tease out the more glaring details that make this thing reek of coordination:
The segment aired on Monday, February 27, 2023. The qualifying period for the 2023 municipal election cycle ended on Friday, February 24. This means the segment aired during the very first show after Vince Lago was officially re-elected unopposed and just as he transitioned from candidate back to sitting official, which just so happens to be the perfect moment to begin seeding a recall strategy. What’s more, because Lago was safely off the ballot (which Ariel orchestrated by deceiving Rip Holmes into abandoning the mayoral race, a manipulation that later prompted Holmes to file a police report), there was no risk of this attack backfiring and driving sympathetic voters to the polls and thus upsetting Ariel's hopes of keeping turnout as low as possible. All of which makes the timing of this segment incredibly serendipitous, wouldn't you agree?
Of all the people the show could have brought on to discuss this development, they chose Ariel. But notice how the hosts never identify him as a fact witness, subject matter expert, or even as the publisher of Gables Insider. They offer zero explanation for why this particular guest is qualified to provide context and analysis. They simply introduce him as “Ariel Fernandez,” who for all the audience knows is just some random guy who happens to be "following the information” and somehow gained insider knowledge.
Even more bizarrely, at the time this segment aired, Ariel was deep into his campaign for city commissioner, yet neither the hosts nor Ariel himself mentions this to the audience. Can you imagine anyone, much less the king of self-promotion himself, landing airtime on one of South Florida's largest Spanish-language radio shows and not mentioning he's running for office? This is a guy who back then was literally driving around town in a golf cart wrapped with Vote for Ariel graphics. And you expect us to believe that he and his hosts just forgot to mention he was running for commissioner? That it never occurred to anyone to say, "By the way, Coral Gables elections are on April 11th, make sure to cast your vote"?
The hosts characterize the matter as merely something "people are talking about." They say "some are concerned," framing this as organic scuttlebutt they're just now picking up on. Hence having Ariel on to provide background. But if that's truly the case, if this was just some rumor they'd been hearing and wanted to explore, why did both hosts have a perfectly synchronized panic attack the instant Ariel went off-script? Watch them lose it the second—and I mean the second—Ariel loops in Lago’s brother, who isn’t a public figure, by incorrectly characterizing him as the trailer park owner’s "attorney and lobbyist, if [he’s] not mistaken." They immediately start making exaggerated throat-slashing gestures at their off-camera producer while Rodriguez-Tejera jumps in to abort the segment. Does that look like two guys innocently learning about a rumor, or two guys who know exactly where the legal line is and just watched their accomplice cross it?
Consistently coincidental
There are other insights one could extract from that segment, but I suspect we have more than enough to chew on already.
In summary, Ariel dupes Rip Holmes into abandoning the mayoral race, thereby removing Lago, who is by far the biggest voter turnout driver in the Gables, from the ballot. Then, the very next business day after Lago is locked in for another term, Contacto Directo runs a segment on a non-existent COE investigation. The show remains conspicuously vague about its sourcing (Rodriguez-Tejera would later claim two confidential sources) yet has Ariel call in to provide details. Never once do they disclose to their audience how or why Ariel possesses this information, what his role in the story might be, or most astonishingly, that he's actively campaigning for city commissioner against a candidate who enjoys Lago's enthusiastic endorsement. Nonetheless, despite the overt choreography, Ariel can't last 45 seconds before saying something so radioactive that both hosts jump out of their chairs to kill the interview (a reaction that betrays a much deeper, lawyerly understanding of both the underlying facts and defamation law).
So what do you think? Was this all just a coincidence, like Ariel's email being used to open those Mailchimp accounts was supposedly a coincidence?
Speaking of coincidences, remember this infamous moment seven months later, when now-Commissioner Ariel ambushes Lago at the September commission meeting by plopping down a homemade affidavit and demanding that Lago sign it on the spot? An affidavit that specifically contained a much broader definition of "immediate family." Do you think it's also a coincidence that Ariel pulled this stunt mere days after learning that Lago would receive a clearance letter from the COE?
Seriously, though. I want to make sure you're tracking here. During a commission meeting—on camera, on the record, in front of everyone—Ariel tried to strong-arm Lago into signing a homemade affidavit about Little Gables conflicts mere days after the COE determined there were no issues with the original affidavit. You know, the affidavit at the center of the anonymous complaint that Ariel went on Contacto Directo to discuss back in February.
Call me crazy, but it's almost as if the first shot at Lago missed, so Ariel decided to reload by trying to force Lago into signing a new affidavit that could serve as the basis for a second “anonymous” ethics complaint. I honestly can't wrap my head around the sheer audacity of attempting something so transparently corrupt in plain view of the public like that.
I also can't believe Lago signed it. I like Lago, and I think he's a shrewd guy, but signing a homemade affidavit that a failed motivational speaker turned elected grifter foisted on you without even reading it, and despite two attorneys pleading with you not to sign it, has to be one of the dumbest things I've witnessed since the last time Dr. Castro opened her mouth.
The more things change
Just think, everything we’ve covered up to this point was gleaned from four minutes of video. There's still a year and a half's worth of discovery, interrogatories, depositions, and other evidence still to draw from, and it only gets worse from here. Much worse.
Which is why I want us to stop and reflect for a moment, to think about the current state of play and how quickly things can change.
It wasn’t long ago that Ariel remained relentlessly omnipresent. Everywhere you turned, there he was, sashaying around town as though he were Lord Paramount of Coral Gables, always donned in his ‘Commissioner’ polo that served as his royal garb. Not a day could pass that didn’t see Ariel cluster-posting selfies, handing out homemade proclamations nobody wanted, or staging flash press conferences because he heard a twig snap.
But then something happened, something that in the blink of an eye transformed one of the most visible politicians in the region into a veritable subterranean hermit, to the point where your best chance of encountering an Ariel selfie these days is on the back of a milk carton.
And we all know why. It’s because he was caught dead to rights doing something very premeditated, very systematic, and very naughty. It was because of Phishingate.
But let’s not forget how the unearthing of the scandal began. It didn’t begin with URLs or email addresses or other forms of digital forensic evidence. It began with a hunch, a suspicion, a sense that something wasn’t adding up. It began with intuition, inference, common sense, and the simple act of noticing things—the very same tools that allowed me (and many of you) to accurately predict that Kirk would flip, or when the second attempt to fire Peter Iglesias would occur, or that Amos Rojas was heading for an early exit, or precisely how an election that was two years away would pan out, etc.
I mention all this because I notice that some in this town have a rather malleable philosophy with respect to evidence. They’ll sign a recall petition against a mayor in the absence of it altogether, but then when it comes to anything that challenges their own prejudices, they suddenly demand reams of it. They suddenly bristle at the very concept of speculation, to engage in what they conveniently dismiss as “gossip and rumor,” and will refuse to even confront a claim unless it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Not only is this behavior insincere, it ignores the simple fact that evidence tends to not just fall from the sky like manna from heaven. It needs to be pursued, and the impetus for that pursuit is often suspicion. And while suspicion alone is a terrible epistemic endpoint, it is a perfectly legitimate, and indeed a necessary, starting point.
We had to suspect Ariel was the mastermind behind Phishingate before we could know it for certain. We had to take the meager clues we were given and map them onto his long and well-established history of shady behavior and then work from there. We had to start, essentially, with mere intuition.
None of which is necessary now. Not with this. Not when there is a four-minute video that lays it all bare. We don't need intuition or speculation or pattern recognition when we can literally watch the conspiracy unfold in real time. We can see Ariel materialize on a radio show with information he shouldn't have had, pushing a narrative that shouldn't have existed, about an investigation that wasn't real, all while concealing his candidacy from an audience that deserved to know who was feeding them this poison. We can watch the hosts panic the instant he goes off-script, revealing they knew exactly what was, and wasn’t, supposed to be said. And we can recall the inexplicable sequel seven months later, when Ariel ambushed Lago with a homemade affidavit just days after the COE cleared him on the original one.
We can acknowledge the now undeniable truth that Ariel was orchestrating hits on his rivals well before he took office. And we can finally dispense with whatever remains of the fantasy that all the dysfunction that erupted the moment Ariel got elected somehow stemmed from Lago's sour grapes rather than from the pathological liar and serial schemer we keep catching red-handed.
In the opening, I urged you to watch the clip again after you'd finished reading. I'll reiterate that now. This time while you watch, imagine at least $1,000 transferring from Actualidad's bank account and into Lago's for every second that ticks by, because if the rumors about the settlement are true, that's effectively what happened. Then ask yourself if Actualidad would have paid that kind of money if they didn't think Lago had a case. Ask yourself why those hosts pulled the plug in such terror if nothing improper was happening. And, finally, ask yourself if Ariel, who sits at the center of this scandal, who was already nabbed in Phishingate, who rarely ventures out from whatever rock he slithered under back in May, shouldn't finally do the right thing and resign.
P.S. Back in January 2024, Ariel told the Herald that he 'did not immediately recall' the radio segment where he was the star guest spreading false information about Lago, a lapse of memory that I can only assume stemmed from the same amnesia that struck when he told a resident he wasn't sure what PeopleCountUSA was, despite having used it to surveil residents for two years.
