The Rending of a Recall: The Lawyer

“Winker the City Slayer.” That’s how I referred to David Winker in his one and only appearance in this newsletter. He is, after all, the go-to attorney for many of South Florida’s civic activists and interest groups.

One might say that what an ambulance speeding toward the emergency room is to a certain species of personal-injury lawyer, a mob of riled-up residents descending on city hall is to Winker.

(Come to think of it, maybe that’s why he’s become so chummy with Ariel “The Munibomber” Fernandez—he knows a good revenue stream when he sees one.)

Therefore, it was no surprise to see Winker out in front of the mayoral recall as End the Corruption’s registered agent. He certainly knows where his bread is buttered, and given the ethically questionable nature of the recall, as well as his close ties to KFC (in addition to being pals with Ariel, he is currently representing Dr. Castro in her matter before the Commission on Ethics), he was clearly the right person for the job. No one, it seems, bends the rules quite like Winker.

“Playing ‘fast and loose’ with evidence”

In February 2024, less than two months ago, a Miami-Dade appeals court issued a unanimous ruling against the City of Miami and a group of activists who are trying to block the county from remaking the Coconut Grove Playhouse. Winker—because of course he does—represents the activists.

In the remarkable final footnote in his concurring opinion, Judge Daryl Trawick, with Judge Santovenia concurring, slammed Winker with the following admonishment:

So, Winker presented Miami’s planning and zoning board with a five-page report that…oopsie…just so happened to be missing the one page that refuted his own argument. We’re not talking 1 of 500 pages. We’re talking 1 of 5. 20% of the entire document. But, I’m sure it was just an accident. He probably just tripped on something when he was using the Xerox machine.

After all, deliberately withholding evidence is a serious offense, as is perjury, aka lying under oath, like when you raise your right hand and swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth and then go on to lie about your residency over and over again, and then quintuple down on that lie, albeit with a holy-crap-I-just-stepped-in-it look on your face, when given an opportunity to correct the record. I recommend watching until the end:

Fun fact: perjury in an official proceeding is a third-degree felony in Florida and is punishable by up to five years in prison, up to five years of probation, and a $5,000 fine. So, thank goodness for the statute of limitations.

Then again, I don’t think the Florida Bar places similar time limits on their own disciplinary actions.

Timing is everything

As the registered agent and lawyer for End the Corruption, it is Winker’s job to make sure that the committee complies with state regulations. It’s his responsibility, for example, to make sure the committee doesn’t use paid canvassers, as that would violate state statute. And he should, at the very least, make sure the committee actually exists before it begins receiving and spending money and engaging in political activities.

For instance, imagine you plan to launch a recall effort that begins on Wednesday, March 13th. Imagine you are going to have a splashy website already up and running. Imagine you are going to have an army of “volunteers” hit the streets that same day and fully armed with hundreds of petitions, T-shirts, and door hangers. Imagine you already have an e-blast in the barrel and expensive social-media ads—ones that typically take days to get approved—ready to go, right then and there, on March 13th.

You would want to make sure your political committee is fully formed well in advance, so that it could receive contributions and make expenditures in accordance with applicable laws, right? You would at least make sure the committee legally exists before it begins to engage in political activities, wouldn’t you?

Incredible! It’s one thing to move quickly, but to move faster than the speed of light so that time not only stops but begins to flow backward, thus allowing you to take money you will collect in the future and spend it in the past? Now that’s amazing!

That said, we already knew Kirk could travel through time to retrieve speeches and vet potential employees, so maybe this is merely a case of him sharing one of his many metaphysical gifts with a political ally.

A nod is as good as a Winker

A firm or attorney’s imprimatur is often a message in itself. As you know, it’s why so many deep-pocketed clients pay top dollar for white-shoe firms. A single 8.5"x 11" sheet of paper, for instance, suddenly feels a lot heavier in the hand when you give it a letterhead that reads Greenberg Traurig or Quinn Emanuel—I, myself, view the former as saying I intend to slowly bleed you dry and the latter as I intend to eat your children.

To be sure, the name David Winker has a certain connotation of its own. Unfortunately, it’s a decidedly negative one. If only I had a dime for every time I heard the descriptors “unethical” and “bottom feeder” when asking around about Winker.

But, to be fair, this is at least partially attributable to the infamous 96-page Winker “dossier” that was circulated a few years ago. I haven’t seen the dossier myself, and to be frank, I have no real interest in it, because if it contains what I suspect it does—massive IRS tax liens, umpteen lis pendens, a driving-with-a-suspended-license charge, etc.—then all I have to say is, meh.

So he allegedly flouts the law, rips everyone off, and doesn’t pay his taxes. Who cares? None of this, you see, is a reflection of an individual’s character or is in any way relevant to anything.

Unless said individual leases commercial space from Vince Lago.

That, I’m told, changes everything!

Seriously, though, while I maintain that End the Corruption’s no-holds-barred campaign of personal ruination makes every skeleton in Winker and co.’s closet fair game, I can’t help but feel as though opposition research that supposedly spans decades is somehow less impactful than some of Winker’s more recent transgressions.

Summation

As promised, each post in this series will conclude with an updated summation of what we have learned about the recall. Here is where we currently stand:

Maria Cruz, who was found by the state to have mishandled a large sum of money, who has been condemned for gross immorality and moral turpitude, and who is regarded by many in the community as thoroughly corrupt, and David Winker, an attorney with a checkered past and a reputation amongst his peers for being highly unethical, who was very recently reprimanded by an appeals court judge for allegedly withholding evidence, and who blatantly lied under oath about his residency at a city commission meeting, are leading a recall effort that accuses without evidence a mayor who is currently up for reelection of being corrupt, that may have already violated state law by using paid canvassers to circulate and witness petitions, and that may have begun operating before being legally formed.

And this, my dear readers, is just the front end of the recall effort. Up next, we’ll see if we can sniff out what’s happening on the back end.

More to come…