In Part 1 of Devil on the Dais! we described the vindictive actions of North Miami Beach commission candidate Michael Joseph against Commissioner Barbara Kramer when she didn’t appoint him to a vacancy on the dais.

When then-Commissioner Tony DeFillipo wouldn’t go along with his evil plot to unseat Barbara, Michael was not happy about it, but this time he didn’t immediately retaliate.

Once the campaign was under way for the November 2018 city commission election, Michael Joseph had the full support of his now-former friends, including Tony, Barbara, commission candidate Ketley Joachim, and this blogger, as well as other people who helped him with his unsuccessful 2015 run against Commissioner Phyllis Smith.  As the days went on, however, Michael began distancing himself from all of us.

When asked why he no longer needed our help, he merely said, “I need to do my own thing.”

We had no idea at the time what his “own thing” entailed.

We soon found out in late September 2018 when Michael publicly advertised his political alignment with Tony’s opponent, mayoral candidate “Reckless” Robert Dempster, along with commission candidate McKenzie Fleurimond, all of whom began running on a “progressive” agenda.

A month later in October 2018 we reported in The dirtiest of all North Miami Beach campaign tricks!, “A mystery hit piece arrived in North Miami Beach mailboxes last week against Tony DeFillipo, who is running for Mayor … referring to Tony’s slate of candidates as the Tony “Soprano” DeFillipo’s Crime Family.”

The disclaimer on this mailer stated, “Paid for by AFSCME PEOPLE.”  AFSCME is the acronym for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which is the union for the general employees of North Miami Beach.

Almost immediately, it was discovered that AFSCME had nothing to do with this mailer, and that the real person behind this scheme was none other than Michael Joseph’s best friend and campaign strategist, Hector Roos.

This is the same Hector Roos we told you about previously who, under the alias “Ike Runner,” attempted to unseat Commissioner Kramer by sending out an email blast publicly accusing her of violating the city charter.

And now, Hector Roos (or rather, Michael Joseph) was going after Tony DeFilippo with a vengeance.

On October 23, 2018, Tony filed a defamation lawsuit against AFSCME, ASFCME People, G Print, Inc., Thor Media Group, LLC, and Hector Roos (the owner and operator of Thor Media).

Michael Joseph, of course, denied any and all knowledge about the mailer, or why his best friend, Hector Roos would do such a thing.  At the time, we believed him, thinking he had nothing to gain by attacking Tony.

But then we had second thoughts after a few obvious clues jumped out at us.

For starters, it’s common knowledge that Hector Roos is not only Michael Joseph’s best friend, but he has also been Michael’s behind-the-scenes campaign strategist since Michael first contemplated running for office in 2012 and during all three of Michael’s political campaigns.

Secondly, Michael used the Hialeah-based printing company, G Print, Inc. for his campaign mailers, which is the same company Hector Roos used to print the hit piece against Tony.  No other North Miami Beach candidate used this company for their campaign printing.  In fact, according to all of his campaign treasurer reports, Michael paid a total of $10,967.55 to G Print for printed mailers between September 1, 2018 and October 5, 2018, just two weeks before the hit piece against Tony went out.  We have no way of knowing if some of that money was spent on that mailer since Michael is not required to produce itemized invoices for his expenditures without a subpoena.

We then considered the possibility that even if Michael didn’t pay for the mailer, he still had plenty of motives to have it produced.

For one thing, Tony refused to side with him in his war against Barbara Kramer.  There was also the prospect that Michael was angry at Tony for passing him over by appointing Evan Piper to fill the third commission vacancy at a special meeting held August 14, 2018.

Those motivations, however, rang hollow when we considered the fact that the fake four-sided, full color AFSCME mailer was not cheap to produce and mail to thousands of North Miami Beach voters.  Neither Michael nor Hector Roos had that much money to throw away to produce a mailer that most people toss into the trash without bothering to even read it.

We were convinced there had to be another reason for Michael and Hector to go through all this trouble and expense.  Someone with much deeper pockets had to be behind this campaign.

After eliminating the usual suspects in North Miami Beach, such as developers and wealthy residents with axes to grind, and doing some more digging, we came up with a few hypotheses of our own.

The obvious suspects, of course, were Tony DeFillipo’s opponents in the mayoral race.  So we carefully reviewed the campaign treasurer reports of Ray Marin, Robert Dempster, and Beth Spiegel, who dropped out of the race almost immediately.  All their contributions seem to be accounted for, and there appears to be no unusual spending on campaign material.  (You can click their names to review their individual reports for yourself.)

We also came up with the possibility that one of his opponents might have opened a political committee (PAC) to be funded with enough “dark money” to put out this mailer.  So we searched the Florida Committee Database and came up with nothing in any of their names.

We kept digging and came up with one more possibility.

At a September 13, 2018 meeting, less than a month before the fake AFSCME mailer was sent out, G5ive, LLC, a North Miami Beach strip club came before the commission to request the renewal of its 4:00 AM to 6:00 AM extension of hours license.  Despite a recommendation of approval by the Chief of Police and the Deputy City Manager, the motion to approve G5ive’s request for extended hours failed by a vote of 3-4.  Then-Commissioner Tony DeFillipo was one of those voting no.

If anyone had a huge beef with Tony, who was running for Mayor, it was the owners/operators of G5five, who stood to lose a boatload of money by being denied those extended business hours.

We asked ourselves if they were angry enough at Tony to commission those mailers.  They certainly had more than enough money to do so.

But, even if G5ive did finance the hit piece, why pick Hector Ross to do their dirty work?

Hector’s less than believable tale, is that he met a man named “John” in a Fort Lauderdale Flanagan’s parking lot on September 27, 2018, which just happened to be two weeks after G5ive lost their extended hours license.

According to the Miami Herald, “When they met that afternoon, John instructed Roos to create and distribute a political attack ad that accused then-mayoral candidate Anthony DeFillipo of being a Tony Soprano-like mob boss presiding over a slate of criminals running for North Miami Beach City Council, according to court documents.  He paid Roos $4,750 in cash on the spot and promised more when the project was complete, according to Roos’ timeline. Roos was to carry out the job without further instructions or contact.”

Oh, the intrigue!

Even more intriguing is the fact that the Registered Agent for G5ive, LLC is an attorney by the name of Stephen Hunter Johnson from the firm Lydecker | Diaz, who was the Registered Lobbyist in 2015 for the strip club.

In addition, on August 26, 2019 Mr. Johnson became the Registered Lobbyist for his law firm in its attempt to become the municipal attorney for City of North Miami Beach, even though he has absolutely no municipal law experience.

We’re also told that Stephen Hunter Johnson and Michael Joseph are close acquaintances.

Furthermore, Michael Joseph has been vigorously advocating for Johnson’s firm to get the City Attorney position.

For the record, we are absolutely not accusing G5ive, LLC of financing Hector Roos’ hit mailer against now-Mayor Tony DeFillipo, but it sure looks like they had enough of a motive to do so.

Just saying.

All of which brings us back to the censure of Michael Joseph by his colleagues on the North Miami Beach City Commission at the September 26, 2019 meeting.

The Mayor and Commissioners are currently seeking a City Attorney or law firm to replace Sarah Johnston, who has expressed a desire to leave and possibly work in the private sector.

One of the options on the table is to hire the law firm of Weiss Serota Helfman Cole & Bierman, which has extensive experience in municipal law all over South Florida.

As we already mentioned above, Stephen Hunter Johnson registered to lobby the Commission on behalf of his firm, Lydecker | Diaz.

A certain someone (who apparently does not want Weiss Serota hired) filed an “anonymous” complaint with the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust about the pending proposal, and then conveniently leaked the complaint to the Miami New Times.

The New Times then ran an article about it on August 30, 2019.  While the reporter did contact City Attorney Sarah Johnston for a statement, he never bothered to interview any members of the Commission or the administration.

As a result of “anonymously” filing an ethics complaint, and then leaking the “story” to the New Times, the “anonymous” tipster achieved his goal of creating a story out of thin air.

Hmmm.  That sounds so familiar, doesn’t it?

Oh, wait!  I know!

That’s exactly what Hector Roos did when he sent out the “Ike Runner” email attacking Barbara Kramer, and copied the media with it in the hopes of creating “news.”

But, we digress.

The Ethics Commission has the duty to assign an investigator to look into every complaint filed in order to determine whether or not there is probable cause to move forward with an investigation.  In this case, as in all other complaints, the Commission’s investigator began interviewing all city officials, including the elected officials.  It’s important to understand that the Ethics Commission has not yet opened a formal investigation since the interview process is still ongoing.

Two days after the New Times article was published, former North Miami Beach Appointed Mayor Beth Spiegel, who now lives in New Mexico, sent a scathing email to city officials, denouncing the Commission’s intent to hire a private firm, and viciously attacking City Attorney Sarah Johnston, which was all based on the article’s one-sided take on a commission discussion.

Michael Joseph, however, apparently thought that Beth Spiegel’s opinion about city business was gospel.

You know, the opinion that was based on a heavily biased “news” article about a complaint that Michael had leaked to the Miami New Times.

You see where this is going, right?

So Michael decided to print out her email, make copies in the City Clerk’s office when she left the room, and sneakily place them on the visitors’ table outside the Commission Chambers before a meeting, as if it were official city business.

What this freshman commissioner did was wrong on so many levels, we are practically at a loss for words.

Fortunately, Commissioner Barbara Kramer had plenty to say about her underhanded colleague when she asked the Mayor and Commission to censure Michael Joseph for his abominable behavior.

A censure is defined as a public reprimanding of a public official for inappropriate conduct or voting behavior, and aimed at reformation of the person and prevention of further offending acts.  In politics, a censure is an alternative to more serious measures against misconduct or dereliction of duty.

Read Barbara Kramer’s full comments here:  Barbara Kramer Commission Speech 09-26-19

After more than an hour of discussion, during which Michael Joseph arrogantly refused to acknowledge wrongdoing or even apologize for his actions, the Commission finally voted 4-3 in favor of censure.

WATCH!

Instead of humbly learning from his mistakes, he arrogantly repeated his false accusations against City Attorney Sarah Johnston during the Commission reports, once again referring to former Mayor Beth Spiegel’s email, and saying, “I look forward to the Ethics Commission coming forward with their findings…”

Before he could finish his sentence, Mayor Tony DeFillipo cut him off and said, “Commissioner, if you keep on that route I’m gonna cut your microphone off.”

The stunned look on Michael’s face from that rebuke was absolutely priceless!

He abruptly ended with, “Those are my thoughts.  I’ll leave it at that, thank you.”

City Attorney Sarah Johnston asked the Mayor for a point of personal privilege to address Michael’s baseless accusations.

She first addressed the “completely false” allegations in Beth Spiegel’s email and touched on some of those points.

With regard to the “anonymous” complaint filed with the Miami-Dade Ethics Commission, she said, “I understand that not everyone is happy with the direction, or [with] me, but there’s probably a better, more professional way to do it than to suggest that anything I’m doing is unethical when that’s not, in fact, the case.”

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Judging by Michael’s long-standing pattern of using anonymous surrogates to attack his perceived enemies, as we’ve already proven here, Ms. Johnston should hardly be surprised by his devious tactics.

After all, Michael is probably thinking that Sarah Johnston is the only thing standing in the way of Stephen Hunter Johnson’s firm being hired.  The sooner he can get rid of her, the sooner he can get his way.

Next, Commissioner Barbara Kramer had her say.  “We have a devil on this commission, and I know it!  And everyone better keep their eyes open because you see the display tonight.  There is just no mercy with this person.  They don’t apologize, they mean nothing that they say, and I believe they are behind the complaints that have come to our City Attorney.”

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Commissioner Fortuna Smukler explained that she didn’t vote for or against the censure because she was conflicted, and because she had hoped Michael’s apology would be sincere.

She continued, “Honestly, Mr. Joseph, I asked you to apologize, you did, and now when you spoke you made the comment that you can’t wait for the ethics thing.  To me that apology just went out the window!”

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WATCH!

In the nine years I’ve been blogging for VotersOpinion I’ve targeted more than a dozen local politicians, public officials, and candidates for their unethical, corrupt, and sometimes illegal actions.  In almost every one of those cases, it was strictly for political reasons.

For example, no politician has been in my cross hairs more than former NMB Commissioner Frantz Pierre, and yet in the 12 years that I’ve known him it was never, ever personal.

In fact, I can think of only three public figures who previously provoked my fury by making politics personal.

Michael Joseph is now the fourth.

Commissioner Barbara Kramer hit the nail on the head when she said, “We have a devil on this commission!”

Indeed they do, my friends.  Indeed they do.

Stephanie