Never mind July.  It looks like Christmas might come as early as next month if the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics and Public Trust find probable cause that North Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Joseph abused his official position.

As we recently reported in Devil on the Dais! The Twisted Duplicity of Michael Joseph, Part 3, for over a year the Shifty Commish has been desperately trying to get Mayor Anthony DeFillipo disqualified from running for re-election this November.

Unfortunately for him, according to a Miami Herald article posted this morning, Was a commissioner improperly ‘opinion shopping’? Investigators will decide., Michael’s shady antics put him on the radar of Jose “Take No Prisoners” Arrojo, the Executive Director of the Ethics Commission, who “is reviewing the allegations and communicating with the county’s State Attorney’s Office on the matter.”

The Herald reported, “The probe began after the agencies got a referral last week from attorney Michael Pizzi, who represents North Miami Beach Mayor Anthony DeFillipo in an ongoing defamation lawsuit. Pizzi pointed to a Feb. 14 email that City Attorney Sarah Johnston sent to DeFillipo after he asked her to tell him who was seeking information about the term-limit issue.”

The matter being referred to, of course, is Michael Joseph’s incessant badgering of City Attorney Sarah Johnston in an attempt to re-interpret the City Charter language on term limits, as evidenced by the referenced February 14, 2020 email from Ms. Johnston to Mayor DeFillipo in which she wrote [emphasis ours]:

Commissioner Joseph told me around January 2019, that he heard you had reached your term limit and asked me to look at it, I followed up with shortly thereafter with the same information I had explained previously (the current charter language) and he asked me for another opinion.  Several months later he again asked about the term limit language and possible opinions from Jean Olin and I provided him the 2016 memo from Ms. Olin which analyzes the former Charter and the analyses of the current Charter from [Weiss Serota attorney] Robert Meyers, he insisted that there must be truth to the rumor he heard about term limits and wanted another opinion-I explained the issues with opinion shopping and the current Charter language was not ambiguous.

It was brought to my attention that Commissioner Joseph asked two attorneys from Weiss Serota to look at Roberts Meyers opinion again which they declined.

Not surprisingly, Michael lied to Miami Herald reporter Aaron Leibowitz by claiming that Sarah Johnston as “the only attorney” whose legal opinion he solicited, and “chalked up her characterization of him as opinion shopping to ‘an innocent exaggeration about my interest in the term limit rules.'”

The truth is when Michael apparently tried to call Ms. Johnston about her February 14, 2020 email, she replied by email on February 24, 2020 at 1:28 PM, stating [emphasis ours]:

I am unavailable for a phone call or in-person meeting. I understand you have some questions regarding the inquiries referenced in my response to Mayor DeFillipo, your initial inquiry regarding term limits was in our first meeting following the December Commission meeting, you followed up with me in January 2019, February 2019, April 2019, and June 2019. If you have any additional questions please email me.

Two hours later at 3:35 PM, Michael emailed her back in a blatant attempt to intimidate her into rewriting history.  He wrote [emphasis ours]:

“Sarah,

I appreciate you getting back to me even though your [sic] not available to meet with me today.

As I mentioned to the city manager, a reporter from the Miami Herald reached out to me on Friday regarding your memo to the Mayor and how you referred to my inquiry on the term limit rules as “opinion shopping”. I only recall having two conversations with you, one in February 19′ [sic] when you were unsure and the other in June 19′ [sic] with your opinion. Frankly, after our June conversation I accepted your opinion on the matter and considered the term limit issue settled.

I hope the characterization that I was opinion shopping was an innocent exaggeration. You are the only attorney I have asked for an opinion regarding term limits. I would appreciate it if you could correct the record to reflect that I was not opinion shopping. That is, I was not going around asking different attorneys their opinion regarding our city’s term limit rules.

Please respond as promptly as possible so I can set the record straight and avoid any further confusion.

All the Best,

Michael”

In response, Ms. Johnston unequivocally “set the record straight” to “avoid any further confusion.”

She wrote [emphasis ours]:

“I disagree with your recollection my responses are clear and consistent about the frequency of and content of your inquiries. I can not control the inferences that may be made based upon my factual response and I’m confident that you are not suggesting I misrepresent what has occurred because of a Miami Herald reporter inquiry.

I have not had any conversations with the media and have not responded to any media requests although many of the “anonymous” requests and claims on this issue have copied members of the media.

Thank you
Sarah”

Was that PRICELESS or what?

Even more ironically, Michael told the Miami Herald reporter, “I’m not in the business of going down rabbit holes with wild and unsubstantiated allegations.”

We literally hurt ourselves laughing when we read that one.

Michael Joseph is the poster child for making “wild and unsubstantiated allegations.”

We’ve already documented the Drama Queen’s multitude of wild and unsubstantiated allegations, including the times he:

• Gave a fake tip to this blogger about then-candidate Paule Villard in order to knock her out of the competition as an appointee to fill a vacated commission seat;
• “Allegedly” conspired to anonymously and falsely accused Commissioner Barbara Kramer of not being an NMB resident in an email to City Attorney Sarah Johnston – copying dozens of city employees, NMB residents, and the media! – using the fake identity “Ike Runner;”
• “Allegedly” created a fake mailer, fraudulently using AFSCME’s logo, to slander then-Commissioner Anthony DeFillipo, who was running for Mayor;
• “Allegedly” filed an “anonymous” complaint making false false accusations against City Attorney Sarah Johnston (for which she was categorically cleared of all wrongdoing) in an attempt to have her fired and replaced with his own candidate ;
• Was caught on camera after initially denying that he furtively distributed to the public manufactured evidence backing up those false allegations against Ms. Johnston.

So, yeah.  Michael might want to sit this one out.

And we might want to start heating up that corn popper while we patiently wait for the Ethics Commission and the State Attorney’s Office to complete their respective investigations.

In the meantime, we figured we’d keep you entertained with this amusing short film we came across on the internet aptly entitled Trouble’s A’Brewin’.

Enjoy!

Stephanie