A few hours after Monique Worrell became Orlando’s Ninth Judicial Circuit state attorney again, her former political opponent and angry rival, Ryan Williams, now Chief Assistant State Attorney, sent a defiant email to the staff of the office.
Williams, who had become second-in-command under Andrew Bain, who was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, said, “The leaders of this office have no plans to start looking for work elsewhere.”
In Tuesday’s general election, Bain lost by a huge 15-point majority to Monique Worrell, who used to be the State Attorney.
Worrell will be back in office in January, less than two years after DeSantis fired her for neglect of duty and incompetence in August 2023, saying that her policies “allowed violent criminals to escape the full consequences of their criminal conduct.”
Williams, who lost the 2020 Democratic primary to Worrell and then became second-in-command after DeSantis fired her, told all staff in an email that “we have made amazing progress these last 14 months” since Worrell was fired, but that the office still had “a long way to go and much more to do.”
He went on, “We live in troubled times.” “… Even though I don’t know anything unique, my faith in the Constitution will let me do my job as well as I can until Florida law says I can’t.
“The people in charge of this office aren’t going to start looking for work somewhere else.” Not at all. We are all determined to follow and enforce the law in the same tough way we have been.
The Tributary asked the State Attorney’s Office for comment Wednesday, but neither Williams nor Bain would explain what the vague email meant.
Williams has caused Worrell a lot of trouble for many years.
Williams quit his job working for Worrell’s predecessor so he could prosecute death sentence cases in a more conservative nearby judicial circuit. This was before Worrell beat Williams in 2020.
Later, after DeSantis fired Worrell, Williams and Bain said she was wrong to file charges against a police officer who shot an unarmed man.
They said the officer lied about shooting the man on purpose, and Worrell should have known the shooting wasn’t intentional, even though the officer said it was.
In June, a judge said there wasn’t enough proof to call into question Worrell’s “honesty, trustworthiness, or fitness” in how he handled the case.
Williams also filed claims against two of Worrell’s agents for prosecutorial misconduct in June 2024. It was decided in October by the Florida Bar that neither lawyer had done anything wrong, and the case was ended.
Bill Cervone, a former state attorney for the Eighth Judicial Circuit, looked over the email and said he didn’t think it was malicious. He thought it might just be Williams’ intention to keep doing his job until Bain’s term ends in January.
Cervone said that under Florida law, assistant state attorneys work for the elected state attorney and are only responsible to that person.
At the start of each term, the elected state attorney decides who to re-appoint and who not to re-appoint. He thinks Worrell will want to replace Williams and other high-level employees with her own high-level staff. Cevone said, “He can fight that all he wants, but I don’t think he has a leg to stand on.”
Cervone said that Bain’s government probably doesn’t want to stop Worrell from legally taking office, but he added that Bain could try to make her transition harder.
Cervone talked about a time in 1992 in Gainesville when the outgoing state attorney wouldn’t let his replacement into the office during the changeover.
This led to staff meetings being held away from the office to plan things. He said he hoped that wouldn’t happen again.
Cervone said, “They could try to stonewall in that way if they wanted to.” However, he thinks Worrell is linked enough in the office to handle such problems.
Anna V. Eskamani, a Florida House Representative who speaks for part of Orange County, said she thinks Bain and his staff will follow the rules in Florida.
The Tributary was told by Eskamani that Worrell had been properly elected as State Attorney and had been re-elected by a large majority. “The office of State Attorney Bain and his staff should back a peaceful return to Worrell.”
The Tributary tried to get in touch with Bain and Worrell on Wednesday, but neither of them replied. A Worrell spokeswoman, Keisha Mulfort, who used to be her chief of staff, told WESH 2 News that people in Orange and Osceola counties had already made up their minds.
Mulfort told WESH 2 News Thursday that anyone with questions about Ron DeSantis, the appointed state attorney, or the chief assistant that voters turned down in 2020 should ask them.
He also said that those questions should be directed to the over 400,000 voters who made their choice very clear at the polls.
