City of Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones is suing Mayor Tomas Regalado and state attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle for what she says is a plot to destroy her political career by accusing Spence-Jones of political corruption.
On Monday, Spence-Jones filed a lawsuit claiming that Fernandez Rundle and Richard Scruggs, the lead prosecutor in a case accusing Spence-Jones of corruption more than a year ago, misled key witnesses.
These criminal cases surrounding Spence-Jones turned out to be unsuccessful.
According to The Miami Herald,
The suit claims that Fernandez Rundle’s goal amounted to a “shocking, nefarious scheme” to remove Spence-Jones from the city commission from 2009-11 as a favor for the state attorney’s ally, Regalado, so that Spence-Jones, his nemesis, could be replaced by another politician to represent Miami’s black community in District 5.The lawsuit asserts that Fernandez Rundle and her office “manufactured false evidence, hid and withheld exculpatory evidence, intimidated and manipulated witnesses, defamed Spence-Jones, and repeatedly attempted to manipulate the political process, in a corrupt attempt to remove, arrest, imprison, and forever ruin a dedicated Miami public servant.” And when Spence-Jones prevailed in both cases, “Fernandez Rundle and her team covered up their own wrongdoing, recklessly and falsely accusing [the city commissioner] and her well-respected defense counsel of yet more crimes, to the entire world,” the 106-page suit asserts.
Spence-Jones has retained the legal counsel of Ray Taseff in Coral Gables and the New York law firm that defended the Duke Lacrosse players accused of rape a few years ago.
Since she joined the commission in 2005, Spence Jones has had several investigations launched against her, which involved accusations of bribery.
