DeSantis Doesn’t Need to Testify in Upcoming Trial, Judge Rules

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas on Nov. 19, 2022. Wade Vandervort/AFP via Getty Images

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis does not need to testify in an upcoming trial, a U.S. judge has ruled.

The case was brought in August by Andrew Warren, a Florida prosecutor suspended by DeSantis for saying he would not enforce some laws. Warren alleged the suspension violated his First Amendment rights.

Florida’s motion to shield DeSantis, a Republican who just won a second term in office, from testifying in the trial was granted during a pretrial conference held on Nov. 23, according to a transcript of the hearing obtained by The Epoch Times.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, a Clinton appointee, said he was granting the motion but would consider saying the governor could be called during the trial, depending on the evidence the plaintiff brings forward.

Hinkle said that it does decide in the plaintiff’s favor, DeSantis could still refuse to testify.

“I’m going to listen to the evidence closely and analyze it and make the best, most accurate ruling on the facts that I can, based on the evidence as it’s presented,” Hinkle said.

“I will draw inferences from evidence, as I always do, as juries always do, as any fact finder does. I can’t tell you now what inferences I will draw. I haven’t heard the testimony. It would be unlikely that I would draw an inference against the governor just because he chose not to testify, but that’s a different question from how the facts should be resolved based on the evidence as it comes in. If the governor doesn’t testify, then the governor won’t testify. And I won’t have his testimony. And that’s the choice that the governor has made,” he added.

Both parties agreed with the ruling.

A spokesman for DeSantis declined to comment.

The ruling effectively quashes “any not-yet served subpoena,” Hinkle wrote in a previous order.

Competing Arguments

As the case heads toward trial, Warren had reserved the possibility of moving to compel DeSantis and the governor’s chief of staff to testify. But Warren had not met the burden of proving the case is extraordinary and that the information he would seek from the officials was not available from alternate sources, lawyers for the state argued in a Nov. 15 motion to shield the officials.

DeSantis agreed to allow Warren to question the three officers described as primarily responsible for developing the suspension, effectively substituting himself and the chief of staff with officials “’most knowledgeable' about the suspension order,” the Florida lawyers said.

Those officials, Ryan Newman, Ray Treadwell, and Lawrence Keefe, have already been deposed in the case.

“The Governor has also approached this case with remarkable transparency, waiving his executive and attorney-client privileges, producing thousands of pages of documents reflecting his deliberative process, and answering multiple rounds of written discovery. Combined with the information that Mr. Warren has obtained through nine depositions and multiple third-party subpoenas, he has more than enough evidence to discern the Governor’s motives without hauling Florida’s top executive officials into court. To top it off, Mr. Warren has failed to exhaust all evidentiary avenues— as he must to establish extraordinary circumstances—by refusing to depose a Rule 30(b)(6) representative of the Governor’s office, from which he could have obtained binding declarations about the Governor’s motivations,” the lawyers added.

Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren addresses the media after learning he was suspended of his duties by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 4, 2022. Octavio Jones/Reuters

In response, Warren’s team noted that DeSantis has spoken in public about the suspension multiple times, including during a gubernatorial debate, and said the governor “has consistently taken credit for the decision to suspend Mr. Warren.”

“But now, with no apparent sense of irony, Defendant has again filed 20+ pages of motion papers imploring the Court to protect him and his most senior advisor not only from having to speak under oath about a subject on which he has previously been delighted to hold forth but also from the legal consequences of his choice to be absent from a case about which he has unique knowledge,” Warren’s lawyers added.

They asked the judge to reject the motion.

Warren Signs Pledges

Warren’s suspension stemmed from pledges he signed vowing not to enforce laws regarding abortion and transgender care.

Warren joined 89 other prosecutors in June vowing to “stand together in our firm belief that prosecutors have a responsibility to refrain from using limited criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions.”

The statement came in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling striking down Roe v. Wade, which had limited how states restrict abortions.

Florida legislators passed a law that banned abortions beyond 15 weeks, with some exceptions. DeSantis signed the bill and it took effect in July, shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

No other state attorneys in Florida signed the document.

Florida law says that state attorneys cannot offer a “blanket refusal” to enforce a criminal law.

Warren also signed a statement with other prosecutors that pledged to “not promote the criminalization of gender-affirming healthcare or transgender people.” Gender-affirming is a term used to describe sex change operations and other procedures meant to facilitate a person’s change from male to female or female to male.

The joint statement said that bills that criminalize such treatments “do not promote public safety, community trust, or fiscal responsibility,” and suggested that they wouldn’t be enforced.