#BecauseMiami: Who the F-ck is Rob Piper?

0:00It's one of my favorite times. There's that point in every summer where I start convincing myself, I'm going to be normal about football this year. Not as emotional. Not lose myself completely in it. And then the game start. The sprinklers. The smell of grass. The roar of the crowd. The toasting of Miller Light. Ah, that right there my friends. That's my favorite part about all of this because make it football time is great. Make it football time a Miller time. That's special. Some of my favorite weekends are built around football. Getting everybody together, putting the college games on on Saturday come back for the NFL on Sunday, order way too much food, and crack open Miller lights for me and my friends. That's a perfect weekend for me. And Miller light is a beer I reach for every time because it's crisp, refreshing, and easy to drink. Especially when football starts. When it's still somehow down here. 90 degrees in Miami. It's a true American pilsner that cools the body down the original light beer since 1975 and just 96 calories and 3.2 carbs. Legendary game days start with a Miller light.

1:00Make game day legendary. Go to MillerLight.com slash stand by delivery options near you or you can pick up some Miller light pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Game time is Miller time. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company Milwaukee, Wisconsin 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. Now to an exclusive surrounding how millions of taxpayer dollars were diverted into the Hope Florida Foundation. Money that was supposed to help poor sick children instead found its way into a political campaign. CBS News Miami has obtained a copy of the sealed grand jury report that found the DeSantis administration misappropriated $10 million of taxpayer money into a political action committee controlled by his then chief of staff. For more than a year, both Governor Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Oothmeyer have dismissed questions regarding the diversion of $10 million of taxpayer money from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation. A state grand jury says that it found significant wrongdoing. In a stunning 19-page summary of the grand jury's investigation, jurors concluded taxpayer money was misappropriated and was part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities. Despite our finding that the money was misappropriated, we find insufficient evidence to charge

2:02anyone criminally the report concluded. Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida or had any memory of who made it. While we can't prove who is responsible, we can plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes. The grand jury report could have been made public in February under Florida law, but a source familiar with the proceedings told CBS Miami that several individuals named in the report, including Oothmeyer, have been delaying its release through close court proceedings. Today on The Because of Miami Podcast, we've got the North Miami Mafia, the Miami Mafia, and the Florida Mafia in kind of like reverse order there. A lot of Mafias. A lot of Mafias. And what just happened here, Roy, is they tried to cover up this grand jury report, but they found that there was effectively a conspiracy of the highest officials in the state government

3:04out of the governor's office, including his chief of staff turned attorney general. The attorney general turned US Senator to effectively misappropriate $10 million in taxpayer money that was meant to provide restitution to sick children in the state. And instead was improperly funneled into political campaigns specifically to defeat a measure. You remember a couple years ago, there was a statewide constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana also to ensure that there would not be a statewide abortion ban. Both of those were defeated by a very narrow margin because they need over 60% of voters for that. And it turns out our money was misused for that purpose. That sounds illegal, Billy. And yet the headline at Seeking Rents is conflicting testimony and foggy memories. How the hope Florida grand jury found wrongdoing, but no wrongdoers, Jason Garcia of Seeking Rents

4:09is here now. You can find him on sub stack at Jason Garcia dot sub stack dot com. Seeking Rents is a must read not only in Florida, but if you want to know how government goes wrong, government gone wild, you need to read this because it will provide you a road map to find three in your community and state as well. Jason, this is wild and the mob elements of this are everywhere, including the fact that there are no whistleblowers here in this case because there's all these like you said, you have no whistleblowers. You know why, Roy? Why is that Billy? What does stitches get? Normally they get stitches, Billy. They get and sometimes wind up in. Uh, Jill. Ditches. Okay. We were just. So. So that was right there. So that was a thanks, thanks, thanks, reader. Yeah, you're a poet and you weren't even aware of it. So, so everybody who did participate, enable, either facilitate this apparent theft or

5:10even cover it up after the fact, they all got rewarded for it, which is exactly what happens in organized crime. The people who are who are in on it and who, hey, I can't remember. I don't know. You might have said it. I'm not sure. I can't remember. They all advance in the racket. No, talk to me, Jason. What the hell happened here? How did $10 million get a basically stolen and nobody is responsible? Yeah, it's, it's really interesting. You read this grand jury report and you got a bunch of a whole lot. I like, I don't really remember what happened. I just know that nobody did anything wrong. I, my memory is very clear on that specific detail, but everything else is a little bit hazy. And to the point you just made, like the most outrageous part of all of this in addition to just no actual individual accountability. I mean, you have a grand jury declaring that this money was misappropriate. This money was stolen. $10 million, the public money was stolen. But we can't, we can't charge anyone specific with a crime because nobody will take responsibility

6:11for everything. But in addition to no accountability, all these people got promotions, right? You had Ashley Moody promoted from Attorney General to the US Senate, essentially potentially a lifetime appointment in one of the most powerful bodies in all of American government. You had James Zuthmire, the chief of staff. The guy that more than anybody, the grand jury kind of lays blame at the feet of him because he's a guy that shows up at the beginning, middle and end of this scandal, the daisy chain going on here. He gets promoted from a attorney, from chief, Ron DeSan's chief of staff to attorney general. He is now unbelievably the top law enforcement officer in Florida guy kind of at the heart of this scandal, who may be a criminal. Not a more, right? If there's not a more sort of Florida in a nutshell example of things that I don't know what is. But even beyond that. Like a key guy in this report, who is a guy by the name of Jason Wyda, who at the time was the secretary of the agency for healthcare administration, which was like the main state agency negotiating the settlement that kicks off this sort of $10 million daisy chain, right? And you've got in this report, there's a number of people that say, I think the idea

7:11to sort of take this $10 million, it all came from Jason Wyda. There's like a couple of different people that say that. Then they get to him and he's like, I don't remember where it came from. Yeah, sorry, man. I'm like, racking my brain, but I got nothing back there, right? You know what he's doing now? He's now Ron DeSidze, chief of staff. He got promoted too. But still it keeps going on. You've got like a key person from the attorney general's office, the person who signed of the person who signed the document on behalf of Ashley Moody. And who by the way, testified that he got explicit approval from Ashley Moody to sign the document, even though he raised concerns to her. She was like, sign it anyway. He got promoted. He's not an appellate court judge in Florida. And yet another guy, like the lawyer for Aka, the agency for healthcare administration, the guy who is like, from all these emails that we have from public records request, that was kind of like, just the point person negotiating this, not like the ringleader or anything, but like a point person on the ground. He's now a trial court judge. So like all the way up and down the chain, people not only did not face any actual accountability, they have been all promoted by the governor. They say the cream rises to the top.

8:13They also say shit floats. But Florida is like the number one state in the union for failing up. But this isn't even failing up. This is straight Maffioso shit. I mean, this sounds like, it almost sounds like a Rico. I mean, the way the grand jury kind of walks you through this, people like to say, oh, this was leaked. But it kind of wasn't. It's kind of a public record. It could have been made public. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It should have been made public in January. The grand jury wanted a public. It got public policy recommendations in this document. And yet everybody was trying to keep as much of it confidential forever or at least until after the election. And that's so funny too, because Oothmire, you know, we refer to this as a nothing burger. You know, Ron DeSand is sitting on, you know, there's nothing here. There's not really anything here. If you can hear him over his rattle, then why didn't they release it, Jason? If the, you know, because I think in April, there was a press conference at Jim DeFeedy of CBS shout out to Jim, by the way, amazing, amazing journalism here. I mean, award winning legendary work.

9:14Ron DeSand is already said, the only thing that happened that's illegal here is the leak of this report, which means that Jim DeFeedy could wind up being the only person indicted. It would be, it would, by the way, it would be unconstitutional and political retribution. But he might wind up the only person indicted in this tire, hope, Florida scam. So Jason, like in April, when Oothmire says nothing, he repeats the nothing burger thing, he would have already had access to this document and probably read it. So he knew that that was a lie. This wasn't a nothing burger. They had in fact found wrongdoing, despite in your words not having identified a wrong doer. Absolutely. Yeah. And like, and to be clear, it's, this is all through the report. It's not like we're just like cherry picking one line. They talk about this taxpayer money was misappropriated. They talk about how it was misused for political purposes. But they also talk about how people involved in this were mischaracterizing the use of funds on like key documents and stuff like this. They talk about repeatedly that key peopleists were intentionally trying to circumvent a bunch of state laws that would have required them to give this money back to the taxpayers

10:15it belonged to rather than dumping it into the governor and James Umeyer's campaign against the marijuana and abortion amendments. There's wrongdoing all throughout this report. So the idea that this guy, who by the way, like the guy at the center of it could look at this and say there's nothing, there's, this is a nothing burger. There's nothing in here. Well he was actively telling trying to suppress it. And oh, by the way, we should also say if this was also perfect, if this was all just legit and above board, how is it that nobody will take responsibility for like the core decision at this? Yeah. Right? Like if you did nothing wrong, then right. Right. And why not just say I did it? If this was such a great idea, it seems like you'd want to take credit for it. Also, Uthmeyer was not called before the grand jury. Even legal experts say about people who appear to be very involved. In fact, maybe even the tip of the spear here, but we're not called by the grand jury. Yeah. This is really interesting. It is a heavy indication that he was probably the target here because you get to a situation

11:17where if he's the target of the investigation, you bring him in, it pleads the fifth. There's not really anything you can do to force his testimony short of offering immunity, which you wouldn't do if he's the target of the investigation. Now I will stress that James Uthmeyer said, I've never been a target of anything, but of course this is the same guy that says there was nothing in this report to begin with. So that says a little bit about his credibility, I'd suggest. And so there's a lot of publicity early on and Ron DeSantis took real exception to it. Dad, he takes real exception to it now that the hope Florida was a nonprofit, I guess, started by his wife, the first lady of the state, Casey DeSantis, Taki-O. But this thing with hope Florida though, this thing, you, I said, but I said, I said, this thing though with hope Florida's, the money didn't even go to this charity to do the work that this charity claims to do. Let's set aside for a moment, this charity is all kinds of shady and sketchy where the donations come from, where the money goes to. But this was just a shady flow through. Like it just kind of came in one door and out the other anyway. Right. And to that point, Billy, this hasn't gotten much attention because there's literally so much

12:21in this report that is damning. But like there's one detail where one of the guys they called a testify was the chairman of the board for the hope Florida foundation. And he told the grand jury that like he got a phone call from, from an outside attorney a guy who's very close to James Oothmar, by the way, who told him, A, you're about to get $10 million and B, you're about to get a request for $5 million of that $10 million. So like the same time he learned he was getting $10 million, he also learned he was sending it out the door. So before we go, why is there not a Rico here? Biden Leon County not find a way to now, listen, if we had a real DOJ, you know, these were real times, if this were, if public corruption prosecutions were a priority of the department of justice in this country as opposed to pardoning people responsible for public corruption or using it as, you know, weaponizing law fair, dare I say, weaponizing those types of prosecutions. This would probably be easily prosecutable. So why hasn't there been some kind of action here? I mean, really?

13:21Yeah, that's a great question. It is one that the state attorney and Leon County probably needs to be pushed on. I would argue that another guy that needs to be pushed is the judge that has been presiding over this case for why on earth this report was kept under wraps for as long as it was why on earth it took like a leak to an investigative journalist to bring this to light. When the again, the grand jury clearly wanted people to see this, judges need to answer that question. I will suggest to you just that, you know, I am sympathetic to the idea that it may be hard to bring a rink rico case in a state where the potential target of that case is also again, the chief law enforcement officer of Florida right now. I love this town. Last thing before we go, latest headline and seeking rents attorney general James Uthmeyer is raising hundreds of thousands from firms he hired record show. By the way, hired with our money, Roy, didn't hire like out of the, you know, like his money record show that Uthmeyer has raised at least $300,000. Well, I say reelection campaign, he was never elected to attorney general.

14:21He was appointed as a thank you as a hush compensation for his involvement. Who knows? We don't know, but he's raised at least 300 grand from law firms and other vendors who have received contracts from the attorney general's office since he took over in February of 2025. I don't want to say their kickbacks, but when I Google the definition of the word kickback, I mean, at least you could say they're paying taxes maybe on that money directly to this campaign. What the hell is going on here, Jason? Man, and I will tell you that story we pulled together. That comes just a couple of weeks ago, or maybe it was a month ago, the Tampa Bay Times did a story where James Uthmeyer keeps like intervening in all these civil lawsuits like where developers are trying to get something done or car dealers are trying to get something done. And the Tampa Bay Times kept finding examples of where he gets a $25,000 check from one of these like civil litigants and then like uses the attorney general's office to intervene on their behalf. I don't know, there seems to be something of a pattern here. Pay for play, baby. I love this town. Jason Garcia must read.

15:23I say it every time you're on here and I can encourage it enough. Jason Garcia dot sub stack dot com seeking rents. Thanks so much for being here. Yeah, it's pleasure to leave. Thanks for having me. It's one of my favorite times. There's that point in every summer where I start convincing myself, I'm going to be normal about football this year, not as emotional, not lose myself completely in it. And then the game start the sprinklers, the smell of grass, the roar of the crowd, the toasting of Miller light. Ah, that right there, my friends. That's my favorite part about all of this because make it football time is great. Make it football time a Miller time. That's special. Some of my favorite weekends are built around football, getting everybody together, putting the college games on on Saturday, come back for the NFL on Sunday, order way too much food and crack open Miller lights for me and my friends. That's a perfect weekend for me. And Miller light is a beer I reach for every time because it's crisp, refreshing, and easy to drink, especially when football starts.

16:24When it's still somehow down here, 90 degrees of Miami, it's a true American pilsner that cools a body down the original light beer since 1975 and just 96 calories and 3.2 carbs. Legendary game days start with a Miller light. Make game day legendary. Go to Miller light.com slash stand to find delivery options near you or you can pick up some Miller light pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Game time is Miller time. Celebrate responsibly, Miller brewing company Milwaukee, Wisconsin 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. Party bringing the ocean. Turn my rush. How long did you get the instruction to say it? I know we're gone. North Miami City Council member Cassandra Timothy testifying before a judge on day three of a trial to determine if she, along with two other sitting council members, violated the Florida sunshine law and a city charter in a coordinated effort to remove a former city manager from her position. The lawsuit filed in June of 2024 by resident Eileen Becaba, alleges council members Timothy, Marius Demi Irvin and Pierre France Charles privately coordinated city business outside of

17:26public meetings, which led to the termination of former city manager, Rashah Kamu, a judge finding the city council members did violate the city charter. By conveying in some way a threat to the city manager that she would be terminated. You see Roy even North Miami, which is a totally different city, by the way, has its own North Miami mafia. And in this case, it was revealed. The civil case brought by North Miami resident and community advocate Eileen Becaba that these three council members basically got together to threaten to proverbially whack the city manager as mafia also would in the event that she was going to discipline some employee at the city. So they conveyed through like third party enforcers that, you know, you best not do your job

18:27as the city manager to discipline city employees where you're going to lose your job and guess what happened to her? What happened, Bill? She lost her job. Oh my gosh. They should candor. It was really something. I mean, this is, you know, these 34 municipalities, they're, they're, the spirit of them was to have more localized accountable transparent government. And instead, it's just 34 new ways for them to steal from us. And it's these 34 kind of fiefdoms. It's game of thrones in paradise with iguanas and alligators instead of dragons. North Miami is no different. It's a little town, but a lot of crazy shit goes down there as in this case. And Eileen is joining us now. Eileen, this trial I understand was a little bit crazy. It was a three day trial here in downtown Miami. And there was like some people that almost came to blows like it was almost a fist fight in the lobby. You had a lawyer claiming that one of the star witnesses who was one of the enforcers was like having an affair or had an affair with the relationship with the city manager

19:28was like a novella. What happened in this trial? Well, this trial was something else from the very beginning throughout the entire case, even before we got to the courthouse, before we got to the point of having a trial, they fought us for two years for public records. They did not, I just wanted to make sure you know that while we brought sunshine violation as one of the claims in the case, the judge ended up finding that we did not have admitted evidence for the sunshine. We had a huge problems with getting evidence that is admissible for the sunshine portion of the case, but they were found guilty of violating the charter, which is getting sending that third parties in order to interfere with Russia Commours ability to reprimand her staff for not being capable of doing their job. So at the courthouse in terms of what you were referring to, yeah, there were issues between

20:33that witness and the defense lawyer in the hallway in the break. So the trial started. We started the entire case with three claims and the first one was breaking the citizens bill of rights. The second one was breaking the charter and the third one was breaking sunshine. Those were the three alleged accusations we had against them. They never really fought this case based on the merit of the evidence. What they tried to do is just pick away and get them all removed instead of having to be tried for them. But it does sound to me that there was a sunshine violation, maybe whether it was committed by them or not as a different story, but in just turning over the inability of view to obtain public records over the course of years, some sort of onerous or unreasonable demand for money, right, in exchange for public records. Any of that kind of craziness. Yes, there were not Miami pretty much had a history of not giving public records.

21:37And then if they don't want to investigate something, they'll try to absorb it in fees and it was no different. And then the third thing that they do, they tell you it's not available, it doesn't exist. The fee is high. And in the end of this case, in order to be able to admit things in court and to have it to be admissible, we, there are certain rules. So you can have the evidence in your hand. But if you don't meet the requirements for getting them certified, you can't really use them in court as admissible evidence. And that's one of the problems we ran into in this case. But it doesn't sound like a huge problem because the judge did find that they violated the city charter, which to me is I would think arguably a more serious offense and they did it in a way that sounds somewhat extortive, right? Like if you don't do, or if you do this or don't do this, you're going to lose your, your job, which is a pretty outrageous thing. I guess my question is is what happens now? They've been found by a judge in a court of law to have violated the city charter.

22:38What happens now? Did the city taxpayers pay these outside lawyers to defend these people who violated the city charter? Like what happens to all this? Well, what we need is a written ruling by the judge. What we have now is a verbal ruling by the judge last week Wednesday. And what happens after that verbal ruling is that there has to be a written ruling. Confirming pretty much what she said. And the wording of everything will be important into how we can proceed. But in terms of your question, they have been found to violate the charter. And we can now take that further to like the governor. Once we get a written ruling, but last night they filed for an emergency intervention against the judge. And that was part of the fireworks in this case too. On day two of the three day trial, they brought up the whole race line of questioning, try

23:43to accuse Mrs. Camel or insinuate that Mrs. Camel was firing all the Haitians, which is what one of the intermediary had told her bringing the message from the council members that she was firing all the Haitians. And she's like, I want competent employees from firing people who can't do their jobs. Now on day two, when they were questioning Mrs. Camel about that, they had already questioned her about that. This is the former city manager to be clear. Yes, that's the former city manager. And they went into trying to even say, well, her lawyer that she hired to defend her was not Haitian. Later. And the judge had had enough of the whole race thing and said, what does that have to do with a sunshine violation? Explain that to me. Well, what is that? I'm sorry. The race, I mean, North Miami, I think, is probably one of the, has one of the largest Haitian populations of any municipality or any city, perhaps in the country. I don't understand how one could even fire all the Haitian employees at the city.

24:47Like it sounds even surmountable. And Mrs. Camel. Mrs. Camel herself is a Haitian American. And spent too many against Haitian Americans. So the judge actually, when they were doing that line of questioning, the judge stopped and says, started asking her question, do you speak real? Are you Haitian? And she said to her, well, she's Haitian. I mean, she has already said repeatedly that she's trying to get competent staff. And another part of the hearing, the judge was looking at video of the hearing and in terms of there's supposed to be a procedure in which they give her a preliminary resolution. Then they give her a chance to respond to that resolution. And 30 days after that, they have to have full consideration according to section 17

25:47of the charter. They must have full consideration before they do a final resolution to fire her. So the judges listening to this and they're saying Cassandra Timothy was adamant about her being let go instantly. And the attorney for the city was explaining, well, not so fast. This is what the charter says. And she was arguing with the lawyer saying, well, no, her contract says she can be let go immediately and the and Jeff Cazord, the lawyer for the city says, no, no, no, we still have to abide by the charter. And so the judges listening to all of this and they're listening to her and she, it sounds like they had from the judges perspective and their audience also that they had already made a decision not unlike what the charter says because the judge made a comment like that they're also using that in their file and last night to say that the judge was

26:47prejudice or against them and they didn't get a fair trial. So they're trying to have the judge dismissed and have another judge put in before the final written ruling. Well, it's funny. You should say that they didn't get a fair hearing when the judge in fact found in their favor on one of the matters and didn't find in their favor on another matter. I mean, we're out of time. But I think what you were getting at earlier is that assuming you can get a written order consistent with what the judge said verbally about their violating the city charter, that the next move can and should be removal from office. Be it because section 19 says that very clearly section 19 says if you violate that section of the charter, it's a misdemeanor and you will cease to be council members. So that's what they're fighting us right now on. Sure. But you're not fighting it on the case. They're fighting it on other things like trying to get a judge thrown out. The last question though, yes or no, if you get this written order consistent with,

27:47like you said, the wording is important. But do you go to the state attorney's office? Should they be filing criminal misdemeanor charges against them? Yes, which result I think in their immediate suspension by the governor, I would think if charges were filed. We are going to go to the governor attorney general after this. I lean Vika. Good luck to you, North Miami resident and community advocate. Thanks for being here and we'll keep following the case. Thank you so much and I want to just encourage North Miami residents. You have power. Get out there. Vote. And when you see things that are wrong, fight it. Everybody says they can't be city hall life just proven you can. Tony, you know that moment at a party or a tailgate where everything just sort of clicks. I know it well. It's usually when I show up. Everybody goes crazy. Yeah, you usually take all the credit for it. And it's because Tony usually walks in with queer. Blocking like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Queervo is a thing that turns hanging out into this is the night. It has that effect on people.

28:48It does. You usually take the credit for it. But again, it's the queer vote effect. It's like that moment in a big game where everyone in the crowd just starts standing up, hooting and hollering. Keep it queer vote. Keep it queer vote, baby. And Miami State Commissioner Vicki Lopez is looking to keep her seat in District 6, which includes the cities of Miami and Miami Beach as well as Brickle, Little Havana and West Flagler. Lopez was being challenged by two other candidates, including former state legislative aide Rob Piper and based on the results, the race will go into a runoff between Vicki Lopez and Rob Piper, Vicki Lopez, 42% Rob's 29%. So Commissioner Vicki Lopez is kind of a known quantity in Miami politics. Well, if really Florida politics because she was previously convicted of honest services male fraud and sentenced to 27 months in federal prison, her sentence was ultimately commuted

29:48by then president Bill Clinton in November of 2000 after serving more than 15 months. This all stemmed out of a scandal when she was a lead county. This is in the Fort Myers area on the West Coast, a lead county commissioner. And she was apparently had a relationship with a lobbyist and was trying to. It was a corruption story. And now thanks to Bill Clinton, she is not a convicted felon anymore, but has been implicated in a variety of improprieties as a state legislator, including helping pass legislation for sweetheart deals to some of these school bus stop light camera companies that wound up employing like her son and stepson. There's alleged malfeasance related to money at some nonprofit. There is of course her involvement in the live local act, which is destroying local communities. So we know who Vicki Lopez is. She also stole this seat last year in the least democratic way you could possibly do it by getting appointed to it rather than being elected to it. And now she's running for reelection from a powerful position of incompancy because, I mean, the city commission hijacked the seat for her.

30:51Here's the thing though, Roy, who the fuck is Rob Piper? So Vicki Lopez was involved in a three way race, but enough about Andrew Gillum. Come on. Involving a three way race with another known quantity by the way, Joe Sanchez, who is a former city of Miami commissioner of retired Florida highway patrol trooper, like well known guy in Miami and Rob got more votes than he did. And is now because Vicki Lopez failed to get over 50% of the vote, which you need to avoid a runoff. She is now in a runoff with this guy joining us now. Rob Piper, who the fuck are you? Where did you come from? We kind of know each where what I call city hall buddies. You know, we see each other at Miami City Hall. We're like public comment friends, you know, Rob's always around. He's always participating. Podium pals. But lapodium pals, that's right. But dude, talk to me like this was a remarkable feat. There was a lot of talk about surprises and upsets on primary night in August here in

31:53Miami Dade. And I think that's the sort of unsung heroes and unknown stories about it. Who are you? Where did you come from? How did you pull this off? They as deadies. Okay. Why I think, uh, yeah, that's, that's a, that's a great question. And I think it's, uh, thank you for having me. No, I mean, it's a great question because people need to know who I am. And thank you for having me and had this opportunity to share that with, with your audience as well as, uh, Miami Dade County District five. But like you said, Billy, uh, I have been, what you said was indicative of, of what I've been doing for the past 10 or so years. Uh, I came to Miami Dade County via the United States Marine Corps. I was stationed here in 2012 after previous around 20 years of being stationed all over the world. I got my commission in the Marine Corps in 1994. And then since then, I've been a Marine Corps ground supply slash logistics officer, uh,

32:55did three tours to Iraq. And I got stationed here again in 2012. Uh, and then I spent four years up at US Marine, uh, up at US, US Southcom and US Marine Corps forces south, uh, as their ground supply officer. And I, that was my Twilight tour. Uh, I retired in 2016, uh, in October of 2016. And from there, that's when I felt compelled to serve in a different way, uh, as a community advocate going in my community, empowering, engaging and informing voters because I feel that when you have an engaged electorate, you have an empowered electorate and when you have an empowered electorate, then think real things can change in Miami Dade County. And having knows this county needs some changes. It needs more transparency. They set the government. It leads and needs less influence by special interest. And it needs to have policies need to be put in place to make things more affordable and then make our climate more resilient, uh, as well as, uh, ensuring that like the extremely

33:57wealthy do not have so much influence on our politics. Uh, and so that said, uh, since 2016, I've been in actively involved in, in Miami Dade County politics, uh, advocating like, like you said, you and I, we've, we've gone to City Hall quite a deal, quite a bit. Um, in 2020, I led the recall effort against, uh, Joe Corroyo. I was a chairman. I had a lot of good people behind me. Unfortunately, we didn't, we fell short on getting that, on making that happen. But since then, I've been tried to stay as much as I can and engaged in serving my community. Again, as a legislative aid and the Florida House, uh, and getting a PhD in international relations. Uh, and in addition, uh, running for city commission just last year. And when this race rolled, uh, rolled around, I saw this as a, this was a calling. Uh, I felt that I had to get in this race as, as late as I did because I, I was, I was on the fence about whether or not I would, I would run for office again.

35:01And when I saw that there were no, I'm a progressive. There were no progressive voices that I felt in this race. Uh, Vicki Lopez, she, uh, her record in telehassy speaks for itself, hardly progressive, uh, Joe Sanchez. I give him kudos for getting in the race and just letting the Miami day commission know that voters deserve to have a say and who they, who serves them on the commission. Uh, but yeah, there's a lot of things I, I liked Joe, but you know, we disagree on a lot of things. So what happened here is that this was a seat previously held by Eileen Higgins who vacated it in order to run to become the mayor of the city of Miami. So law, we have in Florida, resigned to run. It's called, she of course made her resignation date effective strategically, effective, very late in the game. So she effectively disenfranchised her residents and constituents in district five in order to set this seat up for Vicki Lopez. This was a, in my opinion, effectively a scheme to deprive the voters of district five,

36:06their opportunity to choose their county commissioner. And this was done in cooots with Eileen Higgins with her political puppeteer Christian overt with the chairman and vice chairman of the county commission. Now almost congressman Oliver Gilbert, you have Anthony Rodriguez, you have Keon Hardeman, a bunch of folks who a lot of whom were also appointed to their seats, not originally elected to their positions. We now have four of the 13 county commissioners who run a what 17 billion dollar a year county were originally appointed and not elected to their positions. That is not un-American. That is anti-American and anti-democratic. And so here we are with another one of these people, Vicki Lopez. And this is why we're here. And you've represented yourself as a lot of things just now. Are you trying to say then that Vicki Lopez is not those things? She's not for working class people. She is out for the oligarchs and the millionaires of billionaires. How are you comparing and contrasting yourself here to the alternative candidate in this race?

37:07Okay, thanks. I mean, I really don't have to say anything. I just look at her record. I mean, look at how much money that she has been given. A lot of people talk about they were surprised. One of the reasons they were surprised about my campaign was because I'd only spent $2,000 total to come in second place. That factored into about 42 cents per vote. And I did the math based in Commissioner Lopez. I did the math. She spent about $45 per vote. Wow. At least on the SOE website, she had spent over $300,000. And this is not counting what I've read in the reporting regarding the pack money that came in, 1.5 million. So I think the proof is in like, you know, you can only take so much money from special interest. And without having people question who you're for. So I just, you know, let that be the proof, let that be the contrast because again, a lot of people are there, they're rumblings that saying that people put me up to this saying, I'm getting paid.

38:08Well, I'm here to say there are a lot easier ways to get paid because quite frankly, I'm not getting it dying. Well, if you're getting paid, you're not getting paid a lot of money. That's for sure. If you're spent 58 cents, was that the final tally? 42 cents. 42 cents per vote to her. How much? And here's what that matters. It is that's that's the proof right there that I, this campaign is about the people. Okay. People that are helping me, they're volunteers, they're volunteering their skills, they're volunteering their time, they're, they're, they're not getting paid because they are tired of Miami-Dade County being what you described in the whole situation about like her being appointed in the first place. You know, they, they feel that they feel disempowered. They feel that the, that the County government is not paying attention to them. And this was their way of saying, hey, look, we matter. We're going to put this guy, this unknown Rob Piper. We're going to put him in the runoff and we're definitely going to try to put him. No, we will. We're going to succeed and put him on the commission just to say, hey, look, our voices

39:10matter. And Rob Piper is the one that will speak, that can speak for us. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about that because these races, these local races in Florida are nonpartisan races. There's no R or D next to the candidates name on the ballot. However, they tend to get very partisan. I think it's not unknown that you were being supported by a great many Democrats. Vicki Lopez is a Republican. She was a Republican state lawmaker when she was in partisan politics. But these nonpartisan races are interesting. She's also received endorsements from a great deal of elected Democratic officials, including Eileen Higgins, including Danielle Levine, Kava, the mayor of the county, including former Miami Beach mayor Phil Levine, who's also BFFs with Jeff Epstein and Galein Maxwell, and appears hundreds of times in the Epstein files and was accused by Epstein's former secretary of sexual assault. So she's got a great stable of supporters of what I'm saying, along with most, if not all of the city of Miami Beach commission, many of whom are most of whom are Democrats. So what say you about Vicki Lopez's bipartisan coalition of support?

40:15I say it's not going to, I don't think it's going to help her in November because I'm aware of all the Democratic elected officials that endorsed her. But the grassroots Democrats have endorsed me. The Miami Beach Democratic Club, the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, the young Democrats, the Democrats of Coral Way, and I have bipartisan support endorsements as well. Florida coalition to advance racial equity, FKR. And we're going to take that, and I don't know what goes on in the head of the elected officials, the Democratic elected officials that endorsed her. But I just know that, again, grassroots Democrats supported me and they support this campaign and they support what I represent and what I'm looking to do to facilitate the change. Not saying I can make the change is one person, but I could definitely put the ball rolling and lay out the groundwork for others to follow me.

41:17Younger candidates because I would admit, I think I'm too old for this job, but I'm willing to do it if it means that I got to be the first one. If I have to throw my body over the barbed wire, if I got to be the first one through the wall, I'll do it so others can follow me. Rob, so last question because I think this is what people talk about when they talk about unaparties. I would say that those endorsements are not necessarily from Democrats because there's no red or blue there. It's all green. It's all money. It's a paper party. It's the pocketbook party. It's the purse party. But I look at these numbers and you say you've got grassroots Democrats support, but is that enough to put you over the top? When I look at Vicki Lopez got 42% over 7,000 votes in the primary. You got 29% almost just short of 5,000 votes in the primary. I know there was a third candidate in the race, but what is your path to victory? Yeah, my path to victory is pretty much fanning. It's a number of ways. One way is to inform voters about who Vicki Lopez is and what she isn't. There's, you've probably seen the mailers building.

42:20She was portrayed. She was portraying herself as essentially a Democrat, even though she wasn't. And there are other mailers that portray her as a Republican, which she is. So my job is to hammer the living, use a very, very strong ground field program fueled by volunteers and get the word out in places where they may not know my name and some of the reasons that don't know my name, as well as we're going to be, we are like fundraising out the in-yang to try and raise money for a well-targeted ad campaign to counteract the anordinate amount of money that she's going to be putting towards ads to get her met well, to get her deceptive message out there about what she is and what she isn't. So the path to victory is peeling off those voters that voted for her thinking that she was something else. And while at the same time, fanning that, fanning that resentment, that hunger for transparency, that hunger for a lack of special interest and fanning that into that fire into more votes. Go to rob piper here to serve.com if you want to find out who the f*** Rob Piper is.

43:26Rob, thanks so much for joining us. I hope you'll come back again before election day and good luck to you. Yeah, can I just get one more plug? Yeah, yeah. If you're going to do that website, donate whatever you can. Any little bit helps because as I've shown, I can make a go a long way. Cocains.