Francis Suarez Is Not Running For President. He's Running From Prison.

Two days ago, the 2024 Republican field welcomed its newest joke-candidacy, this time from Miami's Republican mayor, Francis Suarez. This man gets a lot of attention from the clamoring-for-moderates mainstream media for being anti-Trump, and even refusing to vote for Ron DeSantis in 2018. He's CNN and the New York Times' wet dream of a "sane conservative." But this guy has no chance at winning the nomination - at least people like Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, and Tim Scott would have a reasonable chance of pulling off a victory if Trump were to DIE tomorrow - but this guy wouldn't even win if his only opponent was Richard Nixon. So why is this clown running? Well...being a moderate Republican does not make you immune from corruption and fraud, and this guy proves that stipulation correct a thousand times over. 

Suarez is a nepo-baby - the son of Xavier Suarez, who served as the Mayor of Miami in the '90s, but Suarez Sr. was actually REMOVED as the Mayor of Miami in 1997 after a Florida circuit judge found compelling evidence of a "massive, well-conceived and well-orchestrated absentee ballot voter fraud scheme." In fact, Francis Suarez was then a 20-year-old sophomore at FIU, and ballots marked with the signature "F. Suarez" were found with addresses not remotely matching the residents who actually lived there, and an independent journalist's investigation found that the handwriting on the ballots closely resembled Francis Suarez's signature.

In 2013, Francis Suarez decided that he wanted daddy's old job, so he ran for Mayor of Miami. It was considered a long-shot, as Suarez was not as well-known at the time. But early in his campaign, his staffers were caught requesting massive numbers of absentee ballots from the office computer of his campaign headquarters. That led to a search of a staffer's home by anti-corruption detectives. Suarez' disastrous public relations implosion, in addition to the near-impossible hill to climb to defeat the incumbent Tomás Regalado, Suarez dropped out of the race. Naturally, he cited the classic, "I need to spend more time with my family" refrain. But don't worry: It's gonna get a lot worse.

Suarez ran for the open mayorship in 2017, and won the election easily, getting over 80% of the vote. 

Since his election to the office, Anti-DeSantis documentary producer Billy Corben, called him "the most corrupt Miami mayor in history." For starters, he owns a $1.475 million house, despite the fact that his financial disclosure forms indicate that there is no possible way he could have afforded to buy it. When Corben asked the Suarez's communications director, (who was later arrested for luring a teenage boy to his office, groping him, and texting him pictures of his junk), about these allegations, he said "Let's agree to disagree, Billy. If you live in Miami focus on the results." 

Because Suarez doesn't actually do a lot of serious work as Mayor of Miami, because the city uses a "weak mayor" system, he works as an attorney on the side. This, of course, offers him the opportunity to claim attorney-client privilege for his list of secret clients that are part of his conflict-of-interest. He claims to have not registered as a lobbyist in Miami-Dade, and yet his law firm, in order to avoid charges of falsifying business records, as marked these associations and services as "Miami-Dade Lobbying."

In 2019, Suarez received massive amounts of donations from David Beckham and Jorge Mas, and in exchange, he agreed to a 99-year, no bid below-market-value lease to pave the city’s largest public park into a $1 billion real estate/retail/office complex with a hotel and a 25,000-seat soccer stadium. To provide cover for this open-air graft job, he promised to protect a program called First Tee that provides golf lessons and mentoring to kids. Ah yes, I'm sure that all the kids learning golf were in the underserved parts of the community and not the richest of the rich, eh? 

Norman Braman, a billionaire oligarch who donated $25 million to Marco Rubio's 2016 campaign, and was the employer of Marco Rubio's wife, gave the mayor $75,000 in campaign contributions. So in 2018, Braman wrote a new law in the city regarding casinos on official city letterhead, sent it to mayor's private email, who forwarded it to city manager's private email, and it became law.

Don't worry. We're not close to being done yet. 

Suarez is a crypto-bro, and even worse than the milque-toast right-wingers like Ron DeSantis who like to talk about crypto as an end-around to government regulation and economic oversight. He's not just used it for political gain; he actually tried to line his pockets with it. He has said publicly that he wants to abolish all taxes in Miami, and funding the city instead with funds from the blockchain-mining of BitCoin. He's worked to allow residents of Miami to be paid in BitCoin, and pay taxes in BitCoin. In fact, he created a new crypto currency called "MiamiCoin," which is just about as hilariously Florida Man as you can get, and it subsequently lost over 90% of its original value. He even helped build a ridiculous futuristic Wall Street bull to symbolize how Miami would be the crypto capital of the world. In 2021, the height of the brief crypto ponzi scheme era, Suarez worked with Sam Bankman-Fried to secure a $135 million sponsorship by FTX, in exchange for naming rights of the stadium, which became FTX Arena. In fact, Sam Bankman-Fried was going to move FTX headquarters to Miami in early 2023, which would have likely been a great new source of backdoor personal income for Suarez. But naturally, after FTX declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November of 2022, the FTX name came down from the arena. Bill Corben likes to call Suarez "Mayor Ponzi Postalita." I think it fits.

Florida Man Attempts New Scam

Is your blood bubbling yet? Let's make it boil.

Suarez was hired as a paid consultant to Location Ventures, and received $170,000 in actual income (as opposed to campaign donations) after a series of chronicled meetings that were between Location Ventures CEO Rishi Kapoor, Suarez and the City Manager. In exchange, Suarez helped Location Ventures secure permits for a $70 million project called Coconut Grove, after it appeared the project would take too long and cost extra due to red-tape delays and a zoning waiver from the city. Suarez is now under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department for that real-estate permitting agreement, which is probably a scary thing for a Florida Man who has been used to getting away with everything in his life. So what's one good way to make an investigation go away? Run for President.

Donald Trump has already been indicted twice - once by New York, once by the federal government, and he'll probably be indicted at least one more time in Georgia, and possibly in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. In addition, it looks possible that Ron DeSantis could face an indictment in Bexar County for trafficking illegal immigrants (who are human beings, by the way) on his flights to blue cities. What Suarez probably figures is that if the Justice Department is already wrapped up in the political turmoil of indicting a former President and cult leader, it might not want to give any additional appearance of indicting a member of the opposing party of the incumbent President of the United States who is currently running for re-election. Would it the right thing to do? Yes. Would the norms-police on CNN and the New York Times have a mental implosion over it? Also yes. Running for President gives corrupt Florida Man Suarez the perfect political cover to avoid an indictment, especially if Merrick Garland becomes too afraid of attacks from conservatives over investigating presidential candidates. All it would take is one Fox News story saying "Biden Justice Department tries to take down popular Latino Republican candidate for President in swing state," and someone in DOJ would get scared they'll be impeached or hauled in front of a screaming Jim Jordan or Marjorie Taylor Greene.

There's no reason that Suarez would want to run for President. The race is already filled with two other Florida men polling at a combined 80% of the vote, and Suarez probably can't even make the debates because of the 1% polling requirement, or worse, the 40,000 individual donor requirement, which is twice the number of votes he actually received in his re-election bid two years ago. This is not about a vanity run for President; this is not about getting more publicity; it's all about making the investigations slow down or go away.

Suarez's only problem with this strategy is that by running for President, he will attract a thousand times more publicity about every single aspect of his life. A single local documentary producer can always do some damage on corrupt politicians, but that's nothing compared to the swarms of national press that could descend on Miami in the future. Suarez will have a national media microscope quite literally where the sun don't shine (the smoke-filled rooms, of course...), and this would not be the case if he weren't running for the White House. Hell, if he weren't doing this, I would never have learned about how completely sketchy this guy is. It's a risky gamble for Suarez, but it could pay off if he plays his cards right.

But look at the big picture: When Suarez says, "It is time for a next generation leader who has the vision to lead and the character to connect with everyone by looking at them in the eyes and listening to them. Not shouting at them and lecturing them...and that is why just yesterday, I filed paperwork to run for President of the United States of America," don't believe him. It's just another scam promoted by a Florida Man.