Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s authoritarian deeds have resulted in a lawsuit from a former top employee in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who says he was forced to resign for whistleblowing.
Shane Desguin, the agency’s former chief of staff, said in his filing that he was forced to retire in November after he wouldn’t carry out illegal or inappropriate orders, such as violating the state’s public records laws, arresting protesters without probable cause, and obtaining migrants’ photos and personal information who were transported to Florida without legal justification.
Desguin “was subjected to disparate treatment, different terms and conditions of employment, and held to a different standard because he reported Defendants’ malfeasance, gross misconduct and unlawful employment activities and was subject to retaliation thereafter,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed against DeSantis and the FDLE.
Not long after Desguin’s retirement, his deputy, Patricia Carpenter, was also fired. The lawsuit claims that Desguin and Carpenter faced an internal investigation that was a “thinly veiled attempt at character assassination” because of their whistleblowing.
A spokesperson for DeSantis didn’t comment on the lawsuit, according to ABC News, but cited that investigation as well as comments from the FDLE’s communications director, Gretl Plessinger: “Shane Desguin and Patricia Carpenter created workplace chaos, endangered the safety of other employees, and acted dishonestly and unprofessionally.”
The lawsuit says in late 2021, Desguin had to deal with the arrival of migrants being flown by the federal government to Florida in his position with the FDLE’s Office of Statewide Intelligence.
In his lawsuit, Desguin says that he was ordered by DeSantis through another official to get “photographs, biometric data, and any other pertinent information by engaging with migrants at the airport. As these requests escalated, (Desguin) objected, and emphasized, on multiple occasions…FDLE could not legally conduct name checks, capture photographs, or compile intelligence files without a criminal predicate or reasonable suspicion, as those actions would be unlawful.”
Later, when Florida officials suggested that migrants should be transported by bus out of the state (which was later attempted), Desguin said he told his superiors that this could constitute “false imprisonment or kidnapping,” the lawsuit said.
Once, in September 2023, Desguin said he was told by a DeSantis aide to arrest neo-Nazi demonstrators at an Orlando event to benefit the governor politically. He said that he couldn’t arrest protesters simply for their views, to which the aide told him, “I don’t think you understand. If you look hard enough, you can find a way. The governor wants someone arrested today. He will stand by you in any arrest.”
DeSantis has recently been experiencing long-overdue pushback for his hard-line actions, whether it’s having his signature anti-trans law being struck down in court, a failed attempt to invoke executive privilege, or having to back away from his infamous book bans. His culture war laws have cost Florida millions of dollars and made him unpopular in the state, and unsurprisingly, he’s now working with the more popular, if not more authoritarian, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
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