Artiles sought affidavits from attendees at party where he bragged about NPA candidate
Hours after the Miami Herald reported that former state Sen. Frank Artiles bragged that he planted a no-party candidate in a Miami-Dade County state Senate race, Artiles sent threatening legal letters to at least three people who were in attendance at an election party where the comments were made.
According to the sworn depositions of three people who attended GOP Sen. Jason Brodeur’s party at Liam Fitzpatrick’s restaurant in Lake Mary, Artiles asked them to sign affidavits on Dec. 3, 2020, the same day the Herald’s article was published.
Two witnesses said they did not hear Artiles make the comments taking credit for the Miami-Dade race. One witness did, noting that she was in a smaller area of the restaurant with 15 to 20 people.
Artiles was arrested on felony charges in March for allegedly recruiting and paying an acquaintance to run in the Senate race. He returns to court for another status update in December.
Prosecutors say Artiles bribed Alexis Pedro Rodriguez with nearly $45,000 to run as a no-party candidate in Senate District 37 in the 2020 election. Both men pleaded not guilty, though Rodriguez is cooperating with investigators as part of a plea deal.
The Herald obtained transcripts of new depositions in the Artiles case Wednesday. They were entered into the court record earlier in November.
Stephanie Smith, who lobbies for a health insurance company, said in a deposition that she was in a smaller room at the party, where she saw Artiles point at a screen with election results for Senate District 37 and say, “that was me.”
Miami Republican Ileana Garcia, a first-time candidate, was leading Democratic incumbent Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez in the race. She eventually won after a three-day recount by just 32 votes out of more than 215,000 cast. Alexis Rodriguez, Artiles’ longtime acquaintance who shared a surname with the incumbent, received 6,382 votes in the election.
“It was very clear to me what he meant,” said Smith in her deposition. “I think he just couldn’t help himself. He had to brag.”
When reached on Wednesday, Smith declined to comment.
After he made the comments, Smith told investigators, a spokeswoman for the political committee that ran Republican campaigns in the Senate told everyone to clear the room.
Erin Isaac, the spokeswoman, told the Miami Herald last year that she was not aware of Artiles’ involvement in the race. She did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
Threats and unsigned affidavits
On the day the Herald published the article, Artiles called Smith’s cellphone and accused her of speaking to reporters.
“He used very, very bad words,” she said in the deposition, noting various expletives he called her. “And I’m like, ‘How dare you talk to me like that? I didn’t do anything, this is crazy.’ ”
Later that day, he sent her an affidavit to sign. She never did, she told investigators, and she wasn’t the only one.
Lauren Gallo, a lobbyist for Florida Realtors who lobbied for the League of Women Voters of Florida at the time of the 2020 election, told investigators that Artiles sent her the affidavit via email. She didn’t sign it.
“I honestly didn’t want to be a part of anything ‘cause I didn’t hear anything,” she said.
Gallo didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Will Rodriguez, a lobbyist at Corcoran Partners and former adviser to former House Speaker José Oliva, said he received the affidavit, too.
Rodriguez, who says he considers Artiles a friend of about a decade, told investigators he didn’t hear the former senator brag about the Miami race that night. But a month later, he received an email with the subject line: “affidavit.”
“I remember thinking, opening the email, ‘Frank, why are you putting me in this thing?’ “ he said, recalling that he had seen the Herald article. “When I saw the email, literally looked at the email and I thought, ‘Frank, why are you involving me? Why are you putting me in your messes?’ ”
Rodriguez didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
A pattern of behavior
Artiles’ reputation is a bombastic one, and precedes this most recent encounter. The testimony that described the affidavits and verbal threats are examples of a long-running playbook that at least two others have described as “aggressive” and threatening.
JennyLee Molina, an alumni of Hialeah-Miami Lakes High School, recalls a run-in with fellow alum Artiles earlier this year in the school’s Facebook group. She came forward to publicize inappropriate behavior she witnessed on the part of former teacher and now GOP Sen. Manny Diaz. Artiles, a political ally of Diaz, addressed her in a series of comments.
“I hope you have a really good attorney and/or your handlers,” he wrote in a January Facebook post. “You are an absolute imbecile that is reading a script … I look forward to watching your political hit job get destroyed by real life attorneys. No more hiding behind a computer.”
“Let’s just say, I wouldn’t want Frank Artiles and his friends to know where I live,” she said.
Political strategist Vanessa Brito had a closer relationship with Artiles. Artiles connected Brito with a job leading voter outreach for Mitt Romney on behalf of the national advocacy group, Hispanic Leadership Fund in 2012. But according to Brito, Artiles began to express interest in using the national campaign’s money and phone bank data for outreach on behalf of a county commission candidate he was supporting to run against Juan Zapata, a political foe of Artiles.
When Brito reported the behavior, she said he threatened to sue her.
“Frank is a scary guy,” she said. “He’s big, he’s aggressive, he had a lot of friends.”
Miami Herald staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.
A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled JennyLee Molina.’s name.
This story was originally published November 17, 2021 at 4:56 PM.