On Dec. 17, Kimberle Weeks, the former Flagler County Supervisor of Elections, filed a complaint with the Florida Bar about County Attorney Al Hadeed.
The complaint, never made public until the county administration released it Monday (you can read it in full here), was part of a series of similar maneuvers Weeks and an ally, former County Commission candidate Mark Richter, filed with the state ethics commission and the state elections commission either against Hadeed or against every sitting county commissioner the same month. The filing with the Florida Bar rehashes the same allegations Weeks has been making publicly and to state agencies about Hadeed and the commissioners, claiming Sunshine law violations, conflicts of interest, inappropriate counsel, or election law violations.
The filings were primarily and transparently motivated by politics rather than substantive accusations, as indicated by the scattershot nature of the approach, in hopes that some of the complaints might stick. More pointedly for Weeks, who repeatedly used a similar strategy of making broad-brush public accusations against certain agencies or officials in her six-year tenure, the filings appear to have been motivated by the expectation of drawing negative press against Weeks’s enemies, regardless of the validity of the complaints: her allegations have at one time or another targeted the Palm Coast City Council or City Manager Jim Landon and members of his administration, Flagler County Sheriff Jim Manfre, and county government.
When Weeks recorded a conversation between Hadeed and Commissioner Charlie Ericksen on the periphery of a canvassing board meeting last summer, without their knowledge, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement launched a criminal investigation into Weeks’s recording and into broader matter involving her office, serving a search warrant there on Oct. 3. That investigation is ongoing. The first week of January, Weeks resigned, citing her numerous issues with local government, but also citing personal family matters, including her father’s illness. (Her father died earlier this month.)
Hadeed’s Florida Bar complaint response made a key revelation: that in her recording of that conversation, Weeks had edited, erased or spliced out significant parts of the recording that may have been embarrassing to her. The splicing then, according to Hadeed, was designed to present him in a bad light.
By then, the numerous complaints had already been filed, with each agency receiving them compelled to look into them according to each agency’s formal rules. Complainants to the Florida Bar are required to limit their documentation to 25 pages. Weeks took advantage of the full allowance in a five-page single-spaced, small-font submission on Dec. 17, followed by documentation (emails, memos and copies of minutes), starting with what she refers to as “the whispering incident”–the conversation between Hadeed and Ericksen about a former county commissioner and member of the canvassing board who had once apparently looked at ballots inappropriately, then made a phone call that may have reported what the commissioner had seen. That would amount to a third-degree felony. The commissioner and the time frame of the incident is not mentioned, but Hadeed notes to Ericksen that he told the allegedly offending commissioner to carry on more appropriately, and the commissioner complied. Weeks charges, among other things, that Hadeed violated the Sunshine law when he spoke to Ericksen about the matter.
From there, Weeks then added numerous accusations against Hadeed, many of them accusing him of not anticipating commissioners’ missteps, such as when–in Weeks’s own words, which do not always follow the rules of grammar or syntax–he “failed to advise the county commissioners when they selected canvassing board members for the 2014 elections that involved themselves in a candidate’s campaign could disqualify them from being eligible to serve as a canvassing board member.” She then charges that once certain issues involving commissioners serving on the canvassing board came to light–issues Weeks claims should have disqualified them outright–Hadeed, whose role she never recognized on the canvassing board, did not advise them to step down.
Hadeed responded to the allegations on Feb. 9. “The allegations accuse me of dishonesty, bias, incompetence, conflicts of interest, conspiracy, and criminal wrongdoing,” he wrote Bar Counsel Annemarie Craft. “Ms Weeks has filed this same complaint with the Florida Ethics Commission. These are extreme allegations and they are numerous. Rather than rebut by generalizations, I have looked for matters of record that refute the allegations unequivocally.” In his response, Hadeed noted that he could not possibly limit his documentation to the 25-page maximum set by the Bar, so he left it up to the Bar to follow up for more documentation based on his footnoted references. The full response appears below.
The response is a systematic, point-by-point refutation of Weeks’s allegations. For example, where Weeks claims Hadeed violated sunshine in his conversation with Ericksen about the previous commissioner’s actions, Hadeed counters that the conversation had no bearing on any ongoing business of the canvassing board, and so did not amount to such a violation. His subsequent responses focused on his “good-faith” service on the canvassing board as legal counsel while countering Weeks allegations with a fuller context in which disagreements she brought up took place: essentially, Hadeed, in his response, attempted to fill in the record that Weeks had presented to the bar in splices.
As required by the Bar’s rules, all documents were shared between Hadeed and Weeks, who then responded to Hadeed’s response, on Feb. 18, again focusing on the recording as “the most damning, incredible piece of evidence.” (That response is available here.)
“We are confident that once the proper authorities review this material that the allegations by our former Supervisor of Elections will be found without merit,” County Administrator Craig Coffey said in a news release his administration issued Monday. “The complaints and the required responses to all of these agencies are a waste of taxpayer’s money and County employees’ time.”
Al Hadeed Response to Bar Complaint By Kimberle Weeks (2015)
Edman says
Na, Na, Na, Na
Na, Na, Na, Na
Hey, Hey, Hey
Good Bye….. and good riddance to Ms Weeks !!!
confidential says
A waste of tax payers money was the County whoever did it and approved it, calling the state to monitor our elections and also a real shame…that the County Chair doubted to the media the honest work done by the SOE and all her dedicated and honest poll workers during the elections process.
All the issues mentioned by SOE Weeks were not fictional or invented or perceived, but crystal clear and pathetic reality of intended elections manipulation and for the first time brought into the open by a brave SOE. The manipulators were so enraged that one of them had the audacity and disrespect to call our re-elected lady SOE (by over 61 percent of the voters on her re-election) a five (B) letter insult, and still managed to be re-elected himself. That speaks for itself about some sectarian groups of Flagler County. No wonder its economic blues don’t improve, look what the one’s at the helm have us to deal with while manipulating to get further control of the frying pan handle.
Ray Thorne says
If there were any attempt at election manipulation as you say, I hope that information comes about. The fact that Ms. Weeks was/is not liked by some should not weigh on any investigation into that matter. If what you claim has any merit, I’m interested in the outcome.
Fred says
Kimmy is like a hemorrhoid that will not go away……
m&m says
Looking at the picture the attendies look scared of her.
Jim O says
Weeks is as Nutty as a fruit cake. wow – when does this waste of time and money stop in her unfounded allegations?
KMedley says
Jim O
When does it end? It ends when the universal language of financial consequence is applied. The City of Palm Coast has already paved the way with the recent court decision whereby both Dennis McDonald and his attorney were found to be responsible for filing a frivolous lawsuit and bringing about unnecessary taxpayer expenditures for the defense of the nonsensical lawsuit. The County now needs to follow the path set by the City.
The lawsuit filed by the Flagler Palm Coast Watchdogs, a group headed by Dan Bozza, came about based on a meeting that took place on January 15, 2014 with County Attorney Al Hadeed and Ronald Reagan Republican Assembly director, Dennis McDonald, John Ruffalo, the group’s strategist, and Dan Bozza. It took all of ten minutes for the lawsuit to be dismissed. In a September 2014 Flagler Live article, the impact to taxpayers can be summarized as follows:
“The county attorney’s office is a public resource focused on issues meant to “save money or get money or avoid liability or whatever the function is that is in the public interest,” none of which was the case with this lawsuit. “The time I spent doing this was time I couldn’t spend doing something else, so yes, I have to weigh that on behalf of the government.”
https://flaglerlive.com/70060/watchdogs-thrown-out/
This complaint against Mr. Hadeed, along with the plethora of complaints filed by Weeks and Richter against County Commissioners, will bring about the same effect, taxpayers will pay for the defense of complaints without merit. The question then becomes, if these complaints are summarily dismissed, can Weeks and Richter be held accountable? If the answer is yes, then we as taxpayers need to ask, will they?
Outsider says
The gift that keeps giving.
Michael says
It is time to do the same as Mr. McDonald and make Ms. Weeks’ pay the bill from her personal pocketbook for the Keystone cop crusade. When will we finally be ridden of this good old boy Week’s family, stay out in the country where your poor misguided redneck self belongs. You were a great embarrassment toy yourself and the county, and your husband just made it worse with his country bumpkin I will beat you up idiotic behavior. Honestly, I do not doubt that there were issues with our FC Commissioners, but she was caught up with the Regan bunch (talk about misguided bunch of crybaby’s) and she paid the price, she had a weak mind and was manipulated by those with an agenda of slander and self-empowerment. Glad to see you resigned, now we just need you to quietly go away and stop embarrassing yourself and our county.
confidential says
Too bad that KMedley herself here and after her big defeat twice running against Mrs. Weeks and managing to get appointed to the City Code Enforcement Board, in spite of her two court public records of fraudulent intents in the no distant past (one for deceiving information trying to collect unemployment insurance), still flagging her relentless attack of an honest official as SOE Kimberle Weeks .
Speaks for itself of some of our current local elected one’s and administrators.
Ralph Belcher says
I insist that in any of the complaints that get dismissed that Richter and the other “watchdogs” be held accountable for the cost of dealing with these charges. As a taxpayer I don’t like our resources squandered on this tomfoolery. After all that would fall in line of their conservative views, wouldn’t it? Fiscal conservatism?
Ken Dodge says
Fiscal conservatism is you put your hand in my pocket; fiscal liberalism is when I put my hand in yours . . . or, is it the other way ’round?
Brad says
Here’s the bottom line for me with Kimberle Weeks at this point . . . she quit and bailed on the responsibilities that she was elected to carry out. And she was supposed to carry out those responsibilities selflessly which she did not (and never did for that matter). This isn’t a fast-food place cashier job. It’s overseeing the elections for the entire County. Residents and voters should always be able to trust that the person who has stood up to say they want that position can handle the job and is willing to stand up to the challenges. This is a clear example where reliability and stability of the individual (employment, residence, performance history) should be a huge focus in the next election for the SOE position as well as all other positions elected and appointed (such as Code Enforcement Board positions).
Whatever credibility she might have had at one point on any community matter is gone entirely in my opinion. She is simply another complainer in the crowd obviously obsessed over attention to herself. She has never brought anything positive to the County and will always be remembered for simply being a childish trouble-maker.