FlaglerLive Editor Calls Libel Lawsuit by Former Commissioner Joe Mullins a SLAPP Suit

Joe Mullins, the former Flagler County commissioner who called a fellow commissioner a “fat son of a bitch,” called for the beheading of liberals on WNZF, drew repeated calls for censure and who a then-Flagler County School Board member described as the “pied piper of hate, deception and fraud,” filed suit last week against FlaglerLive and its editor, Pierre Tristam, alleging libel. 

The suit was filed by Mount Dora attorney Anthony Sabatini, the former member of the Florida House of Representatives, current Lake County commissioner, and a candidate for Congress who represented Palm Coast Mayor Mike Norris in his failed bid to unseat Council member Charles Gambaro. 

The suit claims that “Beginning in or around 2024, Defendants published and republished numerous false and defamatory statements concerning [Mullins] through articles appearing on FlaglerLive.com and related online platforms, among them a Nov. 18, 2024 article entitled “Joe Mullins, Disgraced in Flagler County, Declares Run for Waltz’s Congressional Seat.” (Mullins announced on the radio infomercial he buys on WNZF that he would run for the seat Waltz vacated when he became a member of the Trump administration, but Mullins did not run a campaign after Randy Fine quickly gained momentum.) 

The article reports, the lawsuit states, that “among other things, that [Mullins] was ‘disgraced out of office,’ engaged in ‘outrageous behavior,’ and ‘belligerently tried to get out of a traffic stop by telling a cop that he ran Flagler County,’” and that he had “attempted to get out of a ticket months earlier in another county.” Mullins lost the 2022 primary to Commissioner Leann Pennington, who trounced him with 69 percent of the vote, one of the largest winning margins for a county commission seat in recent memory. 

The suit claims that the “statements were false, misleading, and defamatory,” and that Mullins “did not improperly seek to evade law enforcement consequences, request preferential treatment, or misuse public office in connection with any traffic citation or law enforcement interaction.” 

In fact, video evidence from the Florida Highway Patrol and Mullins’s own letters to judges, all linked in news stories reporting on his behavior, document the pattern previously reported. 

The news reports on Mullins’s interactions with law enforcement, including his statement to a Florida Highway Patrol trooper that “I run the county,” were widely reported across the country and the globe after FlaglerLive broke the story, including by  NBC News, People Magazine, the conservative New York Post, the liberal Huffington Post and Daily Kos, England’s populist Daily Mail, Yahoo News, and  numerous other publications. 

The suit also cites an August 2024 article reporting on Mullins properties in Georgia that were ordered into receivership. In 2022 Mullins himself had characterized himself in a signed court document as “insolvent,” “riddled with debt” and “potentially bankrupt.”

FlaglerLive stands by its reporting. 

“It isn’t surprising that the man who spent his political career in Flagler County smearing others, FlaglerLive  and me included, would file a SLAPP suit,” Tristam said, referring to so-called strategic lawsuits against public participation, which Florida law prohibits. “The reporting and its documentation speaks for itself, as does Mullins’s behavior.”  

FlaglerLive is a nonprofit established as a news service in 2010.

“If Mullins is wondering why his political career crashed and burned in Flagler County he need only look in the mirror,” Steve Robinson, who heads FlaglerLive’s board of directors, said. “FlaglerLive’s reporting was scrupulously accurate and an essential service to the community.”