Florida’s state attorney argued that the Gov. Suspended Ron DeSantis on Friday said he still has a job — but the Republican governor’s office said he can’t even go into his old office.
Andrew Warren, who served as Hillsborough County’s chief prosecutor until DeSantis he announced on Thursday, CBS insisted he was still on the job.
“He has no authority to suspend me,” he told the network, adding that “the people elected me to serve in this position and I’m going to continue to do it to keep our neighborhoods safe.”
Warren declared the move “unconstitutional” and refused to recognize its legitimacy.
Those comments drew a Twitter rebuke from DeSantis spokeswoman Christina Pushaw on Friday, who said Warren was being “sticked.”
“Andrew Warren tells the media that he is still the State’s Attorney because he identifies as a State’s Attorney,” she wrote. “I’m sorry but don’t fly here. In Florida we live in the real world. His badge won’t even work to access his former office today.”
DeSantis said he removed Warren because he was not prosecuting serious crimes and had promised to ignore current or future restrictions on abortion or gender reassignment surgeries on minors.
“We’re not going to let the pathogen that’s all over the country ignore the law, we’re not going to let that get a foothold here in the state of Florida,” the governor said Thursday. “We are going to make sure our laws are enforced and no individual prosecutor will put himself above the law.”
Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister supported the suspension, claiming local law enforcement had become frustrated with what they saw as the leniency of Warren’s prosecution.
Warren has since been fired, arguing that his office did not handle any cases involving abortion or gender reassignment surgeries and that he was being punished for hypothetical misconduct.
DeSantis has been blasted several times Progressive DA in cities like New York and Los Angeles, arguing that they allowed crime to thrive.
There was Warren scraped from the state attorney’s website shortly after his suspension as DeSantis appointed Susan Lopez to take his place.