FOLIO WEEKLY: Did he or didn't he?

ST. JOHNS COUNTY SHERIFF SHOAR SAYS HE HAD PERMISSION TO
REVEAL A FEDERAL CORRUPTION PROBE. THE U.S. ATTORNEY’S OFFICE SAYS THAT’S AS RIDICULOUS AS IT SOUNDS.

By Gwynned Stewart

The evening began with expensive
wine, and ended with strawberry
crostata (for the soon-to-be-disgraced
commissioner) and Bavarian rum
cream cake (for the FBI informant).
Around that point, an envelope containing
$50,000 in cash was placed on the table in
the private dining room, where it sat for
some time before then-St. Johns County
Commission Chair Tom Manuel picked it
up and pocketed it.
Moments later, as the men exited
Giovanni’s Restaurant in Jacksonville
Beach, the FBI handcuffed both of them,
put them in separate cars and drove off
into the warm June night.
For Tom Manuel, it was the beginning
of the end. But he tried very hard to make
it the beginning of something else —
namely, a new FBI probe. According to
Manuel and prosecutors in the federal
case, he confessed almost immediately and
offered to participate in a broader investigation.
He agreed to record his phone calls
to ensnare other corrupt officials and, on
at least one occasion, he wore a wire.
Neither Manuel nor prosecutors will
say who might’ve been a target of this
second phase of the probe, but the FBI
was apparently persuaded that other
targets might exist, because they didn’t
arrest Manuel that night. Instead, they let
him return home, and even resume his
duties as County Commission chair,
which he did with his usual vigor, and no
hint of his trouble with the feds.
Whatever might have come of
Manuel’s efforts won’t ever be known.
Six days after he began cooperating with
investigators, St. Johns County Sheriff
David Shoar told reporters that Manuel
was the target of a federal probe,
effectively ending the investigation.
Cases in which a law enforcement
official reveals an ongoing probe are
exceedingly rare. But Shoar has been
unapologetic about his decision. He told
The St. Augustine Record that the
citizens of the county had “a right to
know” about the investigation, and suggested
he was being hounded by
reporters. “I guess I could have said, ‘No
comment, no comment,’ but I know how
journalists interpret that as ‘The answer’s
yes,’” Shoar said. “I checked with the FBI.
Confirming there was an active investigation
was perfectly fine with them.”
Which is where an already unusual
story gets even stranger. Because the FBI
did not give Shoar permission to reveal
the investigation — at least according
to U.S. Attorney Julie Savell, who prosecuted
the case against Manuel. When
asked point-blank at Manuel’s January
sentencing whether anyone had given
the sheriff permission to expose the case,
Savell was adamant: “[Shoar] made the
decision [to reveal it],” she said. “That
was not approved by the FBI or our
office. He had no authorization of
disclosure.”
Which leaves open the question: Did
he or didn’t he? In a recent interview with
Folio Weekly, Shoar insisted he did. And
he says he’s dumbfounded that an investigation
that he helped instigate — one
that ultimately nabbed a corrupt county
official — has somehow left him as the
bad guy.
“I’m not happy with a lot of how this
case went down,” he says when asked
about Savell’s comment. “I’m the one
who brought the case to them.”
The events of the past several
months have clearly deflated Tom
Manuel. The smug confidence
and unrestrained ego he’d displayed in the
past — well-documented in the series of
covert videos recorded by developer agent
Bruce Robbins in April, May and June of
2008 — have been replaced with something
approaching contrition. In a recent
phone interview with Folio Weekly, he
spoke softly and deliberately. “There’s no
question that Mr. Robbins gained my
trust, took advantage of that, and there’s
no question that my ego got in the way.
Those are things I have to live with. It was
very stupid of me. I feel very badly for my
family. They’re the ones who are impacted
the most. And for the residents of St.
Johns County and for Northeast Florida
as a whole.”
There’s an irresistable irony in the fact
that Manuel, of all current and former
County Commissioners, is the one who
fell in a bribery probe. After all, St. Johns
County is a place where developer campaign
contributions are often viewed as
open bribery — advance payoff for the
hundreds of land-use changes sought
(and granted). Rivers of cash flow to
development-friendly candidates from
powerful Jacksonville developers (and
their myriad lawyers, planners and corporate
subsidiaries); the cost of a countywide
candidacy jumped from around
$40,000 in the early ’90s to nearly
$200,000 in 2006.
Manuel pledged to change that. After
serving four years on the county’s Planning
and Zoning Agency — a period in
which he became known for having a
strong anti-growth posture — he ran for
commissioner in 2006 on a platform of
total independence, refusing to accept a
dime from development interests. The
decision cost him — he raised only
$15,700 compared to his opponent’s
$140,600 — but he won anyway, buoyed
by the hopes of sprawl-weary voters.
Indeed, with the arrival of Manuel, and
the ouster of his avidly pro-growth predecessors,
county residents had hope, for the
first time in years, that the out-of-control
pace of growth might finally slacken.
In the end, however, the candidate
who refused to be bought turned out to
be eminently buyable. He accepted a total
of $60,000 from Robbins, a representative
of Boca Raton-based developer The
Falcone Group, and accepted it with the
promise of getting much, much more. As
Robbins told Manuel with chilling professionalism
as he slipped him the cash,
“This is how business works.”
But if Manuel is chastened by his fall
from grace, another emotion contributes
to his change in demeanor: Fear. Having
pleaded guilty to one count of corruption,
Manuel was sentenced in late January
2009 to 21 months in federal prison.
And he has no idea when he’s going. A
heart-transplant recipient who takes
almost three dozen pills a day, Manuel
can’t serve his time in just any prison. The
Bureau of Prisons has to ensure that his
health needs can and will be met during
his incarceration, and those logistics are
still being determined.
“I’m in limbo,” he said recently. “It’s
excruciating.”
Being apprehensive about the future
doesn’t make him any less furious about
the past, however. Leaving his sentencing
hearing on Jan. 28, he was asked by a
reporter about Savell’s assertion that
Shoar did not have permission to reveal
the investigation. Though otherwise
declining to talk with reporters, Manuel
retorted, “You can say the sheriff lied.”
FBI Special Agent and Jacksonville
Field Office Spokesman Jeff Westcott
wouldn’t discuss Manuel’s case
specifically. He did acknowledge that it’s
more than a little unusual for a law
enforcement official to go public with an
investigation. Unless there’s a “compelling
need to do so” — like a threat to public
safety or the need for public assistance —
the FBI remains mum. “Generally, we
don’t disclose the existence of an ongoing
investigation,” he says.
U.S. Attorney Julie Savell did not
return calls for comment. And although
Sheriff Shoar promised to get FBI agent
Jim Casey to confirm his version of
events, Casey declined to comment on the record.

“I know what obstruction of justice is, I’ve been a cop for 30 years,” says Shoar “You think I’m going to say something that obstructs a case?” In the end, Manuel
— the commissioner who could not be bought — proved eminently buyable.

Why does it matter? Well, for Manuel’s
defense counsel, there was little chance of
arguing he hadn’t taken a bribe. But there
was some possibility that his cooperation
in a corruption probe — particularly if it
ensnared someone else — would earn him
some consideration at sentencing. In fact,
Manuel’s attorney asked for leniency
based on the fact that Shoar’s disclosure
had “fatally compromised” the investigation,
destroying his client’s shot at winning
points with prosecutors. (Tellingly, of
the five mitigating circumstances Manuel’s
attorney offered to obtain a lesser sentence,
the disclosure bungle was the only
one Savell did not directly rebut.)
But Shoar insists Manuel doesn’t
deserve any credit for helping — because
he was no help. After three or four days of
working with Manuel, Shoar says, the FBI
determined it wasn’t going to turn up any
other corrupt officials. “He didn’t have
anything to give them,” Shoar says,
adding, “That’s why they gave me permission
on June 11 to confirm it.”
But Shoar admits that he struggled
with the secret of the corruption probe
before that. After learning in April that
Manuel had accepted the first $10,000
bribe, he was bound to secrecy, even as
Manuel continued in his role as county
commissioner.
“If you want to hear the definition of
pain, there was a three-month time when I
knew Tom was corrupt because he’d taken
the money,” says Shoar. “I had to sit back
and watch that guy govern. I don’t know if
I’ve seen anything as distasteful in my life.”
But Shoar insists he held his silence
until it became impractical to do so. On
June 5, 2008, when Manuel was taken
into custody outside Giovanni’s, Shoar
says he was contacted by a reporter with
The St. Augustine Record who had some
vague knowledge of Manuel’s detainment.
Though the sheriff intially denied
knowing anything, he was soon contacted
by Kathy Hartman, editor of The
Ponte Vedra Leader, who had a close
friend who had witnessed the apparent
arrest. (Hartman declined to be interviwed
for this story.) Shoar then learned
that the Jacksonville Beach police were
looking into the matter, possibly as a
kidnapping.
“Can you feel what my mind’s doing
right now?” Shoar asks. After telling Jax
Beach Police Chief Bruce Thomason to
call off his officers, Shoar contacted the
FBI. “And it was not a pleasant conversation,”
he recalls. “I basically told the FBI,
‘You guys were nervous about your
$50,000 walking, and so instead of letting
him get a mile down the road and pulling
him over, they grabbed him in the restaurant.
Now, everything is exposed.’”
Shoar claims Agent Casey told him,
“Go ahead and just confirm that there’s an
active investigation. That should simmer
things down.” Instead, Shoar, says “all hell
broke loose.”
Jacksonville defense attorney Thomas
G. Fallis doesn’t have any special knowledge
of the case, but he has tried a number
of federal cases and says that it’s hard
to imagine a circumstance in which the
FBI would authorize disclosure. “Usually,
a sheriff will be advised not to comment
while an investigation is ongoing, particularly
when a subject is cooperating,” says
Fallis. “[And usually, local law enforcement]
tries to cooperate.”
Former Florida Congressional candidate
Faye Armitage has asked U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder to investigate the
handling of Manuel’s case. “Is he telling
the truth about the FBI allowing him to
comment, when [United States Department
of Justice] and FBI procedures were
violated?” she asks, “I was just … surprised
that somebody like Shoar would
compromise Manuel’s chance to get a
reduced sentence.”
But Shoar says he didn’t compromise
anything. “I know what obstruction of
justice is, I’ve been a cop for 30 years. You
think I’m going to say something that
obstructs a case?”
The circumstances may be unusual,
Shoar concedes, but that’s not his fault.
He didn’t blow the case, he says — the
feds did. “[An FBI spokesperson] is
going to give you [the] ‘Traditionally we
don’t do that’ [response]. Well, traditionally
you dumb bastards don’t get
observed in a restaurant taking a guy into
custody, either.”