1. The Mosh Pit East video showed that Pam Childers, at best, had a bad memory of what happened on June 12, or, at worst, she lied. She did not have her laptop when she, Bruce, and Cameron Smith went to the Supervisor of Elections (SOE) office the first time. Smith never heard anyone say “that everything that needed to be done had been done,” as stated in Summary of Facts (page 4) of Plaintiff’s Bench Brief, because Smith was not there on the second visit when Pam had her laptop.
2. Bruce Childers does not appear capable of serving as Supervisor of Elections. The retired attorney doesn’t understand Florida election laws, failing to complete a process that hundreds of candidates statewide did successfully. He had to have his wife do it for him. Pam Childers spent more time on the witness stand than Bruce because attorney Ed Fleming believed she would be the better witness.
3. During her testimony, Pam appeared very concerned about the public knowing the couple’s finances. She called Form 6 “Complete Financial Disclosure” and insinuated that the information was unavailable to the public. Pam said something about a July 1 deadline, and then the public could ask to see the financial information from the Commission on Ethics after that date. Bender’s attorney, George Levesque, corrected Pam – the title of Form 6 is “Full and Public Financial Disclosure.” It is a public document when the candidate submits it to the SOE. See Bruce Childers Form 6 provided after the deadline. Note: Pam also slipped when she said she was a Certified Professional Accountant. CPA stands for Certified Public Accountant.
4. Though Bruce and Pam Childers repeatedly attacked Robert Bender, accusing him of lacking integrity and using the power of his office to gain revenge on Pam by deliberating not informing the couple about the missing Form 6, Sonya Daniel said she was the sole qualifying officer for Bruce Childers. She made the decision to disqualify him, and she had no discussions with Bender in making that decision. The Childers owe Bender a public apology.
5. Pam likes to tie her political career to Gov. Ron DeSantis. She testified that she works for DeSantis and has said it in BCC meetings. DeSantis is very thorough in making appointments—maybe the most thorough of any Florida governor. However, Pam wants the public to believe DeSantis made a mistake in appointing Bender, and she, Bruce, and her family had to remedy it by convincing Bruce to run.
#notreadbypamchilders
In my opinion, Bruce Childers lied in his pre-trial brief and Pam lied under oath. She wouldn’t even answer her own attorney straight when Ed asked her about their financial officer being at the office with them, because of course he was only there with his back to the doors during the first visit, and not for the visit where “5G Pam” jabbed at her Ipad repeatedly trying to get the pages to scroll.
That’s what happens when elected officials aren’t held accountable for their actions by the agencies that should be policing them–the abuses of power grow greater. Pam may work for the governor, but she answers to the State’s Attorney.
As a side note, my but she seems busy running around politicking on the tax payer dollar. We’re all so used to it that we barely blink when the testimony was that she had promised to go print the form off from her work computer. Think about that for a moment.
My favorite point from my notes was Judge Frydrychowicz going straight to the heart of both the law and common sense truth at the same time (as close to verbatim as I could muster):
What Plaintiff was asking the Court to do was to override the Supervisor of Elections against state statute “because he would have complied if only he had been told a second time he needed to comply.”
The transcript of her entire verbal opinion should be required reading in Escambia schools. What people like CJ don’t seem to grasp is that, had she ruled the opposite, there would have been DQ’d candidates all over the state of Florida cooking up lawsuits this weekend to slam down as soon as her written order hits the books. Let’s see if Pam continues her lickety-split pace of online docket filings in this matter.
Rick, your reporting on this issue the last couple of weeks has been a clinic on why an honest independent press is so crucial right now for the preservation of democracy against such vicious, destructive fabrications. That’s no exaggeration of the service you fulfilled, in informing any member of the public who actually wished to be informed, of what was really happening with this mess.
They ought to be ashamed; instead, Pam is probably plotting even more retribution. Welp, there’s at least one check she can’t hold back, Rick, and that’s yours. Thank you for your tireless efforts on this.