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A Florida sheriff facing a primary contest next week was suspended from office Friday, a day after his arrest in connection to a sex scandal investigation at a previous job, officials said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order removing Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels from his elected position. Daniels turned himself into the jail in Jacksonville on Thursday on a felony charge of tampering with evidence and three misdemeanor counts of giving false information to law enforcement.
“I want you to look past the smokescreen of dirty politics,” Daniels said in a video posted on the official sheriff's office YouTube channel earlier Friday. “One thing I take ownership of as a man is failures as a husband. That has nothing to do with me as a sheriff.”
Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels was removed from office amid a sex scandal investigation. (CLAY COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE)
He remains on the Tuesday ballot, where he faces six Republican challengers. The suspension does not prevent Daniels from running, but if he wins, the suspension will remain in place until the felony case is resolved.
Daniels previously worked as the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office jails director and was elected sheriff of Clay County, just southwest of Jacksonville, in 2016. The charges against him come after a year-long internal investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into a former corrections officer who had been Daniels' mistress while he was her supervisor.
Officials said Daniels had tried to get the woman, Cierra Smith, arrested in May 2019 on stalking allegations, but investigators told prosecutors there was not enough evidence. Smith ultimately resigned while under investigation for misconduct claims.
Her attorney, Latoya Shelton Williams, said Smith was 21 years old when she began a six-year affair with her married boss and was not stalking him when she was detained by his home, but rather Daniels had asked to meet her and then set her up.
“It was an abuse of power for [Daniel’s] personal gains,” Williams told WJXT. “She was a young lady, misguided maybe if you want to, who is having a relationship or having an affair with a married man. And of course, she was painted as this bad person. But on that day, in particular, she was not a stalker, she was going to meet him as reiterated several times in the past. And he asked her to come meet him.”
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DeSantis has named Matt Walsh, a 17-year veteran with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, as interim sheriff. He has a total of 23 years in law enforcement.
To avoid a conflict of interest, DeSantis had assigned Daniels' criminal case to the State Attorney's Office in Ocala, which does not handle Clay County or Jacksonville cases.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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