Miami-Dade police,
please open the door.
Go open the door, go open the door.
>> Come outside man, let me talk to you for a second.
Come here, come here, come here, come outside for a second.
>> Step out, step out.
>> Come out, come outside.
>> Come out, take a seat right over here.
[CROSSTALK] >> Sir, take a seat.
>> What happened?
>> You gotta come with me.
>> Come with y'all for what?
>> I'll explain to you once you get dressed.
>> Took you a minute to run to the door.
>> I was sleeping.
>> Were you sleeping?
>> Remember back in August Ron DeSantis down in Florida, his voting task force
was sent out in strong numbers to go and arrest people for voting.
Apparently with guns drawn as we're seeing in this newly released bodycam footage.
So they decided to carry out and have people come out in their underwear,
these folks that are breaking these laws, how dare you.
Some of them just did it because they were registering to vote as we'll see as we
go through more of these.
While this was happening, Ron DeSantis was in front of cameras with a bunch of other
law enforcement behind him in front of a podium,
talking about how much of a bad ass he is.
This is happening while they're arresting folks at gunpoint.
>> The state of Florida has charged and is in the process of arresting
20 individuals across the state for voter fraud [APPLAUSE].
Now, the majority of these people illegally voted in Palm Beach-Broward and
Miami-Dade.
These folks voted illegally in this case and there's gonna be other grounds for
other prosecutions in the future.
They are disqualified from voting because they've been convicted of either murder or
sexual assault and they do not have the right to vote.
>> They do not have the right to vote, they've been convicted of murder or
sexual assault and they're just thumbing their nose at the law.
And in a matter of fact, I guess the guns were necessary.
Here's maybe the not reason why,
as they point out as it's going through with Ron DeSantis.
Someone against this said, we've seen a lot of arrests in recent months for
voting issues here in the state, but I have not seen guns drawn in that manner,
that's what Neil Volz said.
He's the deputy director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which works
with people with felony convictions to help them get their voting rights back.
Now the videos, he said, were alarming and also heartbreaking.
As a matter of fact, one cop showed that they didn't necessarily have to have guns
drawn on folks even though they had been convicted of in this case.
You'll find out the details of these murder cases and
also sexual assault cases because this guy somehow pulled it off without it,
still as a henchman for this voting law.
Let's watch more.
>> Sheriffs want to talk to you, sir.
>> Well, they said they were coming over here, can I please go hang up my phone.
>> Okay, we'll hang it up for you, we'll take a walk back in and
then I'll hang it up for you, all right.
>> What's this for about.
>> They just wanna talk to you, I have to detain you until they get here,
that's my instructions.
Appreciate your cooperation.
>> Why are we going to jail?
>> They would tell me what to do from here.
Did you vote?
>> Did you vote?
>> Not this time, no.
>> Okay [INAUDIBLE].
You got $1,000 bun, sir?
It was for some about false voting.
>> America, when you get pulled over, may be arrested by the cops and
they'll ask you questions like, have you been drinking today, sir?
Do you have any drugs on you?
Maybe weapons?
Did you vote?
They're top four things that you can get arrested for in the country?
As they asked them, think about how scary that is.
This is that country we're talking about, we're leading in democracy,
were the best democracy in the world.
As our law enforcement arrest people and ask them, did you vote?
And by the way, did you hear the back end of that?
You have $1000 to pay?
We're gonna get to why that's the case too.
But what about Ronald Miller and Robert Wood, why did they treat them like this?
Miller and Wood were both convicted of second-degree murder more than
30 years ago,
a crime that causes you to permanently lose your voting rights in Florida.
They had both long completed their sentences for those charges and
were not aware that they were permanently barred from voting,
that's what their lawyers said.
Here's part of that information.
In 2018, Florida voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment
that lifted the state's lifetime voting ban for people with felonies, except for
those with murder or sex-related convictions.
State officials have not offered a theory as to how Miller and
Wood would have known that their second-degree murder convictions
disqualified them from the amendment.
Now, that amendment was changed to those parts and
maybe people could feel more comfortable with who is voting.
Now the thing that people may wanna feel comfortable doing so
is letting these folks know that that's the case.
Because it's coming more and more clear that the whole point was to make
sure they didn't know, so that this could be one of those nice political moments for
Ron DeSantis as he reads about how much of a bad at is he is.
So a little bit more,
the operation to arrest 19 people appears to have come together relatively quickly
just hours before DeSantis held that press conference announcing all the charges.
One particular cop said, they dumped this stuff on me last minute.
One video shows that he was saying that as Miller sits there in handcuffs.
And he also said, I have to plan a three-county operation in four hours.
So the cops that even had to pull it off,
maybe some of them didn't know the degree to which they had to do things.
But also they didn't know how quickly they had to do those things to get
everything done.
I'm gonna get to how this law was also formed around making sure these folks
didn't know and then they could also get arrested, make Ron DeSantis look good.
But first, let's talk about the gun issue and
also how the law enforcement is used in this situation.
Yasmin, what are your thoughts on this, let's start with you.
>> There are a few different angles to this story.
For one, the GOP is already scaring everyday taxpaying Americans into thinking
that armed IRS agents are gonna turn up at their doors and meanwhile,
this is what they're actually doing and enabling.
And I know that this is Florida and I know that this comes from De Santis, but
let's see if any members of the GOP actually condemn these armed arrests.
And another angle here is that the men had criminal histories,
the men who were arrested had criminal histories.
They were convicted of crimes, but they all served their time, right?
So now they should be able to live as free citizens and they should have their voting
rights restored, no taxation without representation, we know that, right?
And then finally, why did the state issue these people voter
registration cards if the state didn't want them to vote?
If those men really weren't supposed to vote, why were they able to?
They're just trying to scare people and
discourage people from voting, that's all this is.
>> Yeah, man those guns too just reminds me of
our country's crisis of masculinity, right?
It's like these dudes, these cops don't feel like cops,
they don't feel like big dogs, if they're not pounding these people's doors for
voting lawfully as convicted felons.
That's one, and then two,
I've actually lived in a house where the cops came to get somebody and
they literally knock on the door in the morning and say such and such home.
Tell them to come downstairs, we need to see them, we've come here to get them.
They didn't bang, they didn't come in, they didn't flash guns and they
literally knocked and said, is this person here, they gotta come with us, right?
And so there's just a way to do this when you feel you're dealing with a citizenry.
Where these cops don't have to act like there's some kind of special forces is
a little bit too much call of duty happening over there.
And then the last thing Jayar,
it's like millions of people in Florida and they arrested 20 of them,
and he's like making a dent in the voting populace is craziness.
>> By the way- >> A press conference for 20 people.
>> I cut in the middle of that applause line that went for
seven to ten seconds after he said, we've got 20 people, which by the way,
you're gonna find out ended up being 19, even worse.
But think of how much tax dollars and energy and
everything went into this operation, again, to make him look good.
Now, this is where the next twist happens though is, how was this law formed?
And did these folks know and did the state officials know these folks didn't know?
Prosecutors claim that Wood and Miller registered and
voted knowing that they were ineligible to do so.
But both men told investigators that they registered after being approached by
canvassers ahead of the 2020 election, received a voter registration card
in the mail and had no idea that they were ineligible.
Again, two of these folks I think their convictions were over 30 years ago.
The voter fraud charges against these two were separately dismissed last year.
Two different Miami-Dade county judges ruled that the statewide prosecutor,
which is handling the cases, did not have the authority to prosecute them.
And a judge in Broward County dismissed another one of the 19 cases on similar
grounds.
Again, like I said, 19 cases, you know who else is confused by this,
maybe these folks should be arrested too.
Because Florida Republicans then passed that law after the whole thing happened
and they're trying to crack down more.
That required those with felons to repay any money that they owed before they could
vote again, that's I think where that $1000 fine came from or something.
The requirement made it extremely difficult for
those with criminal history to figure out if they were eligible to vote, since
the state does not have a centralized system to determine how much they owe.
Last part about this, let's go through the last confusion.
State officials have also struggled to verify the eligibility of those with
felony convictions.
Some of the 19 people charged were not notified of the ineligibility until 2022,
years after they registered.
State officials have yet to explain why it took them so
long to flag ineligible people on the rolls.
I think it might be taking them so long to figure this out because Ron DeSantis
administration told us to do it now and then we retroactively go back and
punish people for the things that we've now implemented later on and
say how dare you, how dare you.
But actually the point,
is from the stand there and go, look how tough on crime I am.
Hey, how about those people, those two folks whose convictions or
arrests got flipped?
Are you gonna have a press conference about that run?
You talk about how that was actually meaningless and
actually absolutely nothing and got you enough votes to win again?
Is that the whole purpose for this whole thing?
They're actors, they're looking to position themselves in a way that they can
then, get re elected and stay the politicians that they are.