For months, we’ve watched Attorney General James Uthmeier stagger from spectacle to scandal, firing off baseless threats against public officials and acting more like a schoolyard bully than a statewide leader. Perhaps most disturbing, however, are the repeated signs that Uthmeier just isn’t that knowledgeable about the law.
Two incidents in Orange County this week have done nothing to shake that impression.
First, Uthmeier fired off a belligerent post on X accusing former state Sen. Linda Stewart of “harassing law enforcement to prevent them from doing their jobs” and “playing politics with the lives and safety of law enforcement officers.” That claim is purely idiotic, based on Stewart’s social-media post that simply read “ICE in Lynx Central Station downtown.”
This was no threat. During her time in the Legislature and County Commission, Stewart became known for her motherly, protective stance toward the people she served, even those who couldn’t vote for her. This was a worried warning — spurred by a concern for people Stewart knows must feel defenseless right now. That’s particularly true after last week’s disastrous decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, saying people suspected of immigration violations can now be detained if they are overheard speaking a language other than English, or if they simply look “non-American.”
Stewart’s advisory posed no threat to law enforcement; if immigration police were concerned about their locations being known, they would not have made their presence so obvious. Beyond that, Stewart’s post was 100% within the boundaries of the First Amendment — something Florida’s attorney general should be familiar with. Uthmeier apparently hasn’t read it in awhile, let alone followed the spate of recent cases holding that people who spot immigration officials out in public are free to warn others on social media or by other means. Why didn’t Uthmeier know that?
Justifiable murder?
It gets worse. As part of his belligerent post, Uthmeier demanded that Orange/Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell investigate Stewart. That’s pretty brassy, given that the attorney general had — just a few hours prior — levied threats against Worrell herself, as part of a demand that our local prosecutor drop murder charges against an Orlando woman charged with ramming a fellow motorist with her car before shooting and killing him.
You read that right. In Uthmeier’s world, a former senator exercising free speech may constitute a crime. But he’s ready to toss “get out of jail free” cards to people accused of violent homicide.
The incident that sparked Uthmeier’s ire happened Dec. 2, 2024. According to Orlando Police, Tina Allgeo, 48, was driving on Colonial Drive east of downtown Orlando in morning rush-hour traffic when her car was rear-ended by a vehicle driven by Mihail Tsvetkov, a 42-year-old native of Bulgaria who owned a small landscaping/pet-sitting business. Allgeo told police that when she got out of her car to check for damage, Tsvetkov attempted to hit her with his vehicle as he swerved around her. Then she hit his car accidentally as she tried to get his license plate, she told police.
But police saw things differently, based partially on a video taken by another driver that, according to the report, “shows the shooter (Allgeo) following the decedent’s vehicle and purposefully striking it with her vehicle.” The video then shows Tsvetkov getting out of his vehicle, looking at the damage, and approaching Allgeo’s car. There are conflicting reports about what happened next. Allgeo claims Tsvetkov began to beat her, and a witness on the scene supported that account — but another witness who observed the encounter was adamant that Tsvetkov didn’t attack Allgeo, according to the report.
Minutes later, Tsvetkov was dead, shot in the face by a handgun Allgeo was carrying in her car.
A system at work
In February, Worrell’s office presented the case to a grand jury, which — after hearing all the evidence — indicted Allgeo on two counts: Aggravated battery (for hitting Tsvetkov’s car) and second-degree murder. It’s important to understand that an indictment is not a conviction. Prosecutors still have to prove the charges against Allgeo beyond a reasonable doubt. In mid-August Allgeo’s attorney asked the judge assigned to the case to dismiss the charges, claiming his client was protected by Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law. That motion is set to be heard in mid-October.
How, then, is Uthmeier so convinced that Worrell is persecuting an innocent woman? How was Worrell’s office supposed to know, in February, that the defense would claim stand-your-ground in August?
In a scathing, two-page letter, the attorney general swallowed the defense attorney’s story hook, line and sinker, proclaiming that “Florida law dictates that (Allgeo’s) actions constitute justifiable self-defense.” A few paragraphs later, he says “Notwithstanding the clarity of Florida’s law and its applicability here, you chose to present charges to a grand jury, where neither Allgeo nor her counsel had the opportunity to present her immunity defense.” Florida’s attorney general should know that’s not how grand juries work. Nor are prosecutors supposed to simply drop major charges because the defendant says they had good reason to do what they did.
Ironically, until this past week, Uthmeier’s main criticism against Worrell was that she was too lenient in pursuing cases of high importance, including last week’s allegation that she’d been lax on prosecuting cases involving the deadly drug fentanyl. Hours later, Worrell hit back with statistics disproving that claim. By now, she knows to be prepared: During her first term, Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended her from office for more than a year, citing bogus case numbers that he said proved she was too soft on crime. Even after an investigation by the Sentinel’s Cristobal Reyes cast those claims into serious doubt, he refused to relent.
At the time, Uthmeier was DeSantis’ chief of staff. We don’t know how involved he was in the attempt to smear Orange and Osceola county’s duly elected prosecutor previously, but he’s certainly carrying out the same theme here: His letter about Allgeo’s case not-so-subtly threatens Worrell with another suspension.
Enough. We get it. Uthmeier and DeSantis don’t care for Monique Worrell, and they’ve made deep-blue Orange County their ritual punching bag in their culture wars. But their latest blunders reveal an agenda that has surrendered any claim to consistency or logic. They can’t whine that Worrell’s office is too lenient with offenders — and then howl in defense of someone charged with homicide. They can’t pretend to be upholding the rule of law, while disregarding the free-speech rights of people like Linda Stewart, who was clearly within her rights to post the warning about ICE in downtown Orlando.
And they can’t keep using Orange County as the convenient scapegoat to take out their frustrations and absorb their abuse. The past few months have seen attack after attack: threats to remove the County Commission if it didn’t agree to increase the resources it diverts to immigration enforcement; dark mutterings about a hasty, dubious audit that was more focused on Orange County’s “woke” priorities than the integrity of its fiscal dealings; and ugliest of all in its sheer pettiness and cruelty, the sneak attack that wiped out the rainbow crosswalk outside of the Pulse nightclub, marking a spot where 49 young people lost their lives.
Orange County is not territory for the governor’s malicious games. Our public officials are not his private punching bags. And the antics of DeSantis and Uthmeier are embarrassing — not just here, but across the state and even the nation.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Executive Editor Roger Simmons and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com
