The Redacted, pt 1: Are Jacob Oliva and Manny Diaz the DoE/Jefferson scandal's mystery names?
A long overdue DoE/Jefferson records dump includes provocative redactions that appear to break Florida public records law. The records also show why a federal grand jury was and is necessary.
The email screenshot above is an officially released public record about the DOE/Jefferson bid-rigging scandal. Your state government has altered that record through redaction. Your state government cited no legal public records exemption that allows it to perform such an alteration when it released this document a few days ago. The redaction appears illegal on its face.
This redacted public record, from May 31, 2022, is email correspondence involving Florida Department of Education Inspector General Mike Blackburn, who I consider an active part of the DoE/Jefferson scandal cover-up
Blackburn is communicating with two people representing an unidentified state government office, whose names are redacted. Blackburn asks the redacted names what he should tell Rep. Allison Tant, D-Tallahassee and me as Blackburn closes out our formal OIG complaints about the DoE'/Jefferson scandal.
Hi [Redacted] and [Redacted],
As [Redacted] and I discussed on Friday we are getting ready to close our complaints on the Jefferson County issue. I understand that you are still reviewing the issue and probably will be for the next few months or more. Do you mind if I include in my closing letter to my complainant that your office is still reviewing this matter or is that not for public disclosure.
The unidentified person answers Blackburn with: “If that is a document that can ultimately go public I would prefer that it is not for public disclosure.” Again, note the date — May 31, 2022.
That date and the word “the” in a different redacted record are the main reasons I think former interim Florida Commissioner of Education Jacob Oliva and current Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz are likely candidates for at least two of the three possible redacted names.
I’ll explain in a moment.
Why did the state finally release these records now? Who are the redacted names? Which office is “your office"? What further “review” occurred?
Here is what the DoE’s OIG actually sent me on June 9, 2022, to close out my complaint about the DoE/Jefferson scandal. This is 10 days after the redacted Blackburn email.
Good Afternoon Mr. Townsend,
Thank you for the information you provided to the Office of the Inspector General. As you pointed out in your email dated February 15, 2022, and again in a subsequent conversation, the information provided was not your allegations, nor did you have any specific knowledge of the allegations beyond what you read in public records and public reporting. After reviewing your complaint, the information contained within your complaint, and other pertinent information, we have determined that no further investigation is warranted at this time. Should any new information be presented, the OIG reserves the right to re-open the complaint.
Again, thank you for your time and the information you provided.
Sincerely,
Office of Inspector General
In accordance with the wishes of the redacted official from the Blackburn email, that final OIG communication to me included no reference to any state office “still reviewing the issue.”
Soon after that, later in June 2022, reporter Lawrence Mower of the Tampa Bay Times requested state investigative records related to DoE/Jefferson. Mower’s request was finally fulfilled in late September of 2023.
That’s right: the public records request that produced the redacted Blackburn email was 16 months old. (I was able to get a copy of the records, but not from Mower.)
So why would the state obey the law and fill it at all? Why now?
The DeSantis administration is famous for giving reporters and the public and the law the middle finger on public records requests. Why would it break character now and fulfill this request, with an illegal on-its-face, provocative redaction seemingly guaranteed to create attention?
I don’t know; but I bet the delayed document dump relates somehow to the newly announced DoE/Jefferson federal grand jury. I suspect somebody is sticking it to some body. I just don’t know who.
An inside account of a “holistic” investigation that didn’t exist
The state records from Mower’s request come from the Office of the Inspector General.
They account for the state’s so-called “investigation” of the sprawling DoE/Jefferson scandal. The records make a blatant liar out of Taryn Fenske, DeSantis’ spokeswoman in 2022.
Mower’s recent article summarizes the overall story these records tell in three succinct paragraphs:
TALLAHASSEE — After Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education department was accused of steering a multimillion-dollar contract to a politically connected consultant, his administration said the state’s chief inspector general would do a “holistic” review of the 2021 bid process.
That review never delved very deep, according to the results contained in 124 pages of records received from the governor’s office in response to a public records request.
DeSantis’ chief inspector general, Melinda Miguel, never interviewed anyone involved in the case, the records show. Her office instead referred the case back to the Department of Education’s inspector general, who produced no reports and pulled no records.
Mower’s article does not mention or explore the redacted Blackburn email and its implications. But the fun thing about illegal redactions is that they allow for rampant identity speculation. So let’s speculate now.
Alas, it’s probably not Corcoran
The juiciest possibility is that “your office” is the Commissioner of Education’s Office — and that one redacted name is Richard Corcoran, the former Commissioner of Education. Corcoran helped engineer the failed charter takeover of Jefferson County public schools and oversaw the entire Jefferson County bid-rigging scandal.
Corcoran was recently named the obscenely, lavishly paid permanent president of Fake New College as part of anti-woke mafia-style bust out of a once functioning public institution. I wrote some time ago how thoroughly the New College takeover resembles the Jefferson takeover.
That hiring decision almost certainly won Fake New College’s Board of Grifters a future dance with a grand jury — whether it be the active DoE/Jefferson federal grand jury or the grand jury that will investigate the eventual implosion of the Fake New College takeover.
Everything — and I mean everything — that Richard Corcoran touches implodes on the public in incompetence, grift, and scandal. Fake New College will get its full turn. I’m betting on 2027; but it could happen sooner. See the already defective “business plan.”
However, it seems unlikely (but not impossible) that Corcoran is one of the redactions in the DoE/Jefferson email — just because of timing. Corcoran announced in March 2022 — in the middle of the DoE/Jefferson scandal — that he was quitting as Commissioner of Education, effective April 29, 2022.
Jacob Oliva was interim Education Commissioner on May 31, 2022. Manny Diaz took over the next day.
On the day Corcoran officially left DoE, April 29, 2002, the Florida Board of Education named State Sen. Manny Diaz, R-Hialeah as Corcoran’s replacement, effective June 1, 2022. At the same time, the BoE named the Department of Education’s Senior Chancellor Jacob Oliva as interim Commissioner of Education through May 31, 2022.
May 31, 2022 is the date of Blackburn’s redacted email.
If “your office” is the Commissioner of Education’s Office, Jacob Oliva was the commissioner on May 31, 2022. And it seems entirely plausible that sitting Sen. Manny Diaz, who would become the permanent education commissioner the next day, would be copied on a 5:15 p.m. email as a hand off for a major department scandal and PR problem.
Again, I want to emphasize that this is simply informed speculation — made possible only by the unjustified redaction. Don’t redact without citing the exemption; and I won’t speculate.
But “Jacob” and “Sen. Diaz” seem to fit in the redacted windows of the email; and the “As [redacted] and I discussed Friday” could be a third person working for DoE — a chief of staff-type person maybe.
Moreover, in a log of investigative work released as part of Mower’s request, the state documented that Blackburn spoke with “the [redacted]” on May 31 and then three-ish other redacted names. See below.
“The” commissioner; “the” OIG; or “the” governor seem to me the most likely candidates for the “the.” Would you agree?
To try to end the speculation, I will send a formal request to the Florida Department of Education public affairs folks on Monday asking them to confirm or deny that “your office” sits within the DoE. If it does, I will ask them to clarify the names.
I will also ask DoE to clarify if DoE requested the redaction on the OIG records released to Mower.
Oliva and Diaz are at the beating heart of the DoE/Jefferson scandal, along with Corcoran
If you know anything at all about the DoE/Jefferson failed charter takeover and bid-rigging scandal it collapsed into, you know that Manny Diaz and Jacob Oliva are both neck deep in it.
If either one of them wrote “I would prefer that it is not for public disclosure,” they wrote it about an investigation that should have put both of them under oath as key witnesses and/or subjects of investigation.
Throughout the DoE/Jefferson scandal, Diaz worked for the failed charter provider for Jefferson County — Academica. He was literally an Academica employee. As a state senator, he helped steer the contract and big funding to his employer, which then failed abjectly and quit on Jefferson County. Full background on Manny Diaz’s connection to the DoE/Jefferson scandal at this link.
In the aftermath of the Jefferson takeover collapse, Jacob Oliva was the only player in the Florida Department of Education who found himself caught up in both tracks of a two-track corrupt bidding process.
Jacob Oliva is now the fairly high-profile leader of Arkansas’ schools, carrying out Sarah Huckabee Sanders version of the DeSantis’ anti-woke book-banning and groomer-grubber grift. Blackburn cleared Oliva on one DoE/Jefferson track; but no one investigated the second, far more serious, track.
I think the federal grand jury, which is focused on that more serious track, is particularly bad news for Jacob Oliva, which I explained at this link a few weeks ago.
Why the redactions could be, but probably aren’t, from OIG Melinda Miguel’s office
The other plausible possibilities for “your office” and “the [redacted]” are the governor’s office and the state’s Office of Inspector General, which is held by Melinda Miguel.
I mentioned above that I consider DoE OIG Blackburn an active part of the DoE/Jefferson cover-up. I’m using “cover-up” here in a non-legal sense, just for the purposes of clarity. I’m not accusing Blackburn of a crime. I’m accusing him of refusing to do his job — or I’m accusing his superiors of not allowing him to do his job. Here’s why:
Blackburn investigated the more obvious, but less serious, Melissa Ramsey/Andy Tuck track of the two-track corrupt bid process. That investigation was somehow leaked to Peter Schorsch’s Florida Politics site, which “broke” the DoE/Jefferson scandal in late 2021 and then never mentioned it again. Oliva was interviewed as part of that investigation.
Blackburn’s investigation of Ramsey/Tuk mentioned, but did not investigate, the more serious track involving a company called MGT — a track to which all manner of Corcoran associates were connected. The Tampa Bay Times broke that story a few weeks after the story on the Ramsey/Tuck track broke.
That failure to investigate the MGT track is what spurred DeSantis spokeswoman Taryn Fenske to announce that Melinda Miguel, the overall state OIG, would do a “holistic review” and an “all-of-the-above” investigation. Blackburn is only the OIG for the Department of Education, not the state as a whole.
Rep. Allison Tant and I followed up with our own specific complaints to the state OIG, seeking to enforce what Fenske had promised on behalf of the governor. One of my goals was to go over Mike Blackburn’s head and get the investigation away from DoE. That did not happen.
As my own experience and the investigative records make clear, Miguel’s office just handed the whole “holistic review” back to Blackburn so he could keep ignoring the MGT track of the scandal. Blackburn personally handled my brief and rather pointless interview with OIG staff.
All of that could argue for “your office” being Miguel’s — and the redacted names being affiliated with state OIG. I’ve even heard some speculation that people in Miguel’s Office may have law enforcement background that allows for redacting their names. There are three reasons I find that unlikely:
Miguel’s name — and others from her office — are all over other records in the total package sent to Mower. So that would seem to argue against the law enforcement redaction angle.
You can’t really cite an ongoing investigation exemption today concerning a limited “review” 16 months ago.
There is nobody in Miguel’s office — Miguel included — politically significant or high profile enough to protect from political embarrassment with illegal redaction. So it makes no sense to do.
It could be the governor’s office, but the meekish: I would prefer that it is not for public disclosure doesn’t really seem their style or voice.
All that, for me, points to “your office” as the Education Commissioner’s office, with Oliva, Diaz, and a staff person of some kind as three redacted names.
I look forward to DoE proving my informed speculation right or wrong.
Part 2 will focus on an intriguing question: is a conspiracy a conspiracy if someone blows it up before consummation? This question relates to this sentence from Blackburn’s investigative log:
This is the closest Blackburn and the state came to explaining why they did not to try to investigate the MGT track of the bid-rigging scandal — which the federal grand jury is investigating.