Andrew Gillum opens up about Miker Miller, Hamilton tickets, trust, FBI

They were sitting at a local restaurant and Miller said that he wanted to support Gillum statewide, but was interested in local government.

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“If we could count on your help here at the local level we could be interested in helping you,” Gillum said Miller told him.

Gillum, who has been hammered by his GOP rival Ron DeSantis over the FBI investigation, replied that he wanted Miller’s support to be out of friendship, not in exchange for some favor.

“That was my way of sort of putting a hard line in place,” Gillum said. “To me, that felt like that crossed into a transaction. To me, if he wanted to support my run for governor, it would mean that he was looking for me to help him.”

During the course of their friendship, Miller never made a specific ask, he said. 

“But this encounter, in particular, I was making an ask in my run for governor, and he responded in a way that seemed transactional,” Gillum said. “I never followed up, he never followed up with me and that was the end of it.”

The issues: Andrew Gillum pledges to find cooperation with Trump, GOP-controlled Legislature

The back story

Miller and two sidekicks spent about a year in Tallahassee meeting city and county officials in an attempt to get the Frenchtown/Southside community redevelopment district boundaries redrawn to include property they claimed to be interested in developing.

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The investigation became public when the FBI dropped two subpoenas on City Hall in June 2017.

Miller, Mike Sweets and Brian Butler were introduced around town to officials by Adam Corey, a former restaurateur and lobbyist who was Gillum’s friend since their student government days in college and is one of several people at the center of the FBI investigation. 

They bought football tickets that Corey arranged to be given to local officials, including former manager Rick Fernandez, who was forced to step down because of the incident.

And they arranged a series of outings around an August 2016 weekend that Gillum was in New York on business for People for the American Way, his former employer.

The NYC outings and a trip to Costa Rica arranged by Corey are the subject of an ethics complaint filed against Gillum by a local businessman and frequent critic of City Hall.

Text messages and other documents pertaining to those trips were released last week by Corey’s Republican lawyer, Chris Kise, after they were subpoenaed by the state ethics commission.

Gillum had his own hotel room under PFAW, but asked Corey for a hotel room for Aug. 11, 2016, his last night in the Big Apple. When Corey told Gillum that the undercover agent, “Mike Miller,” and his “crew” had tickets for him to go see the musical “Hamilton,” the mayor responded by saying, “Awesome news.” 

Gillum, Corey and Miller also toured around the Statue of Liberty on a boat ride that included catering and cocktails.

A question of trust

The next question posed to Gillum during the Editorial Board meeting was a synthesis of several Facebook questions read by Randi Atwood, the Democrat’s platforms editor, which was basically, how can Gillum reassure voters of his honesty and earn their trust.

“I don’t think there is evidence that I’m not honest,” Gillum said. 

The text messages, he explained, were his acknowledgment to Corey that the tickets had been secured and he was going to see the show. 

“It’s an acknowledgment of me saying, ‘That’s great!’ Under no circumstance did I assume that to mean Mike or Adam had purchased the ticket,” Gillum said. 

He said he’d asked his brother Marcus, who was also in New York, “to take care of it for me because quite frankly I was juggling work. You can see from the text messages that it wasn’t clear I was going to be able to join them because I was there for work.”

Brothers Marcus and Andrew Gillum and lobbyist/friend Adam Corey during a New York harbor boat ride with undercover FBI agents. (Photo: Photos subpoenaed by the state ethics commission)

Gillum said most people see Miller only as a FBI agent, but to him, Miller was a friend. Miller hung out with his friends, joined his workout group and exercised with them.

“What is most upsetting to me is that because you know someone or have a friendship with someone that it inures to making unethical decisions in their benefit,” Gillum said. “My integrity has always been intact.”

In retrospect, Gillum said, he would have asked more questions and dug deeper into Miller’s background.

“I took things at their value in the way they were presented to me,” he said. “I have to tell you, given the last almost two years of my life in this, you won’t find me making that kind of mistake again. You won’t find that kind of trusting relationship that I had found before.”

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He chalked it up to growing up in the realm of professional politics, which he entered at the age of 23 when he was first elected to the City Commission. 

“My innocence around how this process is supposed to work has always been intact. Only since this incident did it start to shake that a little bit, and the truth is you can’t always trust what is right in front of you. You have to guard yourself in this life and in this world, because just because someone is around you doesn’t mean they have good intentions for you.”

Gillum defended his tenure on the commission.

“You won’t find a single example of my service that would substantiate maliciousness,” he said. “That is not who I am or how I live my life. To be wrapped up in that way in this political season has been rough. You won’t find me putting myself in that situation again.”