Former Miami-Dade County Judge Miguel “Mike” Mirabal. (Screenshot: YouTube.)
The Supreme Court of Florida on Thursday formally disbarred a former judge, agreeing with a referee’s report that he lied in his campaign finance reports.
The ex-judge in question, Miguel “Mike” Mirabal, has a bit of tangled legal web. He previously appeared in a Law&Crime article for allegedly pulling a gun on his neighbor. That case, adjudicated under “no action” in early 2022, has nothing to do with the fact that he can no longer practice law in the Sunshine State. His disbarment originates from his pursuit of an elected judgeship in Miami-Dade County.
“In the end, Mirabal exhibited basic, fundamental dishonesty with his conduct in this case, and we have repeatedly made plain that such a serious flaw ‘cannot be tolerated by a profession that relies on the truthfulness of its members,”” the court said.
As a candidate, he was supposed to regularly file campaign finance reports with the Miami-Dade County Elections Department. The court says that Mirabal overstated his campaign’s coffers for political gain.
“Though he certified each report as correct, the referee found that Mirabal’s campaign finance reports were riddled with material errors about his campaign’s finances, many of which were likely timed to be politically beneficial to his campaign,” the high court wrote. “The most significant reporting errors occurred during the candidate qualifying period, where, just before switching races from group 18 to group 43, Mirabal made a series of amendments to his campaign’s reports that made it appear to the public and others in the race as though he had a larger campaign account balance and was a much better funded candidate than he actually was. After the qualifying period ended, and when a smaller campaign account balance was less detrimental to his campaign, Mirabal amended the reports to decrease the balance of his campaign account.”
For example, on March 8, 2018, just before switching races from group 18 to group 43, he boosted his purported campaign total at $71,829.72.
Then, across separate instances within two hours after the qualifying period ended on May 3, 2018, he dropped the total amount to $39,278.26.
This included his amending of a January 2018 report to remove a $10,000 purported loan from himself.
“In deleting the loan amount from the report rather than amending it or placing it on another report, the referee found that Mirabal basically recognized that the loan did not actually occur and that he had no basis to record it,” the court wrote.
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The Florida Elections Commission fined him $2,000. Asked at a hearing to explain the high number of errors in his campaign reports, Mirabel said these were mistakes and he was filling out forms with which he was unfamiliar.
“The referee found Mirabal’s explanation untruthful,” the court wrote. “He noted that Mirabal, who has served as the closing agent on numerous real estate transactions, was not unfamiliar with reporting financial matters on forms and with ensuring the accuracy and completeness of such forms.”
The referee determined that Mirabal, who had experience as a closing agent on many real estate tractions, knew better and that the “errors” in his campaign reports were “too numerous and far too politically advantageous to be a mere accident.”
The referee determined Mirabal broke the bar rule on dishonesty. Other issues including omitting from his application with the Judicial Nominating Commission that he was a party to six different lawsuits.
The court gave him 30 days to close out his practice and protect the interests of his remaining clients.
Mirabal resigned from his judgeship in April 2021, months before the October 2021 alleged incident with the neighbor. Law&Crime reached out to him for comment.
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