A Florida GOP sheriff allegedly ordered the arrest of his mistress. Now he's the one facing charges.

Darryl Daniels, the sheriff of Clay County, Fla., dialed his deputy from the quiet suburban road with an urgent plea for backup: He was being followed by a stalker in a Jeep and appeared to be in “imminent danger."

But Daniels knew exactly who was behind him on that day in May 2019, prosecutors say: It was Cierra Smith, his former employee and mistress of six years, on her way to meet him at their regular spot. Filming the whole thing was his wife, to whom he had recently confessed the affair.

Now, Smith has resigned from her job, Daniels’s wife has filed for divorce, and the sheriff is the one who ended up behind bars. On Thursday, following a year-long investigation, Florida authorities filed four charges against him and booked him into jail.

Yet just days before he is up for reelection, the embattled 55-year-old — a tough-talking Navy veteran often seen in a white cowboy hat — insists he is “innocent.” On Thursday, Daniels refused to resign or drop out of the race, questioning the “suspicious” timing of the warrant and claiming the scandal does not affect his job performance.

“I want you to look past the smokescreen of dirty politics,” he said in a video released by his office Thursday evening. “One thing I take ownership of as a man is my failures as a husband. That has nothing to do with me as a sheriff.”



https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/14/sheriff-arrested-florida-jail/