Gregory Tony’s ethics woes that have plagued his tenure as Broward’s top law enforcement officer for years could finally reach something of a conclusion this week.

The Florida Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission (CJSTC) is scheduled to rule Thursday on a judge’s urging that Tony, the county’s Sheriff since 2019, be reprimanded for failing to disclose a prior driver’s license suspension.

Administrative Judge Robert Kilbride said in May that Tony should be placed on an 18-month probationary status, reprimanded in writing and compelled to undergo ethics training. The recommendation came about a month after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) called on Kilbride to suspend Tony’s law enforcement certification for six months, followed by a year’s probation.

The CJSTC’s agenda for the Thursday meeting has the item concerning Tony under “exception to recommended order,” which likely refers to a formal written objection to Kilbride’s proposed punishment.

At issue was that Tony did not disclose when he was applying for a driver’s license in Florida that his driver’s licenses had been suspended in Pennsylvania in 1998.

A 2022 FDLE complaint said Tony failed to report the suspension in several subsequent applications between 2007 and 2019, when Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him Sheriff.

FDLE Assistant General Counsel Andrew Digby wrote that Tony violated the public trust, calling the Sheriff’s falsehoods “an act involving moral turpitude” by an official who “is inherently held to a higher standard.”

Tony has repeatedly denied he intentionally withheld the information.

“On my driver’s license applications, I’ve said ‘yes’ a few times (and) omitted and missed one or two here and there,” he acknowledged during a 2022 radio show.

Additionally that year, the Florida Commission on Ethics found probable cause that Tony used his office corruptly when he failed to disclose on official documents that he was arrested as a minor for killing a man.

The panel determined Tony did not tell the whole truth during the hiring process for his employment with the Coral Springs Police Department, when completing a notarized form submitted to the FDLE while serving as Sheriff, and when applying to renew his driver’s license while serving as a law enforcement officer.

The driver’s license case is the first to reach a ruling stage. The process began in July 2023 after Dean Register, FDLE’s Director of Criminal Justice Professionalism, filed a complaint against Tony for allegedly making false statements eight times while applying for a driver’s license.

The homicide disclosure case, meanwhile, began in September 2022. Tony was found not guilty of murder after witnesses failed to testify. But later, he signed an FDLE affidavit asserting, under oath, that he’d never had any criminal records sealed or expunged. His juvenile court records for the shooting had been sealed.

Tony, a Democrat, comfortably won re-election in November with a two-thirds share of the vote, easily outpacing Independent Party candidate Charles Whatley for a second four-year term.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vocal vaccine skeptic and activist lawyer, appeared on track to become the nation’s Health Secretary after winning the crucial support of Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor who says Kennedy has assured him he would not topple the nation’s childhood vaccination program.

In a starkly partisan vote, the Republican-controlled Senate Finance Committee advanced Kennedy’s nomination 14-13, sending his bid to oversee the $1.7 trillion U.S. Health and Human Services agency for a full vote on the Senate floor.

All Democrats on the committee opposed Kennedy, whose family name had been synonymous with their party for generations before he aligned with President Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. They sounded an alarm on Kennedy’s work to sow doubt around vaccine safety and his potential to profit off lawsuits over drugmakers.

A full Senate vote has not yet been scheduled, but with Cassidy’s vote no longer in doubt Kennedy’s nomination is likely to succeed absent any last-minute vote switches. Kennedy has been among the more contentious of Trump’s Cabinet choices, and Republicans coalescing around him showed another powerful measure of near lockstep allegiance to the president.

Cassidy had publicly detailed his personal struggle, as a doctor who has seen the lifesaving ability of vaccines, with Kennedy’s confirmation. “Your past, undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments, concerns me,” Cassidy told Kennedy last week.

Yet when it came to his vote Tuesday, he advanced Kennedy with a simple “aye.”

Cassidy, who is up for re-election next year and could face a Primary challenge, later described “intense conversations” with Kennedy and Vice President JD Vance that started over the weekend and continued into Tuesday morning, just before the vote. Those conversations yielded “serious commitments” from the administration, Cassidy said. His reelection campaign had “absolutely zero to do with the decision,” he told reporters.

Cassidy said in a speech later on the Senate floor that, in exchange for his support, Kennedy has promised not to make changes to existing vaccine recommendations that have been made by a federal advisory committee and has agreed not to scrub the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of statements that clarify vaccines do not cause autism. In addition, Cassidy said Kennedy will consult with him on new hires for the agency and appear if asked quarterly before the Senate’s health committee, which Cassidy chairs. A 30-day notice will be sent to the committee if Kennedy seeks to make changes federal vaccine safety monitoring programs.

“He will be the Secretary,” Cassidy said. “But I believe he will also be a partner in working for this end.”

Cassidy said Kennedy’s formidable following waged a maximum pressure campaign, bombarding his office with thousands of messages daily. Pediatricians reached out, too, expressing fears of rampant disease outbreaks and deaths among children if a man who has a history of denigrating inoculations is installed as the nation’s Health Secretary, he said.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, another vulnerable vote that Kennedy worked to win over, said he was reassured last week by the Health Secretary nominee’s promise to let scientists at the public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes for Health, work “independently.”

“The only way that Bobby Kennedy will get crosswise is if he does take a position against the safety of proven vaccines,” Tillis said. “That will be a problem to me.”

Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky have also been seen as potentially unsecured votes, because they voted against Trump’s Defense Secretary nominee and have expressed concerns about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine work. Kennedy could lose support from all three of those Senators and still become the Health Secretary.

Democrats, meanwhile, have continued to raise alarms about Kennedy’s potential to financially benefit from changing vaccine guidelines or weakening federal lawsuit protections against vaccine makers.

“It seems possible that many different types of vaccine-related decisions and communications — which you would be empowered to make and influence as Secretary — could result in significant financial compensation for your family,” Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote in a letter sent over the weekend to Kennedy.

Kennedy said he’ll give his son all of the referral fees in legal cases against vaccine makers, including the fees he gets from referring clients in a case against Merck. Kennedy told the committee he’s referred hundreds of clients to a law firm that’s suing Merck’s Gardasil, the human papillomavirus vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. He’s earned $2.5 million from the deal over the past three years.

As Secretary, Kennedy would be responsible for food and hospital inspections, providing health insurance for millions of Americans and researching deadly diseases.

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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