Gillum asks FBI to move 'quickly' with local investigation

Jeff Burlew | Tallahassee Democrat

Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum told reporters Saturday he has communicated with the FBI about the need for its investigation to conclude to avoid influencing the governor’s race or impacting community business.

“My hope is that they will move quickly,” he said. “And frankly that is the message that we tried to communicate as best we can to the investigating authorities, that if it is truly the intention of the FBI not to have impact on elections .... then it is my hope and it has been our request that they move quickly to bring this thing to heel.”

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Gillum’s comments came Saturday before his appearance at the Florida LGBT Democratic Caucus conference at the Hotel Duval. They followed the public release of a photograph showing Gillum on a boat in New York City with a man believed to be an undercover FBI agent who posed as a developer named Mike Miller and one of the mayor’s longtime friends, lobbyist Adam Corey. Gillum acknowledged he did not know at the time that Miller was possibly a federal agent.

“I suspect that as this thing continues, the facts will begin to be made clear,” he said. “I wish I could control the wild speculation, largely egged on by certain media folks, but I don’t really have the ability to do that. So I just have to do the best I can be weathering it.”

Gillum declined to answer questions from the Tallahassee Democrat about his trip to New York last year and his encounters with Miller, who first appeared in Tallahassee in 2015 as part of an FBI probe into possible public corruption. Miller, along with two other presumed undercover agents, met with numerous public officials before vanishing earlier this year.

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A federal grand jury issued subpoenas in June for documents from the city and the city/county Community Redevelopment Agency involving eight local business people and more than a dozen of their companies. Among those listed were Corey and the city-subsidized Edison restaurant, which he co-owns.

After the subpoenas became public, Gillum acknowledged meeting with the FBI without an attorney. He said he was told at the time he was not a focus of its investigation. The agency, which generally doesn't discuss or even acknowledge investigations, has not publicly confirmed that assertion.

Gillum said he has had a long friendship with Corey going back to his days in student government at Florida A&M University. He also noted he knows everyone else named in the subpoenas.

“I do wish a positive conclusion for everyone involved, but I just don’t know,” he said. “I can only answer for what my actions have been. And so far as my actions are concerned, I’m 1,000 percent confident that I have not done anything to break any laws or come close to it.”

Gillum added that, “If I’m guilty of anything, it’s been that I’ve been a good friend and have hung out with friends and have done things that normal people do that all of a sudden now that we’ve got the potential of an undercover FBI agent involved ... are under a different cloud of suspicion.

"But under a normal circumstance, you know, I met these folks on up-and-up circumstances. I had no reason to believe otherwise up until this point, where more information is being revealed about who is who and what is what. And I still don’t all the way know. None of us do.”

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or follow @JeffBurlew on Twitter.