OPINION

Déjà Vu: Soros-Backed Rogue Prosecutor Refuses to Prosecute

Zack Smith •   October 15, 2025

As Yogi Berra famously quipped, “It’s [like] déjà vu all over again.” 

Monique Worrell, the George Soros-backed rogue prosecutor in Orlando, Florida, is once again demonstrating her unfitness to serve.

Worrell, who won reelection even though Gov. Ron DeSantis had previously removed her from office, held a press conference to defend her decision not to prosecute a man accused of publicly masturbating and indecently exposing himself to children playing at a local splash pad.

She disingenuously tried to avoid responsibility for this decision by saying that she didn’t know about the case personally. She said at the press conference, “I am standing before you today telling you that I trust the word of the attorney assigned to this case when he said, although those actions were wrong, he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they were illegal … ”

That’s insane, especially given that a father, at the park with his 2-year-old child, saw the man—and that video evidence corroborated the father’s eyewitness testimony.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier publicly rebuked Worrell, reminding her that “public safety depends upon the faithful execution of your duties.” He told Worrell, “You have a duty to prosecute criminal cases on behalf of the people.” And he said that it should go without saying that a “man who masturbated on a park bench in front of—and perhaps to—small, innocent children should be detained and criminally prosecuted.”

Uthmeier ended his rebuke by emphasizing that Worrell’s failure to prosecute this case and others “breaches … [her] duties as a prosecutor … In addition to neglect of duty and incompetence, it may further amount to misfeasance and malfeasance.”

This warranted shot across the bow matters because the Florida Constitution provides that “ … the governor may suspend from office any state officer not subject to impeachment [which includes state attorneys] … for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty … [or] incompetence,” among other grounds.

DeSantis already suspended Worrell in 2023, after having suspended Andrew Warren, another Soros-supported prosecutor, in 2022. The Florida Supreme Court upheld both decisions

Now, Uthmeier is making a compelling case that DeSantis may once again have grounds to suspend Worrell.

The sad reality is that wherever Soros-supported rogue prosecutors have taken office, crime and suffering have increased. Victims rarely receive justice, and members of the community continue to be endangered by these prosecutors’ failures to do their basic duties. 

There’s no other way to explain the lenient sentence Worrell signed off on for Peter Washington, a man who, as Uthmeier described, “was convicted [in 1995] of attempting to rape a child under 12” and was arrested again in 2023, “this time for molesting children over age 12.”

Washington faced “27.25 years to life in prison,” but in “June 2025, Monique Worrell gave him just 15 years of probation,” Uthmeier said. That’s hardly a fitting sentence.

Alexander Hamilton presciently said that “a large and well-organized Republic can scarcely lose its liberty from any other cause than that of anarchy, to which a contempt of the laws is the high road.” Through Worrell’s prosecutorial decisions—or indecisions—she’s fostered contempt for the rule of law, failed to protect her community, and failed to appropriately seek justice for the victims of violent (or really any!) crimes. 

Orlando-area residents deserve better. Since Worrell seems not to have changed her ways after having been suspended from office during her first tenure as state attorney, she may leave DeSantis with no choice but to suspend her again. 

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Zack Smith
Zack Smith | Contributor
Zack Smith is a senior legal fellow and manager of the Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program in The Heritage Foundation's Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
You can send tips to zack.smith@heritage.org and follow him on X tzsmith
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