‘Nothing Criminal’ After Investigation Of Elite Vaccine Clinic

MANATEE COUNTY, FL — A Manatee County Sheriff’s Office investigation found “nothing criminal” in Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh’s organization of a vaccine clinic only for those living in the county’s wealthiest ZIP codes.

That event bypassed the county's vaccine lottery system in place at the time. Baugh also created a VIP list for the clinic. Of the five names on that list, hers was one of them.

A criminal complaint against Baugh was filed Feb. 22 by Michael Barfield, a paralegal for Denovo Law Services, LLC in Sarasota and the board president for the ACLU of Florida. In his complaint, he alleged that Baugh violated three Florida state statutes regarding misuse of public position, official misconduct and misuse of confidential information.

The sheriff’s office investigated for four months, conducting numerous interviews and reviewing hundreds of documents, and ultimately “concluded that none of Baugh’s actions rose to the level of a crime,” according to a news release from MCSO.

“Throughout this investigation, several additional criminal statues were considered for their potential applicability to Baugh’s involvement with the vaccination event, but none were determined to germane to this fact pattern,” the sheriff’s office said. “Barring new evidence, no probable cause exists to charge Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh with a criminal offense.”

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Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells said, “From the point we received this complaint our goal was to conduct a very thorough investigation. We spent countless hours on this, focusing not only on the statutes mentioned in the complaint, but also examining whether other laws were possibly broken. Nothing criminal was found.”

The investigative report has been forwarded to the Florida Commission on Ethics, per the agency’s request, MCSO said.

A local attorney, Jennifer Hamey, filed an ethics complaint against Baugh with the Florida Commission on Ethics in February. In mid-June, she said the case has passed the commission's legal review and has been assigned to an investigator.

Chris Gilbert, who ran against Baugh as a Democratic write-in candidate in District 5 last year, filed complaints with the Florida Department of Emergency Management and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in mid-June after his question went unanswered and was called "not appropriate" by Saur.

Gilbert told Patch that he had concerns about equal treatment for all District 5 residents — especially those "not rich and white and living in Lakewood Ranch" — after Baugh hosted a pop-up COVID-19 vaccine clinic only for those living in the district's wealthiest ZIP codes in February.

In the video of the virtual town hall meeting, Gilbert can be heard asking, "We know that there is likely to be an unpublished and informal VIP list for accessing all of the services of District 5. What fail-safes do you have in place to ensure that folks like in my ZIP code of 34208 don't get ignored when we're writing for help in emergencies?"

Gilbert claimed that Baugh "doesn't answer any emails unless they're from donors or someone who specifically (and) reliably supports her. So, how do people know that they're going to get equal treatment when they write in for help?"

Saur responded, "Ok, that's, that's not an appropriate question."

In an emailed statement about the vaccine clinic in February, Baugh told ABC7, "I have apologized to my constituents and my colleagues for a lapse in judgment. These petty partisan political calls are nothing more than the divisive politics our Nation needs to steer away from. I will continue working to bring more vaccine to Manatee County and lead us through this pandemic."