Florida Bulldog

Florida Bulldog is an independent, nonpartisan online news site staffed by veteran professional journalists. We exist thanks to the public's financial support. We are a federally tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization and contributions to us are tax deductible.

All of our stories since we began in 2009 are online, searchable and free to the public.

Florida Bulldog began as Broward Bulldog. We changed our name to Florida Bulldog in January 2015 to better reflect the scope of our coverage. Florida Bulldog's focus is on Miami-Dade and Broward counties, although we do report news from Tallahassee and elsewhere that impacts South Florida and its residents. We are also an outlier, providing coverage of 9/11 you will find nowhere else.

Some highlights of our 2023 coverage: In January we broke the story that Gov. Ron DeSantis was being accused of participating in acts of torture on detainees when he was a U.S. Navy Jag at Guantanamo. On Oct. 6, in response to a New York Times piece that sought to label detainee claims against DeSantis as "unfounded," we published our letter to the NYT detailing our request for a correction.

In August, we disclosed the $400,000 conflict of interest of Florida Commission on Ethics chairman Glen Glizean, who resigned less than two weeks later. Throughout the year, we broke stories about Florida Supreme Court Justice Charles Canady's conflict of interest while hearing the high-profile abortion ban case; the high court's apparent effort to gerrymander state trial courts via a proposed court "consolidation;" the civil court clash between the Everglades Foundation and its former top scientist; and the free trip to a posh Yellowstone resort a right-wing law school gave federal judge Aileen Cannon, who now presides over the classified documents criminal case against ex-President Trump.

2023 marked our 12th consecutive year providing exclusive coverage of developments around the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. That included stories about the massive New York civil case brought by thousands of 9/11 families against Saudi Arabia; a civil case arising from the 2019 terrorist attack by a Saudi military officer at the Pensacola Naval Air Station; and new information from ex-FBI agents who accused top CIA and FBI officials of a 9/11 cover up.

Our 9/11 coverage began in 2011 with the disclosure of another secret FBI investigation of Saudis in Sarasota with ties to both the hijackers and the kingdom's royal family. The family fled their home two weeks before the terrorist attacks - leaving behind their cars, clothes, furniture and personal belongings. The FBI had information in its files stating that the family had "many connections" to the hijackers, yet never disclosed that to Congress or the 9/11 Commission, according to ex-Florida U.S. Sen. Bob Graham. 

Twice, we used the Freedom of Information Act to sue the Department of Justice for 9/11 records. We obtained hundreds of pages of reports, most notably a 2012 FBI summary report that disclosed the existence in 2016 of  Operation Encore, another secret FBI probe of Saudi government complicity in 9/11. Today, Operation Encore is at the center of the multi-billion dollar civil litigation in New York. In September 2021, President Biden issued an executive order requiring the FBI to conduct a declassification review of its Encore records, resulting in the release of thousands of pages previously said to be "state secrets." Those records led to numerous stories that have greatly expanded public understanding of what led up to the deadliest attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor.

Our small but highly experienced staff produced 88 watchdog news stories through Nov. 1, or more than twice a week on average. Other important stories we reported on this year:

1. Allegations of corruption at the top of the wealthy, Hollywood-based Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the re-election of controversial tribal chairman Marcellus Osceola Jr.

2. A variety of reports from the courts about Florida's befuddling new voting laws, women's dwindling health care options as Florida targeted the abortion pill, how the Supreme Court hides an order used to justify ethics rules that protects lawyer/politicians like Attorney General Ashley Moody, and how at a Planned Parenthood hearing in September, Florida's justices made it clear that the right to abortion in Florida is doomed.

3. A pair of stories about major fraud allegations against Florida Panthers owner Vincent Viola's company, Virtu Financial. One, by an Ohio pension fund, accused Viola of using his control of Virtu Financial to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars away from public investors. In Oct., the SEC sued Virtu alleging it and a subsidiary had defrauded customers.

4. Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony, running for re-election, faces twin probable cause findings of perjury, but the state dawdles in its prosecution. In Oct., we broke the story that 17 BSO deputies were charged with PPP loan fraud.