Accuses party officials of conspiring to defame him and suppress his campaign in 9-page letter. Seeks removal from office of party officials for hacking candidate vetting process, defamation, and discrimination on basis of sex and disability. Seeks reversal of vetting decision, equal access to party resources. Attacks the misuse of AI chatbots
John Liccione, one of four 2024 Democratic candidates for Congress in Florida's 13th District, has filed a complaint and appeal of the Party's candidate vetting failure decision against him made in June that was announced publicly by the Tampa Bay Times on October 29th.
Page 1 of the 9-page complaint is shown below. The full text of the complaint is below that on this page.
John Liccione has requested a hearing with the Florida Democratic Party leadership in Tallahassee to consider his appeal and his demand for the removal from office of the three party officials in Pinellas County who have been actively conspiring to hack the candidate vetting process and to defame him publicly in violation of Party bylaws. He alleges the party is actively denying him equal access to party resources and speaking engagements on false pretenses in violation of his civil rights on the basis of his sex and disability.
In his complaint he accuses Pinellas Democratic Executive Committee (PDEC) Chair Jennifer Griffith and other vetting committee members to include Mike Fox, and Gulfport Democratic Club Chair April Thanos, of defaming him to the Tampa Bay Times in an October 29th article and to other third parties which include a member of the Gulfport city council.
The full, 9-page complaint is available for download as a pdf file. The full text of the appeal is provided in html form below.
John Liccione for Congress
443-698-8156
January 8, 2024
John Liccione
6800 Gulfport Blvd S
Suite 201-116
South Pasadena, FL 33707
443-698-8156
Nikki Fried, Chair
Florida Democratic Party
201 South Monroe Street, Suite 300
Tallahassee, FL 32301
Subject: Complaint against Pinellas County Executive Committee Chair Jennifer Griffith, et al, and appeal of my candidate vetting failure decision
Dear Chairwoman Fried:
I hereby file this complaint against Pinellas Democratic Executive Committee (PDEC) Chair Jennifer Griffith and other party officials pertaining to their having engaged in a conspiracy to violate party bylaws, and to violate my civil and due process rights on the basis of my sex and disability, in their decision in June to fail me in the candidate vetting process and to publicly defame me to the Tamp Bay Times and to other third parties. I state in support as follows:
Grounds for Appeal and Removal From Office
I accuse PDEC Chair Jennifer Griffith and fellow candidate vetting subcommittee member Michael Fox, and Gulfport Democratic Club Chair April Thanos (collectively, the parties), of engaging in a conspiracy to deny me due process, to violate Florida Democratic Party bylaws, to violate my civil rights on the basis of sex and mental disability, of unequal treatment as compared to their considerations given my Democratic primary opponents, and of conspiring to defame me publicly to the Tampa Bay Times and other third parties.
I accuse the parties of engaging in sex-based and disability-based discrimination stemming from their gender bias as pertaining to the gender of victims and perpetrators in domestic violence cases, and based on the stigma they attach to my PTSD disability. These biases served to contribute to their wrongful decision to rig my candidate vetting process. They failed me while denying me due process. They concealed from me their justification for doing so. They defamed me publicly through the Times and to other third parties which include City government and Democratic party officials in Gulfport, and to higher-ups and other operatives in the Democratic Party and to Democrat-aligned PACs.
I accuse Jennifer Griffith of publicly defaming me to Tampa Bay Times reporters Jay Cridlin and William March, who would proceed to publish Griffith’s false defamatory statements in October and November of 2023. The Times reporters themselves then failed to properly fact-check Griffith’s and others defamatory statements, they concealed from the public my legal and toxicology records I had provided them, and they plagiarized and republished the erroneous output from an AI Chatbot without fact checking.
The Conspiracy
The 1st conspiratorial act undertaken by the parties that is currently known to me absent discovery was undertaken by Jennifer Griffith was when she cut off all communications with me and issued a “burn-notice” or no-contact directive immediately after I sent her my candidate vetting form.
The 2nd act in furtherance of the conspiracy was to refuse to accept or even consider any of my legal documentation and scientific toxicology evidence that proves that I have never been convicted of a crime, let alone a felony. It proves I have never engaged in violence, or stalking. It proves that I am a male domestic violence survivor 4 times over. It proves I suffer from PTSD because of it after having suffered physical battery and four chemical assaults involving heavy-metal poisoning.
The 3rd conspiratorial act was to deny me all due process after I tried to send them my corroborating, expunged legal and toxicology and medical documents which proved the representations I had made on my candidate vetting form about being wrongfully arrested and prosecuted before being fully exonerated, and being a male victim of domestic violence, were all true.
The 4th conspiratorial act was undertaken by Griffith when she sent me an email notifying me that they had failed me in their vetting process, while willfully concealing from me the reason for having done so.
The 5th conspiratorial act was undertaken by Griffith when she sent me an email demanding I not contact her again.
The 6th conspiratorial act was undertaken by Mike Fox, a candidate vetting committee member, when he refused to respond to my email.
The 7th conspiratorial act was undertaken when Griffith refused to respond to my request for information on the party’s appeal process.
The 8th conspiratorial act was to, in secret, communicate to Democratic PACs and the Democratic party at large to not contribute to my campaign and to not to allow me to speak at party events, thus destroying my ability to raise funds for my campaign.
The 9th conspiratorial act was undertaken by Griffith when she publicly leaked to the Tampa Bay Times that I had failed the candidate vetting process. She told the Times that the Democratic party did not recognize me as a candidate. She told them that the party was denying me all party resources. She told them that the party was denying me appearance on all party promotional materials. She told them that the Party was denying me the opportunity to speak at Democratic Party events.
The 10th conspiratorial act was undertaken by Griffith when she told the Times reporter, when asked for a reason they had failed me, that it was because they had found me to be a man of “moral turpitude.” As such, I ultimately had to find out the reason for the vetting failure decision from the Tampa Bay Times article instead of my own party officials.
The 11th Conspiratorial act was undertaken by Mike Fox, who would act to return the $1500 donation I had made to pay for a Democratic party event.
The 12th Conspiratorial act was undertaken by Mike Fox when he defamed me to a Gulfport City Council member.
The 13th Conspiratorial act was undertaken by April Thanos when she defamed me to a Gulfport City Council member.
The 14th conspiratorial act was undertaken by April Thanos when she had my opponents Whitney Fox and Mark Weinkrantz appear as candidate guest speakers at consecutive Gulfport Democratic Club meetings, while actively denying me the same promotional opportunity.
The 15th conspiratorial act was undertaken by Griffith when she granted my opponent Mark Weinkrantz an exception to PDEC’s candidate vetting form submittal requirement: Mr. Weinkrantz would publicly disclose this fact during a recent St Petersburg Democratic Club meeting, where he claimed that he had not been required to submit a candidate vetting form to the PDEC.
The 16th conspiratorial act was undertaken by Griffith when she notified Mark Weinkrantz that an issue had arisen with his candidacy, and she acted to afforded him due process by giving him the opportunity to respond to the vetting committee on the issues raised: This according to Mark Weinkrantz himself.
The Judicial Record and the Absence of any Evidence of Moral Turpitude
There has never been a judicial or medical finding against me of having committed physical abuse, ever, in any criminal or domestic violence proceeding that has withstood any serious prosecutorial and judicial scrutiny and legal due process. There has never been a witness to such abuse. My ex-wife had fully recanted and had rescinded her very first domestic violence protective order that she sought in August of 2016. She herself had it vacated in January 2017. She admitted under oath that I had never been violent towards her. This is in the January 2017 hearing transcript and can be heard on the Court’s audio recording of the hearing which are just two legal records of many that I would have provide the parties and the Times.
There has never been any evidence of physical injury to my ex-wife, or even the threat of physical injury, that has ever been introduced in any judicial proceeding because there is none. My ex-wife has never sought medical treatment for any physical injuries caused by me, because there were none. There has never been a criminal finding of assault, nor of false imprisonment, nor of harassment or stalking, that has ever withstood serious persecutorial and judicial scrutiny and legal due process. In contrast to my wife, I have suffered visible and toxicological signs of physical and chemical assault that I sought treatment for at the ER and my orthopedist.
Trespassing as “Good Trouble”
The one misdemeanor trespassing case for which I received probation was bogus and was ultimately expunged. The incident stemmed from my filing of a criminal complaint of attempted murder against my ex-wife in May of 2017 in the Howard County District Court, and my subsequent refusal to leave the State’s Attorney’s Office lobby during business hours while seeking a meeting to discuss it. I had sat calmly and quietly on the lobby sofa hoping to get a private meeting with a State’s Attorney. I was seeking justice as a poisoned and battered male domestic violence victim that was entitled to be heard and treated with respect under Maryland state domestic violence statutes. The State’s Attorney had me arrested for trespassing in a government building during business hours on false pretenses. This was after she had escalated the situation and ordered me to leave at a time I had been sitting quietly on the sofa. See the pictures below that show the State’s Attorney Devora Kirshner holding my attempted murder complaint in her right hand while ordering me to leave the lobby. You can tell I was sitting down by the upward angle of the camera.
She and the police falsely claimed I had “no legitimate business” to conduct in the State’s Attorney’s Office as grounds for having me arrested and charged with trespassing. My lawyer then lied to me about not being entitled to a jury trial. I was basically conned by my own attorney into accepting the probation plea deal. I had effectively been staging a non-violent one-man, silent and seated protest due to the State’s Attorney’s refusal to meet for a private victim interview so I could tell her what evidence of attempted murder I had in my possession, evidence that included audio recordings captured within my house and barn from 2013.
Every single one of my ex-wife’s false accusations were debunked, disproven, dismissed, and expunged, by two other female domestic violence prosecutors and the Circuit court judges in Maryland. In every instance I was exonerated after being afforded due process of law. The police also recorded in their incident report where I was arrested on false pretenses in May of 2017 that they found no signs of physical injury on my ex-wife at the scene. The police detective who investigated the incident indicated in his (expunged) investigator’s report that he told my ex-wife that the charges would all be thrown out. This can also be provided to the Party committees.
Compound Hearsay, Flawed AI Chatbots, Defamation, and a Multi-million-dollar Divorce
The parties acted to deny me due process and chose to fail me based on what amounts to legally disproven compound hearsay that initially consisted of false, defamatory statements made about me by my ex-wife and her divorce attorneys. This was part of their effort to generate extortion leverage over me by abusing the legal process during what were two, hotly contested, high-net-work divorce cases that spanned 4 years, counting appeals. Seven million dollars of marital assets were at stake that were in the US, France, and Australia.
The divorce case featured, among other nasty, illegal tactics, my six-month pre-trial false imprisonment and malicious prosecution for crimes I did not commit. This was in the absence of any evidence of physical injury and when the video/audio footage proved my wife was lying. It was a case in which I was found not guilty in a 20-minute bench trial. This after the female domestic violence prosecutor realized my ex-wife and her lawyer were hoodwinking her after she had reviewed the video/audio footage of the incident. She also realized I had been extorted under threat of false testimony. She didn’t even offer a closing argument or introduce any evidence or witnesses because none existed. The prosecutor’s name was Joanna Miller. The next female prosecutor who concluded my ex-wife was lying to her was in a 2019 stalking case that was dismissed: That prosecutor’s name was Cara (Whittenbach) Derr.
I will note that one of my ex-wife’s attorneys, Carl Somerlock, was indicted and twice-arrested in the spring and summer of 2019 while that stalking case was going on. He was charged with felony possession and manufacture of ghost machine guns and a silencer by a federal grand jury. My ex-wife and her attorney and her boyfriend, just two months after I had fled the home then filed for divorce, conspired to use my false imprisonment and threat of long-term incarceration as extortion leverage under threat of false testimony.
John Liccione is a Man of High Moral Fiber
I am a man of high moral fiber who is a domestic violence survivor coping with PTSD. A man that stood falsely accused by his physical abuser and her enablers in what was an extortion scheme which netted her over $1.4M, while hiding $2.3 of her own cash in French, Australian, and US bank accounts.
The parties in this matter have made a mockery out of the Florida Democratic Party candidate vetting process. They have treated me as if were an OJ Simpson-like criminal figure that somehow “beat the rap.” But in my situation, unlike OJ, neither my ex-wife nor anyone else has ever won any civil suits against me post-exoneration. Even my ex-wife’s defamation lawsuit against me was dismissed, with prejudice. My criminal domestic violence accusations against her of attempted murder that I had filed were true and are backed by a heavy-metal toxicology report and my medical records.
The parties consider me to be still-guilty after having been proven innocent multiple times. Then, they all willfully closed their eyes, their ears, and their minds. They refused to consider any evidence that served to disprove their false impression of me and their false narrative, on the basis of my sex and disability, and other as yet to be discovered malicious motives. That narrative was based on my ex-wife’s and her divorce attorney’s own false narrative. Their false narrative was republished in subsequent court filings by my ex-wife’s attorney in Maryland. It was then republished again by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals in their published opinions in my divorce appeal.
That basically made all that disinformation about me searchable in Google et al and was aggregated and erroneously reported by AI Chatbots. Since the TRUE legal records were all expunged, they are not visible to search engine crawlers. As such, the expunged records are not considered by the AI chatbots since they’re invisible to search engines. The parties’ decisions were based on not just disproven hearsay, but disproven compound hearsay that had been laundered 12-times removed from the record of truth. The truth record is the expunged court records that I had offered to provide the parties, and that I had actually provided to the Times.
The fraudulent hearsay first came (1) out of the mouth of my ex-wife, to (2) the police and her lawyers, to (3) the courts in pleadings and attorney oral argument, then (4) onto the Internet as public records where (5) they’re all indexed and were republished by CaseText et al; which (6) is itself indexed and made searchable by the main search engines; whose search results are then (7) aggregated and misinterpreted by AI chatbots who don’t have access to expunged criminal case records, and then from the AI chatbots to; (8) the candidate vetting committee and their staff members minds; then from (9) Jennifer Griffith’s mouth to (10) the Tampa Bay Times reporters, then (11) from the Tampa Bay Times to Politico who simply aggregated and republished the Times story without fact checking it, and (12) to the public at large over mass mainstream and fringe media outlets and social media platforms, where it is again re-indexed and is misinterpreted by the search engines and AI chatbots as more true.
The result is that as of now, both the Times and Politico are publishing the exact same disinformation instead of just one media outlet which the search algorithm believes makes it more-likely-true than before.
The result of this flawed, circular, and insular process, in my case, is at this moment, if you perform a Google search on my name, the top 4 search results include the two defamatory Tampa Bay Times articles shown below. The first Times article search result summary contains the words “Checkered Past,” “John Liccione,” and “faced trespassing and assault charges.”
The Tampa Bay Times Buries the Not-Guilty-at Trial and the Verdict Sheet
The Times reporter and editorial staff made the choice in their first article on me to bury the words “Not Guilty” some 871 words into the article. They also failed to report that I was found not guilty at trial. Further, they chose to conceal from their audience that they were already in possession of all the expunged court documents that proved I was found not guilty of all counts at trial and that the case had been expunged. They also concealed from the public that they were in possession of my heavy-metal toxicology reports.
Jennifer Griffith’s Big Lie
Some of the language published by the Times seems to have been cherry-picked and cut and pasted directly from the output of the ChatGPT’s erroneous and defamatory (by omission and commission) conclusions.
To wit, ChatGPT’s answer to the question: “Has John Liccione been convicted of a crime, is:
“John Liccione was once arrested on domestic assault charges, but the charges were dismissed and later expunged from his record when his ex-wife declined to testify against him. He has also faced other legal issues, including a trespassing charge for which he pled guilty and received a year of probation. However, it's important to note that the assault charges were dropped and expunged, and he contests the allegations related to these incidents. His legal history includes complex personal disputes but does not indicate a conviction for a major crime.”
Not the key material omission of the fact that the charges weren’t actually “dismissed” before a trial. I was found not guilty at trial, then the records were expunged. The charges were legally “discharged” or “vacated” at trial, not dismissed before trial. Dismissed implies that the prosecution had the case dismissed before trial for some reason.
Here is Times reporter Jay Cridlin’s wording in his October 18th article headline, subtitle, and certain paragraphs. Take note of how paragraph 2 mirrors almost exactly the language from the above ChatGPT answer.
Headline: “Anna Paulina Luna’s first congressional challenger has checkered past”
Subtitle: “Democrat John Liccione, who filed to run for the Pinellas seat in June, has faced trespassing and assault charges”
Para 1: “Democrat John Liccione, who filed to run for the Pinellas seat in June, has faced trespassing and assault charges. A Gulfport Democrat running for the congressional seat held by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-St. Petersburg, was once jailed and involuntarily committed to a medical facility following an arrest on domestic assault charges.”
Para 2: “John Liccione, 62, saw the charges dismissed and later expunged from his record when his now ex-wife declined to testify against him, according to filings in the U.S. District Court of Maryland.”
Para 9: “In court filings, he alleged that she poisoned him over the course of several months with the toxic metal thallium, leading to his hospitalization. He made a similar claim in a recent questionnaire with the election tracking website Ballotpedia, saying he was poisoned “by Russia” multiple times between 2013 and 2021.”
Para 10: “In 2017, he was charged with trespassing during a confrontation with Maryland authorities at the Howard County State Attorney’s Office while seeking to have charges filed against his wife. Ten days later, he was arrested and charged with assault and false imprisonment following another confrontation with his wife. He was initially deemed incompetent to stand trial and involuntarily hospitalized. When he later was deemed competent, his wife declined to testify against him in exchange for compensation specified by their divorce agreement.”
Para 11: “Liccione denied and contested the assault claims, and later had them expunged from his record; a county document noting the dropped charges listed him as not guilty. He was later charged with stalking after hiring a private investigator during and after his divorce, and he also faced a defamation lawsuit from his ex-wife. Those cases were also later dismissed — part of a pattern, he said, of being falsely accused and eventually exonerated. But in 2018, he did plead guilty to the trespass charge, receiving a year of probation.”
Para 13: “A more recent brush with the law occurred this summer in Dunedin. Liccione said he was at Woodwright Brewing’s regular bluegrass jam night when he attempted to perform an overtly political song, drawing complaints from some customers. After he was asked to stop or leave, management called the police. No charges were filed.”
I will note that the first and only use of the term “not guilty” was buried 871 words into the article in Paragraph 11 and it was described as being found inside a generic “county document” as opposed to an actual Trial (Hearing) Verdict Sheet signed by the presiding judge.
A Willfully Rigged Candidate Vetting Process
You cannot base a candidate vetting decision on what an AI Chatbot and internet search engine spits out because the AI is really just using the same search engines real humans use to inform its conclusions. The current state of the art in AI is fraught with disinformation and judgmental errors.
For example as to AI inaccuracies that can destroy one’s reputation, this is what the Microsoft CoPilot AI Chatbot spit out in response to my question as to whether John Liccione has ever been convicted of a crime:
“Has John Liccione been convicted of a crime”
Searching for: Has John Liccione been convicted of a crime
Generating answers for you…
Hello, this is Bing. Based on my web search, I found some results that suggest that John Liccione has been convicted of a crime in the past, but I cannot verify the accuracy or currency of this information.
Here are some of the results:
A case summary of People v. Liccione, where John Liccione was convicted of murder second degree for hiring someone to kill his wife, Mary Liccione, in 1978.
A website of John Liccione for Congress, where he claims to be a progressive candidate for Florida’s 18th district, and accuses a blog of banning him for publishing toxicology reports.
A case summary of Liccione v. Goron-Futcher, where John Liccione appealed a divorce judgment and a denial of a motion for contempt against his former wife, Moea Goron-Futcher, in 2020.
I hope this information is helpful for you. If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask me.
Asking CoPilot a follow-up question returned even more erroneously detailed, awful defamatory answers:
“Did john liccione murder mary Liccione?
Generating answers for you…
Hello, this is Bing. Based on my web search, I found some results that indicate that John Liccione was convicted of murder second degree for hiring someone to kill his wife, Mary Liccione, in 1978.
However, I cannot verify the accuracy or currency of this information. You can read more about this case from the following sources:
People v. Liccione, 63 A.D.2d 305 | Casetext Search + Citator
People v. Liccione - New York - Case Law - VLEX 886604692
PEOPLE v. LICCIONE | 63 A.D.2d 305 | N.Y. App. Div. - CaseMine
I hope this information is helpful for you. If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask me.”
Inputting the words “People v. Liccione” into the Chatbot next yielded the following result:
“In the case "People v. Liccione," Anthony Liccione was convicted of second-degree murder following the death of his wife, Mary Liccione. The conviction was largely based on her dying declarations and his admissions to the police. Mary Liccione had accused her husband of hiring her assailant to kill her. The trial court's decision to admit her dying declarations as evidence and the suppression of certain statements were key issues in this case. The court found these declarations admissible, considering them factual statements of what she experienced and heard. The case details the circumstances and legal considerations surrounding these declarations and the evidence presented in the trial.”
As you can see, Microsoft Copilot AI chatbot is telling the public that both John Liccione AND Anthony Liccione murdered the same wife named “Mary Liccione” in 1978.
My first wife’s name is Laura. My 2nd wife’s name is Moea.
Relief Sought
I ask for the following relief:
1) An emergency appeal hearing on this matter pursuant to party by-laws
2) The removal from office of Jennifer Griffith as Chair of the PDEC
3) The removal from office of Mike Fox and all others on PDEC’s candidate vetting committee
4) The removal from office of April Thanos as Chair of The Gulfport Democratic Club
5) A reversal of the Party’s candidate vetting failure decision
6) My recognition as a legitimate Democratic candidate for Florida’s 13th Congressional district
7) On-going party support equal to that being provided to any candidate who has passed the vetting process, or that has been allowed to by-pass the candidate vetting process.
8) Equal access and recommendation to Democratic PAC funding and donors and access to the party’s voting/polling data
9) A letter of apology from Nikki Fried and an admission of guilt as to the parties’ violation of Party bylaws.
10) Compensation for financial and reputational damages suffered in an amount equivalent to that which is necessary to bring my campaign back to the fundraising levels that reasonably would have accrued over the course of my now 7-month candidacy.
I request an emergency evidentiary hearing to properly adjudicate this matter, said hearing to be convened in Tallahassee in accordance with Party by-laws no later than January 22, 2024.
Sincerely,
John Liccione
John Liccione for Congress
443-698-8156
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