Broward County Judge Lauren Peffer in a new court filing Friday formally denied the ethics charges filed against her, stemming from her promotion of a scandalous book and a deepfake AI recording during her campaign last year.
In the routine filing with Florida’s Supreme Court, Peffer denied the Judicial Qualifications Commission’s charges filed last month that she violated judicial ethics rules that govern “inappropriate political activity.”
Peffer, a first-time judicial candidate, won her seat in August and began her term in January. During her campaign, which centered on trustworthiness and ethics in the judiciary, Peffer referenced in an endorsement interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel editorial board a book written and published by a former courthouse employee in the Orlando area called, “The Ninth Circus Court of Florida, My 30-Year Job from Hell!”
The book, written by someone who had been terminated, “portrays the judiciary in the Ninth Judicial Circuit as corrupt and incompetent and attacks the character” of numerous judges, including current Chief Judge Lisa Munyon, according to the JQC’s charging document.
Peffer wrote in response to a Sun Sentinel editorial board questionnaire that the book’s “recent revelations” had “highlighted an image crisis within Florida’s judiciary,” according to the JQC’s notice of formal charges.
At the time Peffer cited the book in the Sun Sentinel interview, it lacked any published reviews and appeared to have generated no public discourse or impact, the Sun Sentinel previously reported. Asked by the Sun Sentinel about evidence of the book creating public mistrust, Peffer sent the newspaper a link to an 18-minute recording of what purported to be a phone call about the book between Munyon, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz and Justice Renatha Francis, according to the notice of charges.
But the recording was fake, likely made with generative AI, and could be deemed so by “any reasonable person,” the JQC said in its notice of charges.
Broward judicial candidate drops Orlando author’s self-published tell-all from her campaign stump speech
Peffer was forwarded the link to the recording “by another lawyer,” her response filed Friday said.
Peffer in her response to the charges on Friday acknowledged that she had not “carefully listened to the call but had a recollection that the judiciary was being criticized in the recording” and did not try to determine its veracity before providing it to the newspaper.
“Judge Peffer acknowledges that she should have more carefully listened to the recording before referencing it in her answers to the editorial board. In responding to these proceedings, Judge Peffer listened to the recordings without distraction, and it was immediately apparent that the purported phone call was a ‘deep fake,’” her response said.
However, she denied that she shared the recording “despite clear evidence of its inauthenticity,” as the JQC alleged in its charges.
In her response, Peffer also admitted that she never read the disgruntled employee’s book before referencing it to the Sun Sentinel and did not research the claims the employee made.
“Judge Peffer did not intend to promote the validity of the book but instead, she intended to point to the book as an example of criticism of the judiciary,” her response said.
She previously acknowledged issues with the book in a July interview with the Sun Sentinel and said she would stop citing it.
Peffer denied that she “ignored” the Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee’s training on campaign ethics as the notice of charges alleged and denied that she “helped facilitate the former employee’s farce,” according to her response.
