A county commissioner is representing Díaz de la Portilla in criminal corruption case

For months, Miami-Dade County Commissioner Keon Hardemon, a criminal defense attorney by trade, has been quietly working with the legal team representing former Miami City Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla in a bribery and money laundering case.

Hardemon has appeared reticent to discuss his role in the case, declining to comment or evading questions from Miami Herald reporters at City and County Commission meetings this year. But campaign finance reports from the final months of 2023 show that Hardemon, who previously served alongside Díaz de la Portilla on the Miami City Commission, was paid $25,000 by Proven Leadership for Miami-Dade County, a political committee controlled by Díaz de la Portilla, in an Oct. 11 expenditure labeled “legal fees.”

Both Díaz de la Portilla and his attorney Benedict Kuehne confirmed Hardemon’s involvement. Kuehne, who is the lead attorney in the case, called Hardemon a “talented and experienced lawyer” and said that Hardemon joined the legal team shortly after Díaz de la Portilla’s September arrest.

“Mr. Hardemon will assist the legal team in demonstrating the charges against Alex are political and fabricated,” Kuehne said in a phone interview.

Wednesday is the deadline for political committees and candidates to submit campaign finance reports to the Florida Division of Elections from the first quarter of 2024, which would show if the Proven Leadership committee paid Hardemon anything in January, February or March.

In a text message to the Herald, Díaz de la Portilla said that Hardemon is part of “an experienced and well rounded team” of attorneys he hired “to fight the Broward State Attorney’s 213 lawyers and an army of bureaucrats; the State’s weaponization of the justice system; the State’s efforts to to criminalize entirely legal, fully disclosed political activity; and the State’s and the lying media’s unlimited budgets which have been deployed against me.”

“I am fighting, and will win, the good fight,” Díaz de la Portilla added.

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Prosecutors have accused Díaz de la Portilla and lobbyist William “Bill” Riley Jr. of orchestrating a money laundering and bribery scheme in order to secure Díaz de la Portilla’s support for a city land deal with the wealthy couple who operates Centner Academy, a private school. Broward County is prosecuting the case because of a conflict between Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle and Riley’s family.

Hardemon was admitted to the Florida Bar in 2011 after graduating from the University of Miami School of Law in 2010, according to the Florida Bar Association. He went on to work as an assistant public defender at the Miami-Dade County Public Defender’s Office, according to his County Commission bio. He now manages his own law firm, according to the bio, which says he has represented “hundreds of clients” including “celebrities accused of serious felonies.”

Miami Herald staff writer Douglas Hanks contributed reporting.