The Florida Supreme Court has disbarred Jacksonville’s disgraced former public defender, Matt Shirk, once a rising Republican star who then squandered his chances at a political future when he hired women based on their physical appearance, propositioned them, fired them after his wife told him to, deleted public records, drank in the office, diverted campaign funds to his child’s private school, violated the attorney-client privilege of a 12-year-old, paid his attorneys the lowest salaries in the state, gave away office guns to a motorcycle club without documenting it and used the office’s spending power to pay for lavish hotels.
Shirk would face two criminal investigations, a grand jury, a state ethics investigation, a state Auditor General investigation and multiple Florida Bar complaints.
In the end, it was the unlicensed practice of law that did Shirk in.
Shirk was first elected Jacksonville’s public defender in 2008, overseeing an office that provides criminal defense attorneys for those who can’t afford their own in Duval, Nassau and Clay counties.
In that initial election, he relied heavily on culture war issues. He told voters the incumbent, a Democrat, supported Barack Obama for president, and if elected, Shirk promised he would never question the integrity of a police officer, according to the police officer who nominated him for a police-union endorsement.
Although he lost in Duval County, he ran such large margins in the conservative suburbs of Clay and Nassau that he managed to win the election.
Even before taking office, he fired 10 of the office’s top lawyers, misspelling many of their names. In their stead, he brought in a team of political allies and friends.
His chief assistant was someone who had been found ineffective by courts at least four times.
Even though no other public defender in the state had a spokesman, Shirk employed two, both of whom made far more than most attorneys in his office.
Meanwhile, his staff turnover rates rose to one of the highest in the state, and his attorneys’ pay was the absolute lowest.
He hired one woman after he saw a photo of her as a ring girl at a boxing match and told his chief investigator to track her down, grand jury and ethics commission investigative reports said.
Another woman he hired was a waitress at a Hooters-style restaurant, and a third was the girlfriend of the then-president of the local police union, according to those investigative reports.
At work, he repeatedly sent two of them sexual messages, sending one that said, “I think if we had sex there would be very minimal awkwardness afterwards.” He took another on out-of-town work trips and frequent lunch and coffee dates, according to a litany of investigates.
Those investigations also revealed that Shirk used public funds to install a shower in his private office without approval, and then he invited the women to shower with him. He also illegally drank with two of the women in his office. After his wife found the messages, he fired the women.
While a grand jury declined to indict Shirk for his misdeeds, it urged then-Gov. Rick Scott to remove Shirk from office. Scott declined to do so, saying it was best left up to voters.
In 2016, in a closed Republican primary, Shirk lost by a three-to-one margin.
After losing his re-election bid in 2016, he used $90,000 in public funds to hire a lobbying firm that had donated money to his campaign. He fired four employees he believed preferred his opponent, and he gave substantial raises to political allies, in some cases doubling their salaries. He gave away nine of the office’s guns to a motorcycle club. He spent thousands of taxpayer dollars traveling to law conferences, including an immigration law clinic even though public defenders don’t handle immigration law. (After leaving office, he began practicing immigration law.)
Meanwhile, he removed hard drives from computers and donated the computers in what his successor, Public Defender Charlie Cofer, called a “concerted effort by the prior administration to delete emails and other documents in violation of public records laws.”
The state also paid for Shirk’s personal fuel usage, and he had the state cover the costs when he crashed into a BMW in a parking lot.
In September 2022, six years after he lost re-election, the Florida Supreme Court suspended Shirk from practicing law.
But the Florida Bar alleged he continued working as an immigration attorney, including filing an emergency motion with an immigration court a year later.
Shirk defended the action, saying he “could not find other counsel to file anything on his behalf.”