- May 19, 2026
Former Flagler County Commissioner Joe Mullins has filed a defamation lawsuit against news site FlaglerLive and its editor and publisher, Pierre Tristam.
The eight-page “Complaint for Defamation (Libel)” was filed in the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court on May 11 by attorney Anthony F. Sabatini.
The suit, which refers to FlaglerLive, a non-profit local news site, and its editor, Tristam, as separate defendants, alleges “repeated publication of false, misleading, and defamatory statements concerning Plaintiff Joe Mullins.”
Tristam, responding to calls and a text from the Observer seeking comment on May 19, said he'll “let the FlaglerLive article speak for itself.” The article, published May 19, called the lawsuit “a SLAPP suit,” an acronym for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.
The lawsuit states that: “Beginning in or around 2024, Defendants published and republished numerous false and defamatory statements concerning Plaintiff through articles appearing on FlaglerLive.com and related online platforms.”
Those related online platforms are not identified, but the complaint later states, “The publications were made to third parties through a widely read online publication with substantial readership and republication through social media and reader commentary.”
The complaint cites a FlaglerLive article dated Nov. 18, 2024, with the headline, “Joe Mullins, Disgraced in Flagler County, Declares Run for Waltz’s Congressional Seat.”
The complaint states that in the article, “Defendants asserted, among other things, that Plaintiff was “disgraced out of office,” engaged in “outrageous behavior,” and “belligerently tried to get out of a traffic stop by telling a cop that he ran Flagler County.”
The traffic stop, on June 19, 2022, and another less than three weeks earlier, were widely covered by media outlets locally and nationally, including by the Observer.
The suit claims that Mullins “did not improperly seek to evade law enforcement consequences, request preferential treatment, or misuse public office in connection with any traffic citation or law enforcement interaction.”
FlaglerLive's May 19 article says, “In fact, video evidence from the Florida Highway Patrol and Mullins’s own letters to judges, all linked in news stories reporting on his behavior, document the pattern previously reported.”
An Observer story in July, 2022, recounted the traffic stops. The story cited Florida Highway Patrol dash camera footage, which FlaglerLive had previously included in its articles on the incidents.
Mullins was pulled over by a state trooper, who clocked Mullins speeding on Interstate 95 at 92 mph in a 70-mph zone. As the trooper was explaining to Mullins that the ticket would be payable within 30 days and that there are three ways to pay, Mullins interrupted him, saying, "I run the county, so I know how it works.”
"You run the county?" the trooper replied.
"Yeah, I'm the chairman of the County Commission," Mullins said.
On June 2, Mullins had been pulled over for speeding on I-95 in Seminole County by two state troopers. He was clocked at 89 mph in a 60 mph zone. He handed one trooper his County Commission business card.
Video from the traffic stop showed the troopers speaking to each other as they walked back to their vehicles to run Mullins' information.
“He said he's a county commissioner,” one said. “Yeah, well, he's getting a ticket,” the second trooper said. “He wasn't stopping when he saw me,” the first replied.
Mullins' lawsuit against Tristam and FlaglerLive states: “The publications foreseeably exposed Plaintiff to hatred, distrust, ridicule, contempt, humiliation, and injury to his personal and professional reputation.”
“FlaglerLive stands by its reporting,” the news site's May 19 article states.
The lawsuit asks for general damages, special damages, presumed damages, punitive damages and costs of suit and attorneys’ fees. The suit also “demands a trial by jury on all issues so triable.”
