MIAMI – Stunning testimony continued Wednesday in the federal civil trial of Joe Carollo, with a former secretary telling jurors that the Miami city commissioner coerced her into making false sexual harassment allegations against two other former employees.
But Tanjha Quintana wasn’t just testifying against her former boss: Carollo is also her relative. Quintana’s uncle is married to the sister of Carollo’s wife, Marjorie.
Carollo is being sued by Miami entrepreneurs Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla, who allege the commissioner repeatedly abused his power by harassing them and hurting their companies — all because they supported his political opponent in 2017.
Quintana testified that she was coerced by both Joe and Marjorie Carollo to falsely accuse other former staffers of sexual harassment not once, but twice.
The first was Steve Miro, who worked as a district liaison for Carollo, and the other was Richie Blom, the former Doral police chief turned Carollo’s chief of staff.
Quintana said on both occasions the commissioner and his wife manipulated her into claiming that Miro and Blom acted inappropriately toward her.
“I was terrified. I was 20, it was my first real job,” she said on the witness stand Wednesday. “He’s related to me and the family, so one, I didn’t want to lose my job, and two, I didn’t want to cause any problems with him that would move into my family matters.”
Quintana also told jurors that the lies “broke her” and that she still couldn’t believe she did it.
“I was forced to ruin somebody’s life over something that wasn’t true,” she said.
Carollo’s attorneys asked Quintana why the jurors should believe her now if she lied under oath previously. She responded that she was protecting her family at the time, but now, her family is so torn apart that she has nothing left to lose.
As the parties, witnesses and legal teams left court for the day, Fuller walked by news cameras with this to say: “It’s a beautiful day in Miami. It is a beautiful day. No comment on the case.”
Fuller and Pinilla are asking for $2.6 million in the lawsuit, plus punitive damages.
No proceedings were scheduled for Thursday or Friday, but Carollo himself will be the next witness called to the stand. His testimony is scheduled to begin on Monday.