The court battle continues to play out over who governs the City of North Miami Beach. In a heated deposition, Mayor Anthony DeFillipo answered questions about where he lives and what he told NBC 6 Investigators in an exclusive interview earlier this year.
NBC 6 obtained the 184-page transcript of DeFillipo’s deposition. In it, he insisted he’s lived in the city since taking office, but he said some things under oath he did not tell NBC 6 in the January interview.
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In January, Mayor DeFillipo took NBC 6 Investigators inside his one-bedroom condo in North Miami Beach as he faced questions over his residency.
“This is my residence. This is where I live,” he told NBC 6.
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NBC 6 asked him if his family was living with him.
In response, he said, “I’m not going to drag my family into this. I am the mayor. I’m the person in question.”
Under oath, however, he did answer that question, telling attorneys, “They visit me, but, no, they don’t live here.”
Instead, he said they’ve been living in Broward County; most recently in a $1.2 million home in Davie. The mayor cited “martial issues” and his wife’s concerns about crime in their old neighborhood as the root cause of the move. He said, “I had no other choice. I wanted to save my family…”
NBC 6 obtained police reports showing the DeFillipo’s called the police several times in 2020 claiming they were being “harassed.” In one, the responding police officer wrote, “he (DeFillipo) feels that the harassment and victimizations has gone on long enough. He even added that he was considering selling his home because his family is tired of the abuse…” referring to a neighbor dispute.
DeFillipo later sold that home in December 2021.
The mayor told the attorneys in the deposition, “My wife was fed up with it … my children were having to see this and go through this… we had a property that was available, and empty and she went there and moved there with the kids.”
The mayor has faced calls to resign for months after an outside law firm concluded he’s also been living in Broward, a violation of the city’s charter. A lawsuit to determine the fate of DeFillipo’s seat is working its way through the court system.
He previously told NBC 6 and the city clerk he moved to his one-bedroom condo after his family moved to Broward.
“That’s where I have lived. That is my residency. And that is where I go every day,” he told NBC 6 in January.
In the deposition, DeFillipo gave a different story, telling attorneys he lived at his mother’s home in North Miami Beach for almost a year while he was renting his one-bedroom condo. That’s something he denied when asked about real estate records obtained by NBC 6 showing it was put up for rent around that time.
Why? He said in the deposition his mother had health issues and he didn’t want to make her address public.
“My mother’s address I wanted to keep sacred and I – for all these reasons that are going on right now, and all this hate and all this commotion — I didn’t want to bring any of that upon my mother or her residence,” DeFillipo said.
The mayor also was asked about another house he bought in Davie after he sold his family home in North Miami Beach. He told NBC 6 he bought it for his father but after he fixed it up his father didn’t want the house. So his family lived there for a time and then he sold it. He stood by that story in his deposition.
More depositions are expected to be filed in this ongoing legal battle.
This all comes before a high-stakes commission meeting in North Miami Beach set for March 21. The city has not had a full commission meeting since October, five months ago. After the mayor’s residency was put under question, three commissioners began to boycott meetings, stopping much of the local government.
Earlier this month a Miami-Dade judge ordered all commissioners to attend the next meeting. Vice Mayor Michael Joseph, Commissioner Daniela Jean, and Commissioner McKenzie Fleurimond – the three missing commissioners – told NBC 6 they will attend the March 21 meeting.
