Palm Beach County Clerk Mike Caruso, a former state Representative and steady ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been arrested on charges related to child sexual abuse.
Attorney General James Uthmeier announced Caruso’s arrest, which he said resulted from “substantial assistance from (the Florida Department of Law Enforcement) and local law enforcement.”
“The investigation is ongoing, and we will provide more information to the public at the appropriate time,” he said on X Tuesday at 8:41 a.m.
DeSantis suspended Caruso shortly after.
The Governor’s Executive Order includes an attached arrest affidavit. Caruso has been charged with five felony counts: Kidnapping, lewd or lascivious molestation, lewd or lascivious exhibition, luring or enticing a child, and child abuse (mental injury).
The alleged victim was Caruso’s grandson, to whom Caruso “enjoyed regular and unsupervised access … as a family member, including periods alone with the child in Orange County, in Palm Beach County, and aboard a family vacation in August 2025.”
On or about Oct. 22, 2025, the victim’s father, Caruso’s son, saw the boy perform a sexualized act on his younger brother and, after intervening, asked him about it. The boy told his father that during a family cruise the preceding Summer, Caruso “placed his ‘pp’ in his mouth and ‘peed’ and it was ‘nasty.’” The boy added that he had showered with Caruso.
In a following interview with law enforcement, the boy disclosed several additional acts of alleged abuse. Around Thanksgiving 2024, the boy said Caruso touched, tickled and “fondled” his penis, touched the victim’s buttocks and exposed his own penis.
Upon being confronted about the boy’s accusations on Dec. 6, 2025, Caruso denied everything. He asked if his ex-wife, Beverly, the mother of all his children, had contacted the boy. The ex-wife, according to 2012 divorce filings in Palm Beach County, had accused him of sexually assaulting a child. Caruso’s daughter had as well. Caruso denied wrongdoing.
Caruso defended himself by asking if he had ever abused his son, the boy’s father. However, he acknowledged it was his daughter who had accused him of inappropriate behavior, including sexual battery.
He added that he would never try to be alone with the boy because of the previous accusation of abuse and offered to never return to Orange County, where his son’s family lived, in exchange for the matter being kept private.
During a conversation Caruso’s son recorded with his father on Feb. 10, 2026, at the request of law enforcement, Caruso again denied wrongdoing. He said the allegations were impossible because sexual deviancy is directed toward one sex, and he was attracted to women.
He warned his son against reporting him to police.
Later, the victim received therapeutic services, after which the therapist advised the family that the boy’s responses were consistent with trauma.
“The totality of CARUSO’s conduct resulted in mental injury to the VICTIM, in that VICTIM has suffered from the trauma inflicted by CARUSO and is presently undergoing psychological care. Some symptoms he has exhibited are diverting the topic or correcting the therapist or parents regarding the account of sexual conduct,” Special Agent Reuben Roach of the Aventura Police Department wrote Aug. 17.
“Based upon the foregoing, your Affiant submits that probable cause exists to believe that MICHAEL CARUSO committed the offenses set forth below against the VICTIM, a child less than twelve years of age, beginning in Orange County, Florida, in the fall of 2024 and culminating aboard the vessel Icon of the Seas.”
Caruso has been a consistent supporter of the Governor, who appointed him as Clerk exactly one year ago, on Aug. 18.
Caruso was running for re-election at the time of his arrest.
A 67-year-old accountant, Caruso represented House District 87 from 2018 to Aug. 18, 2025, when the Governor tapped him to replace former Clerk Joe Abruzzo, who vacated the post for a job as Palm Beach County Administrator.
Caruso is the only Republican in the Clerk’s race and was set to face Democrat Yvette Drucker, a former Boca Raton Deputy Mayor, in the Nov. 3 General Election.
A father of seven, Caruso is married to Tracy Caruso, an editor for conservative media outlet Florida Jolt and President of Delray Beach Executive Suites, an office space company she co-owns with her husband.
Both have been repeat appointees of DeSantis. Tracy Caruso briefly ran for her husband’s HD 87 seat, but dropped her bid last September. Democrat Emily Gregory flipped the seat in March.
Upon being confronted about Caruso’s alleged misdeeds, Tracy Caruso said her husband could be arrested and that the matter was, in her words, a “life in jail kinda thing.”
In April 2025, after the alleged Thanksgiving incident, Caruso voted for legislation to allow the death penalty in cases of human trafficking of children under 12 for sexual exploitation. That measure became law last July. Two years earlier, Caruso voted for a law authorizing the execution of child rapists if two-thirds of a jury deem it appropriate.
While pursuing the death penalty for a 36-year-old nanny indicted for raping multiple young children, Uthmeier asked the U.S. Supreme Court in November 2025 to reverse a prior decision declaring it unconstitutional to execute child rapists.
In his final House term, Caruso served as Chair of the House Economic Infrastructure Committee and Vice Chair of the Higher Education Budget Subcommittee.