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There’s been an emerging scandal in Florida for a few weeks now that directly affects not only Ron DeSantis but also his wife, Casey DeSantis, who is weighing a run to succeed Ron as governor. The gist of the scandal is the state of Florida settled an over-billing case against a major Medicaid contractor and then laundered a portion of the funds from the settlement through a series of foundations until … well, until somehow over $10 million ended up in the bank account of the Florida GOP and another $1.1 million ended up in Ron’s personal political committee. It’s good to be the king, right?
This story has been percolating for a few weeks. It got new life when a Republican state lawmaker, Rep. Alex Andrade (R), who has been leading a state House investigation into the issue, accused two top DeSantis associates of money laundering and wire fraud. What got my attention this morning is that the Miami Herald talked to four former federal prosecutors, of both political parties, who told the Herald that by normal standards there’s more than enough evidence to start a federal criminal investigation at least into the associates who directly made the relevant transfers if not the DeSantises themselves. (One of the associates who directly arranged things is then-DeSantis chief of staff and current Florida AG James Uthmeier.) The former prosecutors the Herald spoke to say that the question of whether this meets the bar for a federal investigation is not remotely a close call.
So that’s our scandal. But that in itself isn’t what prompted me to write this post. As we know, and as the Herald obliquely alludes to, the possibility of a federal investigation seems a bit improbable at the moment because we’re currently in the DOJ hiatus on investigating Republicans. But here’s where a different dimension of Trump and Pam Bondi’s corrupt DOJ comes into view.
Let’s remember the terms. There will be no investigations or charges against anyone in the Trump administration, friends of Trump or any other Republican political figures in good standing with the administration. Meanwhile, there are trolling type threats against Democratic politicians (see Ed Martin’s letters to Chuck Schumer) and some level of actual prosecutions of a retaliatory and corrupt nature like the one of the state judge in Wisconsin.
But if you’re a Republican politician committing real crimes, you give Donald Trump quite a big bundle of leverage over you if the relationship should ever break down or if the political winds change and you want to break with Trump. And that’s even more the case if you’re someone like Ron DeSantis with a history of pretty intense bad blood with the Imperial Top Cheese tied to Ron’s failed challenge to Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. (Yeah, remember that?) When I saw the Herald piece, I thought, if I were Ron I’d have at least a bit of anxiety that the Hiatus on Prosecuting Republicans might not 100% apply to me? But of course that’s probably not quite how it works. Donald Trump doesn’t have any need to prosecute Ron DeSantis or even loop him into a case that would destroy his and his wife’s political careers. Tempers have cooled and he’s got his hands full with other stuff. And most of all, why waste that chit or cudgel? What it means is that Trump essentially owns Ron and Casey DeSantis now, 13th Amendment notwithstanding.
It’s a bit reminiscent of how Trump used the Antitrust Division in his first term. Trump loves antitrust law but not because he gives a crap about business concentration. It provides a powerful and quasi-legitimate cudgel against private businesses. Remember, that’s what has CBS/Paramount prepared to settle an absurd lawsuit over 60 Minutes: Paramount needs a merger approval — all part of the same bundle of legal authorities. Antitrust is great for Trump because in this day and age, with so much business concentration, a huge number of big and powerful companies can at least be reasonably investigated and possibly sued for violations of the antitrust laws. Silicon Valley is like a deer park when the deer just stand there and wait to be shot. It may be obvious that it’s abusive but it’s also hard to argue in many of these cases that federal action isn’t actually justified. Trump’s dealings with the AT&T-Time Warner merger in term one was an example.
It’s pretty much the same with our pal Ron in Florida. If six months from now the DOJ opened an investigation or filed charges against people in the DeSantis operation or even DeSantis himself, it might be obviously abusive. But on the merits, at least from the information now publicly available, it really seems like these people committed pretty brazen crimes. So the basis of any defense, either in the court of public opinion or in the criminal courts, is quite difficult. Because, in this case, they may well actually be guilty.
It is all one of the less considered aspects of the current White House and, to a lesser extent, the GOP crime spree. Yes, there’s a hiatus on investigating let alone prosecuting anyone in the Trump administration and pretty much any Republican political figure in the President’s good graces. But flip that impunity on its back and you see the other side of the coin, which is that all of these people are voluntarily providing chits against themselves or leverage or hostages to the President in the form of themselves. For most, it’s a notional thing. They have no life or existence outside the boss or interest in turning on him. But for folks like Ron DeSantis who are frenemies of the President at best — well, it’s not a trivial thing.