Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi has been in the news for the last several weeks, for all the wrong reasons.
Two weeks ago, the Washington Post reported that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was being assessed a $2,500 fine by the IRS for failing to accurately report a $25,000 donation made to Bondi from Trump’s nonprofit charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Although Trump officials insisted it was just one big misunderstanding, it reignited ongoing concerns that the donation reeked of a “pay-to-play” arrangement.
Trump’s IRS fine followed a June report from the Associated Press that showed the $25,000 donation was sandwiched in between an announcement from Bondi’s office that it was investigating allegations against Trump University, a personal solicitation from Bondi and the ultimate decision by her office not to pursue charges.
“The appearance of something more than a coincidence is too serious and the unresolved questions are too numerous to accept blanket denials by Bondi and Trump without more digging and an independent review,” the Tampa Bay Times wrote in an editorial calling for a federal investigation of Trump’s contribution.
Interestingly, Bondi’s recent foray into the national spotlight is merely the latest chapter in an ongoing saga that has surfaced periodically over the last three years, but has been covered doggedly by the Florida press ever since the Orlando Sentinel discovered Bondi accepted a donation from Trump while her office was investigating his business.
It also adds another layer to existing concerns surrounding Bondi’s ties to organizations implicated in fraud. The Trump fiasco is not the first time that Bondi’s political donations have raised a suspicious eyebrow or two. In 2014, Bondi wrote a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner advocating for the agency to continue reimbursing for high-cost drug tests. Two years prior, the state’s Agency for Healthcare Administration, which oversees Florida's Medicaid program, alerted Bondi's office to a potential fraud scheme involving Millennium Health, a San Diego-based laboratory that was making a killing off of those same expensive drug tests.
A Palm Beach Post investigation found that Millennium donated $67,500 to the Republican Party of Florida, which helped fund Bondi’s campaign, and in 2010, the company spent $312,000 to help fund a database to track opioid prescribing across Florida, one of Bondi’s primary initiatives. The newspaper also revealed that Bondi’s letter to Tavenner was eerily similar to Millennium’s marketing language.
Bondi would later admit to the Palm Beach Post that she shouldn’t have sent the letter, noting that it was drafted by staff members, and the investigation into Millennium’s practices “had not risen to the level of my attention.” Millennium would ultimately pay $256 million to settle the fraud claims, and the company’s CEO walked away unscathed.
It’s important to note that Bondi has not been charged with any crime, although the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a criminal bribery complaint with the state and the Department of Justice calling for an investigation. The Democratic Coalition Against Trump has also filed complaints with the FBI’s Public Corruption program and the DOJ.
Whether the feds or the state elect to investigate Bondi and Trump, the timeline of events opens up a trail of potential corruption. Mix in the previous comments from Trump effectively advocating for pay-to-play arrangements, and you have a questionable situation.
“As a businessman and a very substantial donor to very important people, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal last year. “As a businessman, I need that.”
It also calls into question past incidents with Bondi that appeared to toe the ethical line. In a Miami Herald op-ed, former federal prosecutor and Democratic Florida Sen. Dan Gelber argued that any attorney general needs to go to “special lengths to keep fundraising far away from the duties of the office," and perhaps more importantly, carefully walk the line between politician and prosecutor.
That's where Bondi stumbled. Legal implications aside, the optics of the entire situation is enough to make your skin crawl. State attorneys general serve as their states' chief law enforcement officers; they should be a stopgap to fraud and corruption, not a conduit for it.
Appearances matter, especially when it comes to deterring crime. Florida is widely considered a hotbed for fraud, and it needs an attorney general who is willing to take a hard and fast position against fraud schemes. Even if Bondi escapes this latest round of criticism unscathed, her growing list of questionable relationships could leave criminals with the impression that the state’s highest legal representative values political donations over fraud investigations.
And in a state that’s endured decades as a breeding ground for fraud and corruption, that’s not the impression the attorney general wants to give.