We here at DK actually help break the Fundraiser story again, but this is not new.
Neither is the info published from 2014 but it never got the attention it deserved.. The DOJ needs to open an investigation regarding what the Orlando paper printed. It is damning. Wow. The Times ran this in 2014 as did the Orlando Sentinel.
There's a national embarrassment afoot, Florida is bound to be front and center.
The investigation found Bondi flitting around the globe — at posh resorts in Hawaii, California and all sorts of places other than the state she was elected to serve.
Gift records examined by The Associated Press found that Bondi had taken more than $51,000 worth of free trips, meals and hotel stays — much of it thanks to corporations that funneled money through the Republican Attorneys General Association.
But the Times found that corporate lawyers did more than just stroke checks. They also stroked Bondi's ego, with one helping arrange for her to be featured on the cover of Inside Counsel — a magazine whose target audience is corporate attorneys.
The Times article suggests that the lobbyists got their way.
One of the attorneys lobbying Bondi represented online travel companies that were trying to avoid paying certain taxes in Florida. Bondi's predecessor, Bill McCollum, had sued the companies, trying to get the money. But Bondi dropped the matter, saying it wasn't something her office needed to pursue.
The Times listed other examples of cases that Bondi decided not to prosecute, including a for-profit online school and nutritional-supplement company — both of which were probed by authorities in other states for shady sales practices.
And all this comes on the heels of last year's revelation that Bondi took $25,000 in campaign money from the Donald Trump Foundation — precisely three days after Bondi's office publicly said it was "reviewing" complaints that Trump had run a get-rich-quick scheme.
After Trump's check cleared, Bondi's office decided not to pursue that issue, either.
Bondi, of course, was outraged by the implication that she did anyone any favors.
When cornered by a pack of reporters last week, she indignantly said no one gets special treatment in exchange for goodies showered upon her.
But here's the question: Why is she taking these goodies in the first place?
If it's illegal for a lobbyist to treat an attorney general to a free vacation, it makes no sense to allow that same lobbyist to give $10,000 to a middleman — such as the Republican Attorneys General Association — which can then treat the state attorney to most anything he or she wants.
Pay to play in Hawaii? Looks like.