This article is from a Florida paper, from 2014, and has Bondi dead-to-rights on her quid-pro-quos.
Bondi named in pay-to-look-away scandal
Scott Maxwell
November 15, 2014
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi's role in pay-to-look-away scandal needs to be probed.
Attorneys general are supposed to be crusaders of justice: men and women who aren't afraid to step on toes, take on tough cases and make the bad guys pay.
Lately, though, it's been looking like America's AGs are more interested in stepping on private planes and taking on steak dinners.
And the only thing the bad guys are paying is the tab.
That's the picture painted by a recent New York Times investigation into the big-bucks world of wooing attorneys general — where corporate lobbyists try to keep prosecutors fat, happy and distracted so that their clients won't be investigated.
If Washington has pay-to-play, these guys have pay-to-look-away.
The stomach-turning piece revealed corporate attorneys cozying up with AGs from all across America — Democrats and Republicans.
And right in the middle of it all was Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Why? Because if 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?
She was elected Florida attorney general, not Hawaiian socialite.
And these corporate donations are wildly inappropriate.
Seriously, you don't have to go to law school to know that you shouldn't take money from people you might investigate. It's a blatant conflict.
Think about it. If someone mugged your wife, and a suspect then funneled $10,000 in campaign cash to prosecutor Jeff Ashton — who then decided not to prosecute — you'd be outraged.
But when it's corporate lobbyists, politicos such as Bondi claim there's nothing to see. That's just the way the game is played.
Well, the game stinks.
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.
Both sides do it. In fact, the Times noted that Democrats first protested the Republicans' forming this legalized money-laundering group … until the Dems saw how profitable it could be. Two years later, they formed their own: the Democratic Attorneys General Association.
It's bipartisan payola … for supposed defenders of justice.
One Democratic attorney general, Chris Koster of Missouri, was featured even more prominently than Bondi in the Times expose. The Times found him dropping an investigation into 5-Hour Energy Drink after an attorney for the company questioned him at an oceanfront hotel in California.
So politicians in Missouri are demanding action. Last week, the Republican speaker of the House formed a committee to probe the actions of that state's attorney general.
Legislators or Gov. Rick Scott should demand the same sort of answers here in the form of an independent probe.
If Bondi is so sure her behavior was aboveboard, she should have no problem explaining herself.
She can explain how many free perks she took, how the public benefited from her taking those perks and exactly why she decided to drop any cases related to companies represented by the lobbyists who courted her.
Of course, a better idea would be not to take the freebies in the first place — and just focus on doing your job in the state you swore to serve.
