Florida Republicans tried to waste taxpayer funds on Trump’s legal bills. Grovel much? | Opinion

This one is for the annals of Florida government history.

While passing on federal funds to feed the state’s hungry children, Florida Republicans tried to set up a fund with taxpayer money to help pay billionaire Donald Trump’s legal bills.

It was named the Florida Freedom Fighters Fund and Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis wasn’t shy about heralding, in a press release Monday, its political intent to “provide up to $5 million in financial support to Florida residents running for President who face legal, partisan, political attacks by the Department of Justice or State Attorneys.”

Hmm, who could that needy person possibly be?

The idea of financially helping four-times indicted Trump, currently undergoing a civil trial for defaming a woman who won a sexual abuse case against him, readily found a conduit in Miami-Dade Sen. Ileana Garcia.

A founder of the group Latinas for Trump in 2016 and director of Latino outreach for the Trump campaign, Garcia was rewarded during Trump’s presidency with the job of deputy press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. Nothing unusual there. That’s how the political system works in both parties.

Then, in 2020, Garcia ran and was famously elected to the Florida Senate with no legislative experience — by a 34-vote margin — in a race involving a sham candidate with the same surname as the Democratic incumbent.

In other words, without GOP cheating, confirmed by investigations that led to three people being charged, including a former Miami senator, Garcia may not have risen to hold public office.

With Trump’s continued support, she won re-election in 2022 by 18 points against a first-time Democratic opponent.

Clearly, Garcia owes her government career to Trump and the Republican Party, but she denied, in an emailed response to my questions Tuesday, that she was motivated by helping Trump, whose net worth last year was estimated by Forbes at $2.5 billion.

State funding presidential candidate

It’s quite the ethical leap to turn devotion and IOUs into direct public funding of a presidential candidate by a state entity.

Yet, Garcia sees nothing wrong with her filing on Jan. 5 to set up the fund. Senate Bill 1740, titled “Grants for Victims of Political Discrimination,” moved to committees six days later — a particularly egregious $5 million spending proposal for a state denying 2.1 million eligible kids free federal grocery money.

She only backed down Tuesday, saying she would withdraw it, after Gov. Ron DeSantis, off the presidential campaign trail, threatened to veto her bill.

READ MORE: Bill to have Floridians pay Trump legal fees draws veto threat from Ron DeSantis

But how this effort to fund Trump quickly built steam is worth probing.

In her email, Garcia confirmed that “@JimmyPatronis brought me this bill at a time when all candidates were committing to campaign through the primary, one frontrunner now remains, and he can handle himself.”

Her motivation, she said, was “the political weaponization against conservative candidates,” neglecting to see that, in Florida, it is DeSantis who has removed two duly-elected Democratic state attorneys for purely political reasons.

Should the state Legislature hand them defense funds, too?

Nor over for Patronis

For Patronis, the issue of a state legal fund to fight the federal government isn’t over, his spokesman Devin Galetta said Tuesday afternoon in an email.

The CFO wants to take up “creating penalties” for what he believes is “an ongoing effort to weaponize the federal government against the Free State of Florida” next legislative session. Instead of tax dollars, Patronis would use the state’s Public Campaign Finance program, which is funded by fees candidates pay for qualifying.

“While he believes something needs to be done to fight back against these bad federal prosecutors, the current environment just isn’t right for this year,” Galetta wrote me.

As for Garcia, who prides herself in putting forward initiatives to help families and the elderly, she sees no conflict between handing money to a billionaire for political reasons and the state decision to opt out of a new federal program to provide grocery-store money for low-income families during the summer — as a political rebuke to President Biden.

“Lol! It’s funny you should mention ethics,” Garcia wrote. “I have no control over what the Governor decides to do with the Federal funds, and you know that. Don’t conflate the issues.”

To her credit, Garcia — unlike most of her Republican colleagues in the Florida Legislature — took the time to explain herself.

Not bad for a lawmaker who also has sponsored a bill seeking to curtail the free speech of state political writers who, in her view, defame politicians.

This column has been updated with information sent from CFO Jimmy Patronis’ office.