JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – After Gov. Ron DeSantis was elected in 2018 but before he was sworn in, Florida’s governor took at least six undisclosed trips on private jets and accepted lodging and dining, according to a report by the Washington Post released on Thursday.
According to the report which references flight manifests, tracking data and other documents, in Dec. 2018 DeSantis traveled to Augusta National Golf Club, which hosts The Masters, on a plane owned by Mori Hosseini, a major Florida home builder who DeSantis reappointed to the UF Board of Trustees and who supplied a golf simulator in the governor’s mansion.
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Later, according to The Post, companies Hosseini controls gave $1 million to the super PAC that supports DeSantis’s White House bid and Hosseini personally benefited from $92 million in federal pandemic funding that the DeSantis administration steered to a controversial highway interchange project he sought. DeSantis took four other flights on a plane that was registered at the time to John Cwik, another DeSantis donor, records show.
DeSantis did not report the flights or accommodations as gifts or campaign contributions and it’s unclear whether he used a separate legal option to personally reimburse for the flights at the cost of coach airfare, The Post reported.
In 2020, DeSantis reported a net worth of $348,832 as of Dec. 31, 2020, up from $291,449 at the end of 2019, according to a financial disclosure posted in 2021 on the Florida Commission on Ethics website.
A DeSantis campaign spokesman said all of the travel and events “were compliant and received proper payment,” The Post reported, but he declined to say how the trips were paid or how they met ethics and disclosure requirements. Ethics Commission rules allow private jet trips to be paid back at the cost of a coach ticket on the same route, rather than the actual operating cost of the flight.
“Efforts to fundraise for state political parties and cultivate relationships with state officials are standard for political leaders, especially during an election year,” spokesman Andrew Romeo told The Post.
DeSantis is running for the GOP nomination against former President Donald Trump, and Romeo said the story by The Post is the result of “Trump-legacy media collusion.”
Romeo said any other questions about trips should be directed toward Susie Wiles, a longtime Jacksonville political operative who once worked on the DeSantis campaign for governor but now works with Trump after she and DeSantis had a falling out.
Read the entire report on WashingtonPost.com.