As Ron DeSantis seeks to cut into Donald Trump’s double-digit lead in the Republican presidential race, the Florida governor has criticized the former president for failing to deliver on one of his signature promises.
“He didn’t clean up the swamp,” DeSantis said during a recent debate of Trump’s vow to eliminate the hold lobbyists and special interests have on government. “He said he was going to drain it. He did not drain it.”
DeSantis, who had adopted the “drain the swamp” pledge for himself in his bid to become Florida’s 46th governor, routinely tells voters on the campaign trail that he kept that promise in Florida and will do the same in Washington, DC if elected president.
But a CNN investigation into the very first bill DeSantis signed into law as governor, legalizing smokable medical marijuana in the Sunshine State, raises questions about his own record on catering to special interests and campaign donors.
It’s a chapter of his political career that went unmentioned in his book published earlier this year and one that isn’t part of his campaign stump speech along side his other legislative victories.
To piece together this story, CNN reviewed campaign finance reports, court records, business filings and newly obtained video footage of a private political fundraiser hosted by a doctor once at the forefront of the medical marijuana movement. Combined, they show how DeSantis repeatedly intersected with a cast of players in the state’s budding cannabis industry to his benefit and sometimes to theirs.
As he was promising Floridians he would clean up Tallahassee if they elected him, DeSantis was also courted by marijuana interests who helped bankroll his campaign, including the family of a man who would become one of his top political appointees and a Republican fundraiser who would later go to prison for campaign finance violations. Industry lobbyists raised money for him, special interests donated to him, and one marijuana entrepreneur flew him in a private plane.
Once enacted, the new law DeSantis signed helped fuel what would become a billion-dollar industry in Florida. DeSantis then quietly fought to ensure only a handful of companies could sell marijuana through a regulatory system he once likened to a “cartel” but ultimately helped to preserve.
Among those that benefited was one of the top medical marijuana producers in the US, a Florida company launched amid allegations of the sort of swampy behavior DeSantis would later vow to eradicate.
DeSantis’ campaign did not respond to a detailed list of questions from CNN. In a statement, spokesman Bryan Griffin accused CNN of reporting “opposition narratives from the Trump campaign and their allies to smear Ron DeSantis.”
“As he’s always said and repeatedly shown, donors have no influence on policy decisions,” Griffin said. “No one has done more to deliver on his promises for the conservative movement than Ron DeSantis and that is why he is the hands-down best choice to lead the Republican Party in 2024 and America as our next President.”
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