Florida AG Solicited Trump Donations Before Shutting Down Trump U Investigation

In an earlier post, I noted how the Trump University scandal was also morphing into a campaign finance scandal as Trump-related entities made donations to the re-election campaigns of the Attorneys General of Texas and Florida shortly after they dropped their investigation of the “university”.  Now comes the news that Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a donation from Trump several weeks before announcing the possibility of Florida joining a multi-state lawsuit against Trump University organized by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.  Four days after that announcement and in apparent contravention of the rules governing political donations by charities, a Trump family charity donated $25,000 to a political group backing Bondi’s re-election which added to a $500 donation Ivanka Trump had made a week earlier. Shortly thereafter, Bondi announced that Florida would not be joining the multi-state lawsuit and dropped their own investigation. All this happened in 2013, long before Trump had announced or was considered a serious candidate for President, so you might wonder why the Trump family was so interested in a state-wide election in Florida. Needless to say, Bondi’s office claims that her solicitations from Trump happened weeks before any money was received and that Bondi herself was unaware of the volume of complaints that her office had received about Trump University when she spoke to Trump. And, of course, under the Supreme Court’s view, without any definitive quid-pro-quo, nothing illegal happened here.  But it is interesting to note how little it seems to cost to apparently influence an investigation by a state Attorney General. If only we all had the opportunity to do that.