Ray Sansom is not having a good couple of years. After being elected Speaker of the Florida House in 2008, he was forced to take a temporary leave of absence from the position the following January after a scandal surfaced alleging that he had accepted a job in exchange for political favors. Just a few days after he announced his leave of absence, he was forced to formally resign after his fellow GOP colleagues got together in an effort to oust him. And it just got worse.
In April 2009, Sansom was charged with third degree felony charges of “official misconduct” – those charges were elevated to grand theft and conspiracy in January 2010. He’s currently waiting for a judge to make a ruling on whether those charges should remain.
All of this attention, as you can imagine, was bound to stir up something else. As it turns out, that something else involves a wider investigation into the matter after reports surfaced that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tallahassee, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service have decided to step in. While Sansom’s original charges focused on the exchange of political favors for jobs, it turns out that a number of inconsistencies in expenses and income surfaced relating to GOP party credit cards.
As a result, Sansom, former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, former GOP chair Jim Greer and ex-party executive director Delmar Johnson are now subject to speculation that they used their GOP issued credit cards inappropriately – and potentially criminally. Members of the group could be charged with making false statements on their tax returns and tax evasion as a result of allegations that the group made hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of personal charges on GOP party credit cards.
Hold your fire. While it sounds like an all out attack on the GOP, it’s not a partisan move. It does, however, sound a little political: the investigation was actually initiated at the request of Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running against Rubio for the GOP nod in the Senate race. Crist has been openly critical of the wave of spending by members of his own party, including his former close friend Greer, who stepped down in the midst of suggestions that he spent taxpayer money for personal gain.
Whether tax crimes have actually been committed hasn’t yet been determined: at this stage, the IRS’ involvement is considered “primary” with investigators looking at federal tax records and other financial forms. Specifically, they are said to be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars charged to the party for personal expenses and not repaid or reported. Rubio, for example, supposedly personally racked up more $100,000 in GOP credit card charges in just two years. The charges included grocery bills, plane tickets for his wife and wine bills; Rubio has acknowledged double-billing taxpayers for at least six trips and has promised to pay them back. Johnson was said to have billed the GOP for golf outings and chartered plans.
For its part, enough is enough: reportedly, the GOP party in Florida no longer issues credit cards.
