Florida AG Threatens To LOCK HER UP Mike Bloomberg For Cutting Check To Voting Rights Non-Profit

Dumbest Timeline.

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(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

“We have to have trust in our elections process. It’s essential to a strong stable democracy,” Attorney General Ashley Moody told Fox and Friends’ Steve Doocy this morning. And so, to protect democracy, Moody is launching an investigation of billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg for the dastardly crime of cutting a check to a non-profit that helps restore voting rights to Floridians who were convicted of crimes, served their sentences, and are now barred from voting simply because they cannot afford to pay fines or fees.

In a letter to the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Moody said that she was requesting an investigation at the behest of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis to see if Bloomberg had violated Florida’s ban on vote-buying. And then she hopped on television to tell the world all about it, as one does when one is launching a legitimate criminal inquiry and not a political hitjob.

(For comparison, the New York Attorney General, about whom the Trump administration has bellyached mightily, subpoenaed Eric Trump in May, and the public never heard about it until August when she sued to force him to comply.)

“When you hear words like ‘targeting’ certain voters, ‘investing and adding to a particular column,’ that doesn’t matter what party it is. That triggers Florida law,” Moody told Doocy. “Under Florida law, you cannot directly or indirectly give anything of value to persuade or entice a vote.”

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz (William & Mary Law, 2007) was even more emphatic, telling Fox’s Sean Hannity, “It’s a third-degree felony for someone to either directly or indirectly provide something of value to impact whether or not someone votes. So the question is whether or not paying off someone’s fines and legal obligations counts as something of value, and it clearly does.”

“If Michael Bloomberg was offering to pay off people’s credit card debt, you would obviously see the value in that. [W]hen you improve someone’s net worth by eliminating their financial liabilities, that’s something of value,” he continued.

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“Normally, it would be very difficult to prove that that was directly linked to impacting whether or not someone was going to vote. But they literally wrote their own admission.”

Really? Mike Bloomberg offered cash to voters if they agreed to show up at the polls? That seems … unlikely.

Probably because it never happened. Gaetz and Moody’s purported smoking gun is in internal memo reported by the Washington Post in which the Bloomberg team assessed that the most cost-effective way to increase Biden’s voting share in Florida was by paying the fines of formerly-incarcerated felons.

Prior to 2018, when 64 percent of voters attempted via referendum to restore voting rights to felons who had served their time, one in five Black Floridians was barred from casting a ballot due to a prior conviction. Which was exactly what Florida’s 150-year-old felon disenfranchisement law was designed to do.

Florida’s Republican legislature and governor, who had just squeaked into office on a 0.4 percent margin of victory, responded to the popular referendum by passing a law requiring the payment of all fines, fees, restitution, and court costs before a former felon could register to vote. Then they successfully argued in court that this did not constitute a poll tax, even if had the effect of barring poor and indigent people from the franchise.

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And because African Americans are reliable Democratic voters, and because such a huge portion of Black voters in Florida fell into the category of persons barred from voting by inability to pay court costs, the Bloomberg team figured they could get the most bang for their election buck by just dumping cash into paying off those fines.

“We have identified a significant vote share that requires a nominal investment,” the memo said. “The data shows that in Florida, Black voters are a unique universe unlike any other voting bloc, where the Democratic support rate tends to be 90%-95%.”

And perhaps if Bloomberg had simply cut checks to Black Floridians to pay their court costs, Gaetz and Moody would have a point. Although it doesn’t entirely gibe with their assertion that those fines are part of the state’s obligation to punish offenders, and 100 percent, definitely, in no wise a poll tax designed to stop Black Flordians from casting a ballot.

But he didn’t. Instead, Bloomberg raised $16 million for the non-partisan Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which helps all former felons regain their right to vote, regardless of race or party affiliation.

“Different people may give for different reasons, but we are in this for one reason, and that reason is to place people over politics,” the group’s president Desmond Meade told the Post. “We are concerned with people from all walks of life, from all sorts of politics.”

Bloomberg’s motive in making the donation is irrelevant. He simply calculated the odds that Black Democrats would be heavily overrepresented in the pool of disenfranchised ex-offenders and cut the check, knowing that some portion of it would likely pay off fines for Trump voters, too. The Post bizarrely claims that the donation would “pay the court fines and fees of nearly 32,000 Black and Hispanic Florida voters with felony convictions,” although there is no indication that white, MAGA-hatted Floridians are barred from accessing the fund.

“The right to vote is fundamental to our democracy and no American should be denied that right,” Bloomberg responded in a statement. “Working together with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, we are determined to end disenfranchisement and the discrimination that has always driven it.”

Gaetz calls for election bribery probe of Bloomberg over pledge to pay Florida felons’ fines [Fox News]
Mike Bloomberg raises $16 million to allow former felons to vote in Florida [WaPo]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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