DoE/Jefferson scandal goes nuclear; feds subpoena what all the governor's grifters blatantly covered up
The federal subpoena, supporting a federal grand jury, echoes the official complaint I filed last year with DeSantis' OIG Melinda Miguel. That's why I filed it - to force an open state cover up.
It’s a handy resource now that a federal grand jury is looking at this explosive case, the tentacles of which touch basically everybody in Florida’s education and state government leadership. Near the beginning, this summary has a thumbnail rundown of the key scandal players. I believe I covered every state figure named in the federal subpoena. Call them All the Governor’s Grifters.
On February 10, 2022, I announced in this space that I was filing an official complaint with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Inspector General, Melinda Miguel, relating to the massive Florida Department of Education bid rigging and charter school corruption scandal that emerged from the state-sanctioned looting of tiny Jefferson County’s public schools.
I wanted to force Miguel and Ron DeSantis into a making public choice: carry out the comprehensive investigation of the DoE/Jefferson bid-rigging/charter school corruption scandal that Ron DeSantis’ spokeswoman Taryn Fenske had promised a few weeks earlier. Or openly reveal the corruption of the DeSantis’ administration and his DoE under the leadership of Richard Corcoran, who is now godfather of the darkly hilarious grift formerly known as New College.
The headline of my Feb. 10, 2022 article was:
I am your complainant, IG Miguel. Put Corcoran, Arza, and the whole Nov. 1 crew under oath.
Remember the Nov. 1 reference. It’s important.
Well, actually, Mike Blackburn and Melinda Miguel, turns out further investigation is warranted after all
My complaint focused on the massive, open DoE/Jefferson corruption publicly reported in a variety of ways, most prominently by Lawrence Mower and Ana Ceballos of the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald in this blockbuster story from January of 2022.
Forced to react to an official complaint, the OIG’s office went through the motions of considering me. I provided written exhibits and even met formally, via telephone, with representatives of OIG Melinda Miguel’s Office on Feb. 16, 2022. My complaint had a number: 2022-020063.
More than three months later, on June 9, I received an email from “OIG” titled “FDOE OIG 2022-020063 Complaint Response.” Here is the full text. Note the part in bold:
Good Afternoon Mr. Townsend,
Thank you for the information you provided to the Office of the Inspector General. As you pointed out in your email dated February 15, 2022, and again in a subsequent conversation, the information provided was not your allegations, nor did you have any specific knowledge of the allegations beyond what you read in public records and public reporting. After reviewing your complaint, the information contained within your complaint, and other pertinent information, we have determined that no further investigation is warranted at this time. Should any new information be presented, the OIG reserves the right to re-open the complaint.
Again, thank you for your time and the information you provided.
I should note here that DoE’s IG Mike Blackburn did most of the talking and questioning with me during my call with OIG investigators. He is the same investigator who carried out the original sham investigation of the scandal back in 2021. So I did not expect any serious or courageous or professional action.
The state’s OIG investigators lived down to my expectations.
And then …
The Nov. 1 meeting and charter lobbyist/convicted criminal Ralph Arza loom very very large
Look at what a federal grand jury has now subpoenaed in the DoE/Jefferson scandal. Note what I’ve circled:
If you don’t know about famous drunken racist drunk dialing witness tamperer Jeb Bush ally and top charter school lobbyist Ralph Arza — or have forgotten — give this article I wrote about him a read. It is very entertaining.
And honestly, the entire subpoena reads like a distillation of my complaint and coverage of the scandal, which is more thorough and comprehensive than any other reporter or citizen. Typing those sentences provides me a dopamine hit of some intensity.
I doubt grifter godfather Richard Corcoran takes much comfort in his absence from this subpoena
No atomic scientist could game out the quantum mechanics of all these charged grifter particles slamming into one another. I will make no predictions. I should note that to my knowledge, nobody on the Jefferson County side is anything but a victim or a witness in this case. This is a state scandal caused by state abuse of Jefferson County.
I’d be willing to bet that everyone — especially the feds — knows what Blackburn’s original sham investigation said about then Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran’s role in steering the corrupt DoE bid process to his old buddy Trey Traviesa’s company.
This is how Blackburn described the testimony of former DoE Vice Chancellor Melissa Ramsey in his sham investigation that made her the DoE scapegoat. Note the part in bold:
Ramsey denied ever seeing the draft or final RFQ. Ramsey detailed that she did not have any duties in reviewing or creating the RFQ and explained that she was under the impression that Commissioner Corcoran would be the one reviewing and approving the proposals submitted in response to the RFQ.
As I wrote about that roughly 18 months ago:
Who, ultimately, would review the responses to RFQ and award the work? That is not clear in the [Blackburn] investigation report. Ramsey denies it’s her; [Jacob] Oliva denies it’s him. Ramsey thinks it’s Corcoran; but Corcoran isn’t talking. Who owned bid review is vital to understanding what happened here.
It still is. And Corcoran, publicly ID’d by a witness, even in the sham investigative report, as the bid process owner, is nowhere to be found by name in the federal subpoena. But Melissa Ramsey is; and so is Jacob Oliva, former chancellor of Florida schools, now doing whatever Moms 4 Liberty tells him to do as Arkansas’ top school official.
Hmmmmm.
I get a bit of Jan. 6/mafia investigation vibe from that — little fish flipping on bigger fish flipping on … who knows? In any event, I find it very very hard to believe the feds have no interest in Richard Corcoran’s communications and actions in this case. I suspect Corcoran also finds that hard to believe.
Perhaps that’s why Corcoran, now president of the grift formerly known as New College, isn’t out here declaring himself in the clear to his college’s board, students, and donors. As Mower/Ceballos wrote yesterday about the grand jury and subpoena:
The Florida Department of Education and DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to emails sent Friday afternoon seeking comment. After the Times/Herald reported the allegations last year, the governor’s office said Chief Inspector General Melinda Miguel would review how the Department of Education and its inspector general handled the bid for the multimillion-dollar contract. The state has never produced the results.
Corcoran declined to comment. He is now serving as interim president of New College of Florida, a public liberal arts school in Sarasota County that DeSantis and political appointees are trying to turn into a beacon of conservatism.
Yeah, I bet he did.
Subpoena communications between DeSantis, Fenske, Pushaw, et al. and investigators Miguel, Blackburn, et. al.
I’m not a lawyer. I’m can’t suss out the complex interactions of state and federal law in this matter. I don’t know if the feds would have any standing/role in investigating the state cover-up of the underlying scandal — of if the cover-up is even illegal.
But wouldn’t it be interesting to know if anyone in DeSantis’ office [including, but not limited to, Christina Pushaw or Taryn Fenske] had any discussions with the OIG investigators who “reviewed” my complaint?
What was the “other pertinent information” that OIG used to justify ignoring my complaint? Reporters, ya’ll can request that information as public records if the feds don’t subpoena it.
Also filed under “other pertinent information” — how did DoE, under Corcoran’s command, come to steer the story of the sham investigation scapegoating Ramsey to the Florida Politics website, which “broke it” two days before Christmas under the most innocuous of headlines: “Two DoE employees resign after investigation, conflict of interest.” They later changed it to “Two DoE leaders” after I noted the understatement on Twitter.
You would think that Florida Politics and its owner, Peter Schorsch, would be very proud that a story they “broke” way back on Dec. 23, 2021 has now led to sprawling federal grand jury investigation.
I would, in their place.
Strangely, as of this writing, there is nothing on the Florida Politics website about the federal investigation — or claiming credit for breaking the story. Nothing on Twitter. The story deosn’t even exist for the people who “broke” it. I wonder why.
Indeed, I once asked Schorsch about his lack of interest in the massive state story his site “broke.” His answer:
Florida Politics specializes in breaking more news than almost any other Capitol outlet. Other outlets have the ability to go deeper in their reporting, but they don’t cover as much ground. We are wide, they are deep. It’s a good balance.
There are many, many, many stories out there. This is not a particularly interesting one to me. Education policy reporting is not a speciality because it’s not particularly attractive to high-value readers, whereas health care policy reporting is.
Sure. No high value readers are interested in the DoE/Jefferson story.
Yes, I’m sure that’s the reason Florida Politics got the story handed to it to run on Dec. 23 and then dropped it forever.
So much more to come. Stay tuned.