How Ron DeSantis' brittle vanity turned a minor embarrassment into a major School Board cover-up scandal
For the second time in a year, Ron DeSantis is silently part of a massive education corruption scandal that his administration and state are trying hard to pretend does not exist.
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For the second time in a year, Ron DeSantis is silently in the middle of a massive education corruption scandal that his administration and state are trying hard to pretend does not exist.
The first was the Jefferson County charter school scandal. That scandal quietly ended the brash public career of former Florida Speaker of the House and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran. But investigators corruptly refused to put Corcoran and top charter lobbyist/grifter Ralph Arza under oath, along with many others.
DoE/Jefferson also inflicted the worst policy and public relations blow Florida’s Jeb-world privatizing grifters have ever suffered. And that’s with the governor covering it up. DoE/Jefferson was and is that explosive. See a full account here.
DoE/Jefferson’s weight is the reason nobody talks about it. It’s the reason the governor’s flacks and Inspector General lied to the public about investigating it. I am an official complainant in that scandal, who spoke directly to the investigators about it. They know — and I know — what they’ve ignored. It’s all public, documented in plain sight.
I have also filed multiple official elections complaints with DeSantis’ Florida Elections Commission about this new scandal.
The overlapping layers of the Dunn/Nolte/DeSantis scandal
But even with formal complaints, I expect the FEC, like DeSantis’ OIG in DoE/Jefferson, to cover up and protect the governor from his connection to this scandal.
So I also want to introduce you in a comprehensive, but concise way, to this new scandal. I want you to know what DeSantis and official power have given their blessing to. The scandal comes in roughly four overlapping dimensions:
A Texas GOP operative/lifelong criminal named James Dunn was recruited by Polk County’s “County Citizens Defending Freedom,” a GOP Moms-for- Liberty-type group, to run the campaigns for its slate of Polk School candidates in the recent election cycle. Dunn is a convicted felon, who collected six shady PPP loans and recently cheated a Houston church. Soon after Dunn arrived in Polk in June, illegal campaign texts libeling an opposing candidate soon began to show up in the School Board campaigns.
Here is Dunn with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
A Polk County buffoon named Rick Nolte was part of the CCDF slate. Nolte has openly claimed in official documents that he committed an election felony and at least 10 misdemeanors through illegal cash campaign contributions. Thus, according to Nolte’s own records, when he narrowly won his election in the August primary (51-49), he did so by cheating and committing crimes.
Ron DeSantis endorsed Nolte in August and is completely ignoring the crimes Nolte says Nolte committed. Polk elected law enforcement — specifically big talking Sheriff Grady Judd and weak State Attorney Brian Haas — refuse to address Nolte at all in public, although there are rumors of low energy “investigations.” DeSantis, Judd, and Haas should have publicly hounded Nolte out of the campaign long ago; and they should immediately remove or demand his removal from the office he just took. Ironically, voter data shows the DeSantis endorsement was irrelevant to the race. Generic partisanship and Dunn’s criminality mattered most in these races.
The DeSantis/Judd/Haas failure to act or speak publicly on Nolte and Dunn violates clear precedent set by DeSantis himself and by Judd in their public treatment of Hillsborough prosecutor Andrew Warren and Broward County school board members. It violates precedent set by the Polk State Attorney’s Office in the administration before Haas. And it violates precedent set by DeSantis, Judd, and Haas in the recent case of a Lake Wales city commissioner wrongly accused and then removed from office by DeSantis.
As I just mentioned, this scandal runs quite neatly in parallel with the story of Hillsborough County prosecutor Andrew Warren. DeSantis removed Warren from office earlier this year because of his supposed unwillingness to enforce statute around hypothetical abortion crimes. Warren sued to get his job back, and a trial was held last week. The judge’s verdict is expected in several weeks.
Failure to enforce statute is also at the heart of this Polk School Board scandal; but it’s DeSantis and his minions who are unwilling to enforce laws or even talk about them in conjunction with the board member DeSantis endorsed. And Nolte’s crimes aren’t hypothetical. He claims them openly.
The threads of crime and gross groomerishness DeSantis and elected law enforcement will not address
Within the layers of scandal, there are three distinct and specific criminal angles that DeSantis, Judd, and Haas are refusing to address legally, morally, or publicly in any way. And there’s a fourth gross angle that isn’t criminal, exactly, but suggests Nolte should never be alone with any young woman (or anybody else) in a school setting. Here they are:
Rick Nolte’s openly declared felony and misdemeanor cash donations: It is illegal for a campaign to receive any cash loan or contribution above $50. It is a felony to accept one — even from yourself — more than $5000. Rick Nolte, endorsed by Ron DeSantis, officially reported 10 misdemeanor cash donations and a felony $5200 cash loan/contribution to himself. Nolte confirmed committing the misdemeanors by apologizing for them in writing; but he has not amended or addressed the felony in the same way. He told a reporter who cornered him that he “believes” it’s a “clerical error.” But he has not amended the felony admission, which has been a source of news for a month. The image below is the official announcement of a felony.
Two batches of illegal campaign texts, illegal in two different ways: This includes illegal texts (because they’re unreported in spending documents) and illegal texts (because they’re anonymous) that libeled incumbent Polk School Board Member Lisa Miller and her husband. Both groups of texts are misdemeanors. But it is unclear if the texts are the same texts. Full background here. Key email below below from CCDF candidate Terry Clark references “texts” clearly. None of those texts has ever been reported in any campaign spending report.
Suspicious campaign spending suggesting Nolte hired Dunn and tried to hide it: Nolte claims he spent $2700 in campaign money on “shirts” with a Missouri vendor that doesn’t sell shirts. Falsifying a spending report is a first degree misdemeanor. Also, a handful of other vaguely labeled Nolte spending with that same vendor through June 30 — and another vendor that doesn’t actually exist — totals just slightly more than $7,500. That’s almost exactly the same amount that two other CCDF candidates paid to criminal campaign manager James Dunn in June. Full background and timeline here. Also, Terry Clark’s email above flatly states that Nolte was “also using” Dunn.
Supposed anti-”groomers” DeSantis and and Judd shrug at Nolte’s “T.I.T.S.” manifesto: This creepy and disgusting 2016 Facebook post from Nolte’s golf business offers a window on Nolte’s morality and fitness to serve children. It remained up throughout the campaign. Nolte hasn’t addressed it. DeSantis and Judd and all those fake “anti-groomer” GOP con artist/politicians haven’t said a word about it.
In a less corrupt times, in a less corrupt state, with less corrupt media, all of this would be enough to create a significant scandal. But that’s not our reality.
Elected law enforcement leaders in Polk are already covering for the governor by doing nothing. The governor’s protectors in state-affiliated narrative media, like Peter Schorsch and Politico, will also continue to ignore this scandal. And again, I expect official state power to cover up and look away as well.
That’s why I consider formal agency complaints far more important to file now than in the past. They may be the only decent vehicle for citizens to force acknowledgement — in some limited form — from power. Reporters can’t really do it. (More on the importance of acknowledgement in a future article.)
I want to make ignoring this as hard and publicly painful as I can.
Why corrupt yourself to protect Rick Nolte and James Dunn? The governor and sheriff’s fragile feelings must be spared at all costs
DeSantis, Judd, and Haas could and should have denounced/prosecuted Nolte into resignation or campaign-quitting weeks ago, if not months ago. All their own precedents demand it. Politically, it would have been a tiny footnote in local Polk history, forgotten almost instantly. DeSantis could have even given himself points for being “tough on his own side.”
It would have be the easiest thing in the world for DeSantis, Judd, and Haas to make this go away long before now — with kudos.
So why are we here — still talking about this absurd thing that everyone knows is happening?
It’s not because of Rick Nolte. He truly is a buffoon. He’s isolated and powerless on the board because Polk voters (including many DeSantis voters) smashed the rest of his slate, thanks in great part to public reporting about Dunn in Polk County.
I think it’s because DeSantis and Judd were unwilling to eat even a few hours of bad news coverage and mockery from unimportant people like me.
Gov. Snowflake does not do that. Nor does Sheriff Snowflake.
Case in point: the Polk School Board election cycle played out with book-banning as a major backdrop. Sheriff Judd largely sided with the book banners. And he got very angry when the School Board refused to deny access to books like Drama and Beloved unless a parent specifically requests them.
Judd is the camera-thirsty media star of the I-4 corridor. That’s given him dictator expectations here at home. He pouts and flails when you tell him no. The Nolte and Dunn silences are a giant, public Grady pout.
It’s my theory that Judd is both protecting DeSantis from Nolte/Dunn blowback and having a big emo fit over not getting his way.
He should chill out and eat a moon pie.
The corruption of everything — for nothing
Thus protecting Gov. Beta’s fragile feelings from the slight consequences of having to remove the guy he chose freely to endorse has now become an all-consuming imperative corrupting everything about elected law enforcement in Polk County.
It has forced Sheriff Grady Judd (who is also protecting his own feelings) and State Attorney Brian Haas to make mockeries of their professional reputations and any basic concept of equal justice. They have together legalized gross, blatant election crime and normalized criminality as a political tool and asset.
And that’s the scandal at its most profound.
Polk and Florida’s corruption is so thorough and complete that it elevates and protects grifters as ridiculous and petty as Nolte and Dunn, with the tacit help of elected law enforcement leaders. That’s how we got Joel Greenberg in this state, too.
Because of Emo DeSantis and his local minions, we’re stuck with the most embarrassing political and civic absurdity in Polk history since a Klan sheriff represented us in the early 1980s.
It’s both a window into the fragile, beta personality DeSantis will bring to a presidential campaign and the corrupt weakness of the people who will enable him.
And that’s just the open, obvious Nolte part of the scandal.
James Dunn’s multi-state crime spree and connections are more spectacular. And it’s my understanding that it may be about to break in Texas.
So here is a cheat sheet of Florida characters in this Dunn/Nolte/DeSantis scandal that widens every day that DeSantis, Judd, and Haas pretend like Nolte and Dunn don’t exist and that Nolte hasn’t openly claimed to commit a felony and roughy a dozen additional crimes.
Key characters
James Dunn: Twice convicted federal felon, church-cheater, and 6 shady PPP loan-collecting GOP campaign operative from Texas. Dunn’s life of crime is so dense that I can’t come close to documenting it all in a concise way. Start with these links, knowing there is much more — and much more to come.
Polk Sheriff Grady Judd and State Attorney Brian Haas: Tough talking weak men, who are soft on crime if it’s publicly confessed to by the right people.
The “County Citizens Defending Freedom” (CCDF) and Capital Lynch Mob supporter Steve Maxwell: Polk County’s version of “Moms for Liberty,” which recruited Dunn to run its gross slate of book-banning, January 6th-loving Polk County GOP School Board candidates, who were Nolte, Jill Sessions, and Terry Clark. Its founder is a guy named Steve Maxwell, who was part of the Stop-the-Steal rally and celebrates Capitol Lynch Mob supporter Michael Flynn, the disgraced general.
Rick “T.I.T.S.” Nolte: New Polk County School Board Member and self-declared campaign cheater and felon. Endorsed by Ron DeSantis and backed by CCDF/GOP. Author of Facebook “T.I.T.S.” manifesto.
Jill Sessions and Terry Clark: Failed CCDF Polk County School Board candidates who were part of the CCDF/GOP slate with Nolte. Both openly hired Dunn. Voters punished them severely for openly hiring GOP criminal Dunn. They would have punished Nolte, too.
Anthony Pedicini: GOP operative, close advisor to Ron DeSantis and “friend” of Hillsborough Sheriff Chad Chronister. Coverboy of Peter Schorsch’s “Influence” magazine for Summer of 2022. Pedicini has long Polk connections to Dennis Ross and others. Pedicini also played major PR role in helping DeSantis remove Hillsborough prosecutor Andrew Warren for supposedly encouraging criminality. I don’t know who convinced DeSantis to endorse Nolte; but I bet the process connects to Pedicini somehow. Pedicini is also a snowflake.
“Educators and Parents for School Excellence:” A PAC closely tied to Pedicini, which paid Pedicini’s firm $250K for gross attack ads for Jill Sessions this fall against excellent incumbent School Board member Lisa Miller. Pedicini cashed in and made that anti-Miller, pro-criminal-led campaign content long after it became public in June that Sessions had hired the criminal Dunn.
Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister: Friend and client for Pedicini. Also played a key role in helping DeSantis remove Warren, collaborating with Pedicini for press conference remarks about Warren’s removal. The “Friends of Chad Chronister” PAC contributed to Pedicini’s “Educators and Parents” PAC. Thus, the PAC for the sheriff who wanted Warren removed because of supposedly encouraging criminality literally took the side of an arch-criminal to meddle in the School Board election of somebody else’s county. Chronister’s office has ignored my requests for comment.
There you have it. Who knows if anything will ever happen; but at least it’s documented. Just like DoE/Jefferson is. And you never know. Maybe somebody’s conscience gets stirred.
As Nemik says in Andor: “Remember this. Try.”