The Florida Republican Party released Friday what it called a forensic audit of spending under indicted former chairman Jim Greer, showing almost $400,000 in expenses unrelated to party business rung up during those troubled three years – much of it aimed at helping advance Gov. Charlie Crist.
The audit, by the Atlanta-based law firm Alston & Bird, also depicts a Florida GOP plagued by lousy internal oversight and led by an unfettered Greer, who now faces six state felony counts of grand theft, money laundering and attempted fraud involving a consulting company he formed in 2009 which drew $200,000 from the party.
The review, spanning 2007-2009, also looks like a political weapon for the GOP this election season.
“This independent audit is affirmation of the despicable exploitation and gross financial mismanagement of donor funds that occurred at the Republican Party of Florida during the leadership of Charlie Crist and at the direction of his hand-picked chairman, Jim Greer,” said Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, Greer’s successor as party boss.
The audit ties independent U.S. Senate candidate Crist, who broke with the GOP in April, to Greer’s questionable party spending on limousine trips, dinners at Delmonico’s restaurants, and junkets to Las Vegas, New York and London. Greer’s party spending included almost $5,000 on costs related to his son’s 2009 baptism, auditors said, and lavish spending on hotels, room service and mini-bars.
But it also may raise doubts about a party whose candidates are campaigning on the theme of bringing free-market principles to running state and federal government.
The party’s gubernatorial candidate, Rick Scott, and U.S. Senate contender, Marco Rubio, didn’t comment on the findings. But other activists acknowledged the report exposed GOP failings – while insisting that Crist was central to the wrongdoing.
“It was a dictatorship under Greer, no doubt about it,” said Lee County Republican Chairman Gary Lee, a former New York member of Congress. “But the audit also shows the need for any organization to have prudent oversight. Still, I think it tightens the noose around Crist.”
Florida Democrats seized on the findings, however, as detailing a pattern of abuses by leaders of the rival party, which put $7 million on American Express credit cards during the Greer years, covering wide-ranging trips by party leaders including a trip to London by former House Speaker Ray Sansom, R-Destin, who resigned amid a criminal probe for his role in steering taxpayer money to a college that later gave him a six-figure job.
“After Republican Speaker Ray Sansom’s indictment and Republican Chairman Jim Greer’s arrest, the only way the corrupt Republican establishment can claim they run anything like a business is if they use the disgraced executive Rick Scott’s record overseeing the largest Medicare fraud in American history as their model,” said Florida Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff.
The audit, undertaken at Thrasher’s direction, reviewed only the 15 party officials and Republican lawmakers who charged more than $50,000 on GOP-issued credit cards from 2007 through 2009. The auditors said they agreed with the decision to limit the review’s scope, saying that level represented 96 percent of all the American Express spending within the party.
Alston & Bird said that had any party officials interviewed by the firm raised questions about cardholders who spent less than that, it would have reviewed their spending further. But none raised alarms, auditors said.
Cleared by auditors in their review are still-powerful Republican leaders, including House Speaker-designate Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, and Rubio. Combined, the three legislators repaid $4,488 to the party for expenses considered not related to party business and were cleared in the review, auditors said.
Greer, too, tried to make good with the party – sending a $7,337 check last May intended to cover charges including tickets to a 2009 concert by the rock band Journey, and a driver to take him, his wife and another couple to the show. Other Greer expenses he sought to repay included May 2009 travel to New York for an “Artrageous” event his wife wanted to attend.
Greer’s check, however, bounced after the party delayed cashing it and the former chairman’s bank accounts were frozen as part of the state’s criminal investigation.
Greer’s lawyer, Damon Chase, blasted the party audit Friday – saying that GOP officials, including Thrasher, had vouched for the credibility of Republican finances as part of a now-disputed severance agreement approved when Greer stepped down as chairman in February. Greer is suing the party to recover about $124,000 in severance, which party leaders now say was never approved. The case is scheduled for a November hearing.
“They’re either lying now or they were lying then,” Chase said of party leaders. “Either way, they’re liars. They’re abusing their power, when the Republican leadership of this state can spark a $2 million criminal investigation of a $100,000 claim.”
In an e-mail to the News Service of Florida, Chase sought to distill the party’s motives for its pursuit of Greer.
“Greer served at the governor’s pleasure and did what he was told, the result of which was record fund-raising and unprecedented Republican success in the Florida House and Senate,” Chase said. “Now, because Crist is fighting Rubio, all the spending is suddenly inappropriate. Give me a break.”
Cheney Mason, another of Greer’s lawyers, also filed a motion Friday to dismiss the criminal charges against the former chairman tied to his consultancy company. Motions have already been filed to postpone the scheduled Oct. 18 criminal trial into next year.
Following a U.S. Senate debate with Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek in Miami on Friday, which is to air tonight on Spanish-language Univision, Crist ridiculed the audit’s findings.
“All I’ve done is pay for my things personally,” Crist said. “If it says anything different than that, it’s wrong.”
When asked about what auditors said was $381,786 in inappropriate spending, chiefly by him and Greer, Crist laughed. “That’s absurd.”
Among the excesses cited by auditors were May 2009 costs related to the Greer family baptism, trips to Disney World for the families of Greer and Crist, and several trips to Miami’s Fisher Island, where Crist’s wife, Carole, has a home.
Also detailed is a trip to Las Vegas by Greer, former GOP executive director Delmar Johnson, and state Rep.Chris Dorworth, R-Lake Mary, already tapped as a future House speaker, which coincide with a 2008 Crist fund-raiser. Auditors concluded, “it does not appear that Greer or Johnson were conducting RPOF business while in Las Vegas more than on a nominal basis.”
Included in what auditors label as suspect spending is $73,264 to a Central Florida air charter company, Baer Air, for a twin-engine propeller plane Greer purchased and leased back to the firm. The aircraft was used heavily by Greer and party officials with auditors concluding that “the more that Greer caused the RPOF (and others) to use his plane, the sooner his outstanding balance would be satisfied.”
Auditors also took the unusual step of apparently trying to coach investigators into another area of potential criminal wrongdoing by Greer. “We also do not know if Baer Air issued Greer an IRS Form 1099 for the amount in which his outstanding balance was reduced, or whether Greer did or should have reported this amount on his federal income tax returns.”
In another area of party spending not explored in earlier disclosures involving Greer, auditors also called into question a party consulting deal with former Crist campaign manager and governor’s office chief-of-staff Erik Eikenberg, whose Groundgame Consulting was paid $10,000 by the Florida GOP.
In interviews with those involved, auditors heard disputed accounts of the purpose of the payment – with Johnson saying it was made because the Crist campaign declined to give Eikenberg a signing bonus.
Eikenberg denied Johnson’s account and auditors said they “place no blame” on Crist’s former staffer. But they noted that no contract existed between the party and Groundgame.
By John Kennedy
Kathleen Haughney and David Royse of the News Service of Florida contributed to this report.
The News Service of Florida
