Richard Luscombe reports from The Guardian from Miami:
Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis could face a federal investigation into whether it diverted Covid-19 vaccines to wealthy supporters in exchange for campaign donations.
Gary Farmer, the leading Democrat in the Florida Senate, he wrote Thursday to the acting U.S. Attorney General Monty Wilkinson, asking him to examine the “worrying” reports.
“Over the past few months, there have been several well-documented reports of exclusive vaccination sites that limited access to paying private club members and residents of fortified neighborhood communities,” Farmer wrote.
“In several cases, the establishment of these vaccination sites has been preceded or followed by substantial contributions to a political committee controlled by Governor Ron DeSantis.”
The latest claim, Farmer said, came from a Miami Herald report that more than 1,200 residents, age 65 and older, from the exclusive Ocean Reef Club, a private community closed in Key Largo, had been vaccinated in mid-January.
At the time, the Herald said, the rest of the state was still struggling to get an assignment. Just a month earlier, according to state records, 17 Ocean Reef residents donated at least $ 5,000 to a political action committee that would support the DeSantis re-election campaign in 2022. And one, the former Illinois governor Bruce Rauner, cut a $ 250,000 check in the DeSantis PAC in February after the vaccines were administered.
The newspaper further stated that DeSantis has been using the state vaccination initiative to “target emerging vaccination sites to select communities,” often disproportionately rich white areas.
“Governor DeSantis’ clear vaccine priority for wealthy people appears to be closely tied to political payments, an extremely worrying scheme to pay to play if the allegations are confirmed, ”Farmer wrote.
He asked Wilkinson’s office to “conduct a thorough and thorough investigation into any possible failure of Governor DeSantis.”