After ending his bid for the White House and endorsing Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis has thwarted an attempt to use Florida funds to pay the former president’s legal fees.
Florida’s chief financial officer Jimmy Patronis backed a bill that would have created a “Freedom Fighters Fund” to provide up to “$5 million (£3.9 million) in financial support to Florida residents running for president who face legal, partisan, political attacks by the Department of Justice or state attorneys”.
Patronis called Trump a “Florida man” – the former president resides at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach – who is “facing ongoing legal challenges from Democrats” in various states. So, to him, paying off Trump’s legal expenses was “good from a dollars-and-cents perspective”.
In addition, Republican state senator Ileana Garcia claimed the “Left” was trying to keep Trump off ballots by “weaponising the courts”.
But governor DeSantis, who recently described the former president as “superior” to Biden, shot down the idea of funding Trump’s legal woes.
Responding to a Politico story about the fund, with the headline “Some Florida Republicans want taxpayers to pay Trump’s legal bills”, DeSantis wrote on X/Twitter: “But not the Florida Republican who wields the veto pen…”