Donald Trump just won a key endorsement going into Tuesday’s Florida primary: that of the state’s attorney general, Pam Bondi.
But her bigger favor to Trump may have been her decision in 2013 not to pursue an investigation of Trump’s for-profit education chain after he made a big donation to her reelection campaign.
As Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel reported at the time, Bondi announced in September 2013 that her office was reviewing a series of complaints related to the Trump Institute of Boca Raton, a for-profit education company that is no longer in operation. Three days after the report that Bondi was considering joining other states’ attorneys general in taking action against Trump’s for-profit education chain, the real estate mogul dumped $25,000 into a committee organized for Bondi’s reelection.
Bondi ended up taking no action.
In numerous Republican presidential debates, Trump has explained that he donates big to politicians to buy influence. In one, he explained that he “supported Democrats, and I’ve supported Republicans. And as a businessman, I owed that to my company, to my family, to my workers, to everybody to get along.”
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