RSS Feed
December 10th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Fried plans to challenge the ethics commission probable cause determination in a hearing before an administrative law judge.
Fried was a political newcomer when she jumped into the race for agriculture commissioner back in 2018. Sticking to a campaign platform that focused primarily on guns, marijuana and water quality, Fried won the Democratic primary and narrowly defeated Republican Matt Caldwell in the general election.
Fried altered her previous financial disclosure forms four days before her official entry into the governor earlier this year.
Fried amended the forms she filed back in June 2018 when she qualified for the ballot the first time to show that instead of earning $84,000 from her consulting company, Igniting Florida, in 2017 that she actually earned nearly $166,000 during the previous year.
Fried also amended her forms for 2018 not once but twice. In July 2019, Fried reported that her only salary for the previous year was the money she earned as agriculture commissioner. Several months later — in January 2020 — Fried amended her disclosure to show that she had earned $72,000 from Igniting Florida. She changed it again in May to report that she had earned $351,480 from Igniting Florida.
There was no real debate among ethics commissioners ahead of their vote although there were some questions.
Don Gaetz, a member of the commission and father of Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, asked questions about why the amounts listed by Fried were changed and when it actually translated into money for the commissioner.
“I thought my finances were complicated,” Don Gaetz, who is a multimillionaire and former state Senate president, said at one point during a back and forth with Kuehne.
Kuehne attempted to explain to commissioners that Fried, a first time candidate, had to file her first financial disclosure in 2018 before her taxes were finalized. He explained that the value of Fried’s work wound up being more than initially anticipated. Kuehne did acknowledge that eventually Fried was given cash for her work that in part came from work she did on behalf of a Gainesville-based nursery that was eventually acquired by a medical marijuana company.
Investigative records released by the commission showed that they attempted to interview Fried, but in the end Kuehne submitted a statement on her behalf.
Posted in 
Tags: 
