Thread by @jtlarsen

SCOOP: Florida Gov. Rick Scott ran a super PAC that got a $500,000 donation from a private-equity CEO...

...and one week later, Florida invested $200 million of state pension money with the CEO's private-equity fund.
tyt.com/stories/4vZLCH…

The private-equity firm was Cerberus. Florida paid Cerberus a $4.7 million fee for managing the investment.

We analyzed the Cerberus fund and found it had a 7.7% annualized rate of return.

If Florida had invested the money in the S&P 500, it would have seen a 20.1% return.

LOL...I misspoke...it was $4.9 million in fees as of the latest data.

One month after Florida invested in the Cerberus fund, the Cerberus CEO, Stephen Feinberg, donated another $975,000 to the super PAC run by Gov. Scott... a super PAC supporting then-candidate Donald Trump.

It's important to note that no rules or laws appear to have been violated.

The SEC implemented rules against pay-for-play after pension-fund scandals in New York and California... but so far the SEC has not applied that rule to super PACs.

Our story follows in the wake of similar reporting on Scott money dealings, by @davidsirota and @andrewperezdc, involving a new Scott super PAC, as well as the Florida pension fund.

maplight.org/story/rick-sco…
and
maplight.org/story/rick-sco…

And the New York Times has a new piece up TODAY questioning the blindness of Scott's blind holdings.

Never rains, but it pours.
nytimes.com/2018/10/17/us/…

Cerberus assured us that they're in compliance, which we have no reason to doubt.

An agency spokesperson called "any suggestion that politics influenced" the investment decision "baseless and without merit."

Scott's office referred us to his campaign, which did not respond.

140,000 Florida teachers belong to the pension fund.

Teachers union head @rweingarten told us: "“These kinds of shameless pay-to-play deals are inappropriate at best and illegal at worst..."

She continued, "And it’s doubly disturbing when a governor with a fiduciary duty to protect the retirement security of Florida’s public sector workers takes the bait and decides to plow their deferred wages into a high-fee private equity fund instead.”

The handy video version of our investigation into Rick Scott and the private-equity firm that got state business even as its CEO poured money into Scott's pro-Trump super PAC.

Full video HERE:

I should mention that this story was done in collaboration with The Intercept.

You can read it on their site, as well.
theintercept.com/2018/10/18/ric…