Trump aides and Rick Scott plotted Scott’s big offshore drilling ‘win’ – By Joan McCarter (dailykos.com) / March 27 2018
Remember back in January, when the Trump administration gave a miracle reprieve from the administration expansion of off-shore drilling? Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had a number of excuses for exempting Florida among all other coastal states, finally landing on the excuse that Florida had “coastal currents [that] are different, the layout of where the geology is” that it was too unique to safely drill offshore. If it all smelled fishy, that’s because the whole announcement was completely rotten. It was entirely cooked up by the administration and Florida Gov. Rick Scott to give the Republicans a political win.
When Gov. Rick Scott and U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced on Jan. 9 that Florida was “off the table” for offshore oil drilling, the governor cast the hastily arranged news conference at the Tallahassee airport as unplanned and the Trump administration’s decision as something Scott had influenced at the eleventh hour.
In fact, Zinke’s top advance staffer, whose job it is to plan ahead for such events, was in Tallahassee the previous day. And top officials from the offices of both Scott and the secretary were in regular contact for several days leading up to the announcement, according to more than 1,200 documents reviewed by POLITICO Florida as part of a public records request.
The documents, which include phone records, text messages, and emails, contradict the supposed spontaneous event that portrayed Scott as single-handedly securing a politically popular win for Florida’s environmental future only days after the administration had spelled out a controversial new national five-year plan to boost offshore oil drilling. The event left Scott, at least for the moment, with a big victory to hold over Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), whom the term-limited Scott is almost assuredly challenging in 2018.
The announcement of expanded drilling came on January 4 and just five days later, Scott and Zinke announced the miracle reprieve. But on January 5, the day after the initial announcement, Zinke’s and Scott’s offices were coordinating Zinke’s trip to Florida for the January 9 meeting where Scott would supposedly argue successfully to save Florida’s coastline. In fact, between January 5 and that January 9 meeting, staffers for the two were in touch no less than 24 times to coordinate the whole thing. But backing up a few months, Politico found that Scott deputy chief of staff Craig Carbone and Jackie Schutz Zeckman, then Scott’s chief of staff (she’s now on his Senate campaign), had “at least 60 calls [in] October with Interior officials,” and “the discussions became much more frequent as the oil drilling announcements approached.”
Sen. Bill Nelson, the Democratic incumbent Scott is likely to challenge, called it from the beginning:
“I have spent my entire life fighting to keep oil rigs away from our coasts. But now, suddenly, Secretary Zinke announces plans to drill off Florida’s coast and four days later agrees to ‘take Florida off the table?’ I don’t believe it,” Nelson said in a statement at the time. “This is a political stunt orchestrated by the Trump administration to help Rick Scott, who has wanted to drill off Florida’s coast his entire career.”
Scott’s immediate opposition to the sham proposal was so suspect that it has earned him a “Full Flop” from PolitiFact Florida. It was a clumsy and transparent Trump-Scott conspiracy from the get-go, and now Politico has demonstrated just how ham-handedly they executed it.
