Gaetz floats his trial turd on missing emails.

About one of the funniest things to come down the pike (lately) in all of this is a motion by future Florida senate leader Don Gaetz (R- Niceville) to gain support for a new bill.

His bill would make it mandatory - mandatory I tell you! - for transitional governments to keep their emails prior to taking office. Seems to make sense doesn't it? It's only fair, and commonsense for them to do that 'n all, because shucks! They might just get up to all kinds of hootenany with their hiring decisions if they were able to cut deals and so on, on the sly like, in their email chats.

So, Gaetz says, we'll put a stop to that by making it illegal for people to delete their email accounts in between the time they get elected and when they take office! Hyuilk!

Only trouble is, IT ALREADY IS ILLEGAL! It has been for some time! Gaetz doesn't think anyone outside of Tally knows about Florida's Government in the Sunshine Law which has provisions for this all spelled out since the 1990s. We've had email and the internet since the 1990s, by the way, Senator Gaetz. We're you aware of that?

I guess this trick is so old, some of us have forgotten how it works. You break a law, then get one of your buddies to say "well, if the law was only written more clearly, this sort of thing wouldn't have happened in the first place."

This is a variant of the "soft owning" we discuss in our new book Rick Scott: Enemy of the State. You may recall from the book "soft owning" was when someone commits an atrocity, or in Rick Scott's multiple cases, has someone do it for him, then looks into a camera with as much sincerity as he can muster and says "I accept responsibility for that which happened...because a staff member did it. Yes, I accept responsibility, because I am the top dog in this outfit."

Of course we know what they are saying "someone else did this, and that someone has been fired and likely paid money to keep schtum."

What's happening here is something that happens just about every time someone commits an ethics violation. It happened when Mike Haridpopolos was slapped on the wrist. Several members of the legislature even Gary Siplin a democrat, said Florida's ethics rules weren't clear enough and needed to be redefined.

It's not going to work Senator Gaetz. Not this time.

This fig leaf comes as an investigation is happening into the illegal destruction of emails our governor authorized or did so by omission, or by accident. There is no excuse. No way out, nothing that plays.

This move on Gaetz's part hints to how the FDLE non-investigation is going. They need to float a trial turd and see if the public will swallow the explanation that the law called Sunshine isn't clear enough and needs to be strengthened and the neophytes in Team Scott essentially aren't to blame.

I don't know about you, but I am tired of swallowing the feces.

Don't you believe the misdirection.