The Ron DeSantis campaign is in damage control mode following a report exposing the Governor’s relationship with Morteza ‘Mori’ Hosseini, an Iranian donor set to benefit from DeSantis’s $92 million allocation of COVID cash to assist his donor’s land development.
Specifically, DeSantis staffer and now registered foreign agent Christina Pushaw tried to “debunk” the report and defend Hosseini – a man with continued links to far-left Democrats.
“[B]y ‘Iranian,’ they mean an American citizen, of Iranian heritage,” said Pushaw, who previously worked for Mikheil Saakashvili, a Georgian and Ukrainian politician. Hosseini was, in fact, born in Iran, per his own biography.
Pushaw’s tweet coincided with newly created, anonymous DeSantis supporter accounts attacking the report, or replying to it with anti-Trump memes. Many of the accounts were activated only in 2023 or late 2022, with many sporting usernames comprised of only a first name and a series of random numbers – commonly associated with bot activity. Several demanded intervention by Community Notes, the Wikipedia-like “fact-checking” feature on Twitter which the DeSantis camp recently weaponized against their detractors – despite Pushaw trashing fact-checkers in the past.
A “context” note added to the report says the project near Hosseini’s developments dates back many years. This does not change the fact that financial backing from DeSantis has reportedly accelerated the project by “more than a decade”, however. Local campaigners also say DeSantis’s Department of Transportation has “secretly added” a number of expansions to the project, which has ballooned in cost.
