Gov. Charlie Crist defended his hand-picked Republican Party of Florida chairman, even when the heat was on Jim Greer to resign.
Now that the heat's been turned up and the pot's boiled over with Greer's arrest, it appears Crist is beginning to distance himself.
By December 2009, RPOF leaders and donors saw enough evidence of Greer's mismanagement of funds and shady dealings that they began questioning him, even calling for his resignation.
Not his long-time friend and ally, Charlie Crist. Crist, the state's top Republican at the time, said he'd seen "no evidence" of Greer's mismanagement.
Not only did Crist claim to be oblivious to the excesses and misdealings the majority of the RPOF power players were seeing, but he went further to praise Greer for his performance. Even after Greer's resignation, as seen in an interview with the Palm Beach Post from Feb 26, Crist stood by his position that his friend and party chairman had "done a good job."
"What I really admire about former chairman Greer," Crist says in the video, "was the level of outreach he strove for in terms of minority recruitment." The video clearly shows how Crist keeps the focus on Greer's outreach to minorities instead of the alleged reaching into donors' pockets.
Now that Greer has been arrested and charged with six counts of fraud, money laundering and grand theft, he is changing his tune, saying during a press conference Wednesday that he's disappointed and he's "not complicit."
"As I said earlier, it's disappointing, it's surprising," said Crist. "Sometimes you're disappointed by people."
