TALLAHASSEE — A panel headed by an appointee of Gov. Ron DeSantis found he did not violate state ethics rules when he accepted a $28,000 golf simulator from a major political donor but did not report it as a gift.

The behind-closed-doors unanimous ruling on June 26 from the Florida Commission on Ethics became public Wednesday in a brief news release that also found no probable cause DeSantis violated ethics rules by not reporting donor-paid airplane trips he took while campaigning for governor.

The simulator was given to the Florida Governor’s Mansion by Daytona Beach developer Morteza “Mori” Hosseini, a longtime supporter of DeSantis who has given the governor tickets to play golf at Augusta National Golf Club and has lent his private jet to the governor’s campaign.

Hosseini, also chair of the University of Florida’s board of trustees, has been a frequent guest at the governor’s mansion and a VIP at his inaugurations.

The commission concluded the simulator, though initially intended as a gift to DeSantis, was actually a gift to the state because it will remain in the governor’s mansion after DeSantis leaves office. That means DeSantis was not required to report it, it said.

“The decision was made behind closed doors, and that raises concerns about government transparency,” said Michael Barfield, research director for the Florida Center for Government Accountability. “Public confidence of the integrity of ethics rulings is undermined when the decisions are not made openly.”

The brevity of the two-paragraph public press release didn’t help, Barfield said. “The public deserves a thorough explanation of the rationale behind the decision.”

There is also a potential conflict of interest, he said. The commission is made up of nine members, five appointed by DeSantis, including its chair. The commission chair is Ashley Lukis, wife of Adrian Lukis, a former chief of staff for DeSantis and a lobbyist with the politically powerful Ballard Partners, whose founder Brian Ballard has supported DeSantis.

Ashley Lukis is also deputy chair of the litigation department for the GrayRobinson law firm, which earned more than $3 million for legal work it did representing the governor in court for the last 12 months. A third of that, or $1 million, was billed to the governor’s office in the month after the commission dropped the ethics complaints against him.

“In a judicial setting, a judge would have recused themselves,” Barfield said.

Neither DeSantis’ office nor the commission responded to requests for comment Friday.

The complaint against DeSantis filed by Victor Obringer of Sarasota last June accused DeSantis of accepting the golf simulator as a gift for his home without disclosing it on his quarterly gift reports, and then granting the donor a political favor.

Hosseini, chairman of ICI Homes, has donated nearly $3.5 million over nearly two decades under his own name and through several of his corporations to the Republican Party, GOP candidates and other conservative committees and close to $300,000 to DeSantis and his PAC, according to state campaign records reviewed by the Orlando Sentinel.

Obringer’s complaint doesn’t specify what favor Hosseini received in return for the golf simulator, but in 2023 the DeSantis administration pushed state transportation officials to steer $92 million in leftover COVID-19 relief funds toward an interchange project that would benefit one of Hosseini’s developments. Using those funds sped up the interchange project by a decade, more quickly providing transportation access to land that Hosseini wants to develop.

A seven-page preliminary investigative report by the ethics commission, which was also released this week, detailed what its investigators determined when they looked into the case.

The report said Obringer, who could not be reached for comment, learned of the gift from a newspaper account. The investigators found several reports online about DeSantis receiving the golf simulator and questioned whether he had to report it as a gift as required under state law.

Hosseini told ethics investigators that he met DeSantis around 2011 or 2012 when he first ran for Congress and the two became friends who frequently golfed together. DeSantis is an avid golfer who met his wife over a bucket of golf balls at a driving range in Jacksonville.

Once DeSantis was elected governor, however, he didn’t have time to play golf with Hosseini due to the “time constraints, notoriety and security issues” that went with being governor, according to the report.

Hosseini told DeSantis that he would buy the governor a golf simulator so he could “keep his skills honed.”  DeSantis wanted to run it by staff to see if it was okay, so Hosseini talked to then-deputy general counsel and ethics officer James Uthmeier, who decided Hosseini could loan the simulator to the Governor’s Mansion Commission.

Although Hosseini said he originally intended the simulator for DeSantis, he later decided all of the governor’s staff should use it, including his security detail.

Governor’s mansion manager Jerred Hopkins told investigators the simulator was set up in an area of a cabana that was used as a gym. Hopkins said it was in a private part of the mansion designated for the “first family only,” which no staff were allowed to enter except for cleaning and maintenance.

But Hopkins said the simulator was state property and inventoried by the state Department of Management Services and will remain at the mansion when DeSantis leaves office. The governor’s mansion inventory list shows the simulator being acquired Sep. 19, 2019 and gave it a “acquisition cost” of “$1.00,” with a notation that it was donated.

Lawyers for the governor argued the simulator doesn’t qualify as a gift because it falls under an exemption for public purpose, that public purpose being the “physical health and wellness” of the governor.

The assistant attorney general representing the Commission on Ethics recommended a finding of no probable cause, accepting the argument made by the governor’s lawyers that the golf simulator ultimately became a gift to the state.

“That is a convenient after-the-act explanation that circumvents the disclosure requirement,” Barfield said.

The other complaint, filed by the nonprofit voting rights organization Campaign Legal Center last July and based on a May, 2023 article in the The New York Times article, said DeSantis failed to disclose several airplane rides provided as gifts by And To The Republic, a conservative social education organization started up around the same time DeSantis began running for president.

The group arranged nearly a dozen speaking events in eight states for DeSantis in February, March and April of 2023 and arranged the air travel, including one trip on a jet owned by Miami hotel owner Jeffery Soffer and another on a plane owned by Waffle House, the preliminary investigation confirmed.

Lawyers for DeSantis said the air travel paid by the host didn’t need to be reported because it is considered an honorarium— a token of appreciation for speaking at the event. The commission’s advocate agreed, noting that the commission had ruled similarly in a previous case.

“Consequently there was no requirement to disclose the transportation as alleged,” the advocate said.