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POLITICS
That time Marco Rubio helped his convicted cocaine trafficker brother-in-law get a real
estate license
POLITICS
That time Marco Rubio helped his convicted cocaine trafficker brother-in-law get a real estate license
by Matthew Yglesias
Dec 31, 2015 at 12:00 PM EST
Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Marco Rubio’s presidential aspirations have long been dogged by vague unsubstantiated allegations that he is a “risky bet” with skeletons in his closet that could prove damaging in a high-profile election. This week, Scott Higham and Manuel Roig-Franzia of the Washington Post became the first reporters to put some meat on these bones with a story alleging that as Majority Whip of the Florida House of Representatives Rubio “used his official position to urge state regulators to grant a real estate license to his brother-in-law, a convicted cocaine trafficker who had been released from prison 20 months earlier.”
It’s a story about the side of Rubio’s family that he doesn’t like to talk about, a sign of the kind of problems that may be hurting Rubio in the invisible primary, but it’s also a story about the growth of a troubling kind of employment protectionism in state governments across America. One question, after all, is whether Rubio should have used his official position to help get his brother-in-law the legal right to sell real estate in Florida. Another question is whether a person with a cocaine conviction who wants to sell real estate in Florida should need to call in a favor from his brother-in-the-law the powerful politician in order to be able to do so legally.
Who is Orlando Cicilia, and what
Did Marco Rubio do for him?
Vox
By Matthew Yglesias
December 31, 2015
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