Mayor Andrew Gillum said a 2016 trip to Tampa on a developer’s private plane was for city business, but a new batch of emails show the meet-up with Tampa Bay politicos was part of the ramp up to his run for governor.

Republicans already are saying Gillum violated state law by reimbursing the developer for the flight with $400 from a mayoral office account that is supposed to be used strictly for official business.

The documents were released by Chris Kise, a lawyer with longtime Republican Party ties who represents Adam Corey, a former lobbyist and restaurateur at the center of a local FBI corruption investigation.

Kise released the documents as part of a subpoena from the Florida Commission on Ethics related to Gillum's travel to Costa Rica and New York.

"These were inadvertently excluded from Friday production," Kise said in his letter to Ethics Commission investigator Keith Powell.

The fallout:

Emails about the Tampa trip were also part of a document dump last week that included details about a political fundraiser in honor of Gillum and Forward Florida, the political action committee that eventually became part of Gillum’s gubernatorial war chest.

“On top of this bombshell revelation, the documents show that Gillum may have used official office funds to pay for a campaign trip,” the Republican Governor’s Association said in an email released today, an hour after Kise released his documents.

The Florida Democratic Party characterized the document dump as yet another smear attack by Kise, a Republican Party operative who worked for Gov. Rick Scott and former Gov. Charlie Crist. The party accused Kise of working with the campaign of U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, the Republican nominee for governor.

Back story from 2017:Private plane took Gillum to see top Dems, developer

Kise has been attacked by Democrats for being politically motivated, but he said he is complying with a subpoena from the Florida Commission on Ethics.

“Once again, Chris Kise, one of Rick Scott’s most high profile political hatchet men, is trying to confuse and distract voters with information that has long been public," Gillum spokesman Geoff Burgan said.

"Since Kise has so much to say these days, Florida voters deserve to know whether he’s coordinating with the DeSantis campaign, who’s gotten $60,000 from Kise’s law firm. Is DeSantis going to disclose these Kise document leaks as an in-kind contribution?”

Gillum's campaign is running from the issues by first attacking Corey and then his attorney, Kise told the Democrat.

"The documents establish Andrew Gillum, not Mr. Corey, has serious criminal and ethical exposure. This criminal and ethical exposure explains why Andrew Gillum will not address personally any of the details, as his lawyers have likely counseled him on waiver of his Fifth Amendment rights," Kise said. If Andrew Gillum can address the facts about his criminal and ethical violations, then he should address the facts. Otherwise those facts regarding Andrew Gillum’s criminal and/or unethical conduct, like all facts, speak for themselves."

The 44 pages of emails focus on making arrangements for a Feb. 12, 2016, trip to Tampa to meet several Tampa Bay area powerbrokers over a lavish lunch in a private dining room at the swanky Capital Grille on Westshore Drive.

They detail a month-long exchange between Gillum’s then-chief of staff Dustin Daniels, Corey and his partner Nick Lowe at Unconventional Strategies, and Peter Leach, senior vice president of the Tampa-based Southport Financial Services.

Daniels, subject of a separate state ethics complaint, is running for his bosses' job.

Leach coordinated with Ruth’s List Executive Director Marley Wilkes to come up with a “variety of different folks with different interests.”

In another email, Leach acknowledges it was a campaign event when he asks whether the cost should be in Ruth’s List name.

“I have reserved the room in my name, but perhaps under campaign regs it should be in Ruth’s List’s name,” Leach said. “I’ll reimburse Ruth’s List if that is preferred.”

Those who RSVP’d included former Florida CFO Alex Sink, who was scheduled to introduce Gillum and do a brief speech “on the importance of state races.”

The invitees also included former governor and current U.S. Rep Charlie Crist, Stephanie McClung, who worked on Crist’s 2014 gubernatorial campaign, Laura Crouch of TECO, and several trial lawyers and fundraisers.

They were people Corey said were “great people that Andrew would be well served to meet.”

The documents include an exchange between Daniels and Leach over providing a bio of Gillum. In one email, Leach suggested adding a prominent section that spoke to Gillum's beliefs and accomplishments.

“This will be the first impression people in the Tampa area will have of him and as he broadens his exposure across the state this bio will gain even more importance as the first impression info about him,” Leach said.

Daniels complied, telling Leach they would provide a more detailed and substantive bio with more of the mayor’s accomplishments “as well as stances he has taken regarding Syrian Refugees, Marriage Equality, the Confederate flag, etc.”

Leach also arranged for Gillum and Daniels to fly down to Tampa in his private plane. The flight left Tallahassee at 10:30 a.m. and returned by 5 p.m. Leach was reimbursed out of the mayor’s office account, which is supposed to be used for official city business.

When the Democrat first reported about the trip a year ago, the mayor's current chief of staff, Jamie Van Pelt, said Gillum was invited by Leach “to a meeting at his office to learn about some of the work he was doing to advance wrap-around social services in schools and housing developments.”

While in Tampa, Van Pelt said, the “mayor also met with local political leaders.”

Asked if he wanted to revisit his comment from a year ago, Van Pelt, said he would not comment further about it.

The email exchanges last week also suggest that Corey arranged for an undercover FBI agent posing as a developer to pay the $4,386 catering costs for an April 11, 2016, Foward Florida fundraiser in honor of Gillum, but the PAC did not report the contribution.

“I’ve done tons of fundraisers,” Gillum said during a Sarasota appearance over the weekend. “I’ve never had to deal with the food bill. I’m not real sure where that ultimately gets dealt with but I assume every step of the way it was followed appropriately.”

When asked whether he could produce any more records that could clear up who paid for that food — or any of the other questions about who paid for what on other trips Gillum took with lobbyists to Costa Rica, New York and Atlanta — Gillum said his campaign had nothing more to release.

"What I get from people is they say, 'I am so sick of these people crapping on you over nothing,'" he said.

Contact Schweers at jschweers@tallahassee.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeffschweers.