State and Federal donor records in the new report reveal the real “billionaire kingmakers” — a select group is from Trump’s donor list — began grooming Rep. Desantis in August 2016, long before the backbench lawmaker became a Fox News regular or gubernatorial aspirant.

The formerly obscure northeastern Florida Congressman raked in moolah from 15 major Trump donors, who combined to deliver over $19 million the President in 2016.

Starting in August 2016 and greatly intensifying in cash value over the next 18 months until the end of November 2017 — which is the last reported date for the Florida PAC supporting his run for Governor —the Trump mega-donors began slowly plying Rep. Desantis with cash by donating $220,000 to his gargantuan $4.6 million dollar fundraising haul last year.

His opponent raised $42,518.

Rep. DeSantis managed to spend nearly 8-times as much money per vote in 2016 versus 2014 to win his safe, heavily Republican district covering southern Jacksonville, reliably conservative St. Augustine and Daytona Beach.

The Florida Republican Congressman didn’t disappoint his big dollar donors, and he’s got a 94.8% “Trump score” for his voting track record in the House according to FiveThirtyEight.

15 of Trump’s billionaire kingmakers have combined to give Rep. Desantis’ Gubernatorial PAC $605,000.

As of November 30th, the House Republican has collected $885,000 from that small group of Trump donors, the equivalent of 20 years worth of the median household income ($44,240) from residents of his district’s Volusia County voters.

Since then, that same group of 15 national Trump donors have combined to donate over 28% of the $2.137 million raised by the Gubernatorial race focused, DeSantis-supporting Florida PAC “Fund for Florida’s Future.”

In August, when the Trump White House was in turmoil trying to defend Donald Trump Jr.’s indefensible election meeting with Russian agents at Trump Tower and during the midst of a massive staff shakeup, Rep. DeSantis arrived like a white knight, directly threatening Special Counsel Robert Mueller from his post on the House Judiciary Committee.

On August 24th, Rep. Desantis filed an amendment to a spending bill seeking to formally defund the Special Counsel’s Office.

It has languished.

Later, DeSantis joined a Republican effort to exhume the debunked Uranium One scandal from the grave in October, when the ironic truth is that a Trump campaign advisor met with one of Putin’s top deputies during the campaign, who was a major player in Rosatom during their purchase of the Canadian uranium mining company’s shares.

Then, at a key moment this winter, Rep. DeSantis — Harvard trained lawyer — sprung out of the woodwork to become one of Donald Trump’s top public defenders against Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into last year’s Russian election attacks.

This December, the Representative would wield his Harvard law degree on cable television in a manner reminiscent of a criminal defense attorney for the President, albeit in the unusual vein of DeSantis instead being a sitting Congressman frequently ignoring the separation of powers between his co-equal branch of government and the White House, just to help Trump fight his own executive branch investigatory agencies.

Nothing upsets Rep. DeSantis more than knowing why Donald Trump’s compromising ties to Russia surfaced.

A recent interview with the Tea Party legislator on Fox Business centered on asking if the Democrats found or reported potential election crimes first (even though it was one of hostile House Intel Chair Rep. Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) donors who first funded the Dossier), as if that matters more to the public than knowing why Donald Trump kowtows very publicly to Vladimir Putin, the authoritarian Russian President.

President Trump returned the favor by giving DeSantis a major endorsement in his run for Florida Governor on Twitter, even though the Congressman hasn’t even formally declared himself a candidate for the race.

It goes without saying that the real impetus for Trump’s tweet last week that he had watched a segment [sic] about Rep. DeSantis on Fox News, while flying to Palm Beach at taxpayer expense to send mean tweets and play golf during the holidays at his private club, Mar-a-Lago.

This week, Rep. DeSantis thinks that the Trump Russia Dossier’s existence is akin to “pulling teeth” as he told Fox News, complaining that the FBI’s investigatory privilege is shielding his Quixotic quest to investigate the investigators at the FBI and Special Counsel’s office.

The American public wants answers about Russia’s 2016 cyber attack on our elections, but GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis wants nothing more than to shut down the Special Counsel’s investigation and FBI experts who are looking for answers.

Here is the Follow the Money report: