 First, a story that's been getting a lot of traction since the release of an investigation Friday into a high-powered Republican insider. Kent Sturman took his own life in December while he was the subject of a criminal probe. Our guest, Nate Monroe, broke that story. The Florida Times Union columnist joins us now. And you can join the conversation, too, at 904-528, excuse me, 549-2937. You can also tweet us at FCC on air and email us at FirstCoastConnect at wjct.org. Good morning, Nate. How's it going? It's going great, Ann. I hope it's going great for YouTube. It is. They're still kind of getting our sea legs here. But happy morning. Happy Monday. So, Nate, this report has been in the works for months. And it finally came out Friday, much awaited. Tell us a little bit about who Kent Sturman was and how this investigation began in the first place. Sure. I mean, you know, Kent Sturman was kind of an insider's insider. This is not someone who was a household name in Jacksonville by any means. He was someone who had ingratiated himself to powerful people, both in the city and in the state. I would say what was interesting about Kent Sturman is that the way he did that was not the typical way that a lot of kind of insiders become close to powerful people. He was a political donor, but not, by any means, the wealthiest donor or the most prolific. He didn't give these huge sums of money that we sometimes hear about. And yet, he found himself, I mean, he could have credibly claimed to have been among the closest, if not the closest kind of advisor that the governor had in Northeast Florida. And so he had just sort of established these sort of deep relationships with people like the governor. He was also very close with the former sheriff of Jacksonville, Mike Williams. He sort of did that despite not being just this, again, like the kind of real money man behind a lot of these guys. But definitely kind of a deep insider. So this investigation began shortly before he took his own life in December of last year. And then the investigation continued after his suicide. Why didn't it end when he took his life? So the state attorney's office continued investigating Kent Sturman for about 10 months. And the state attorney said that they would continue to do so to try and figure out if he had victimized any additional women. The underlying charges in the investigative report describe a situation where Kent Sturman had kind of sought to coerce a young woman by luring her in with potential VIP access to a Taylor Swift concert. That was the only incident that investigators found. They did not find any other women, despite there being sort of rumors of this in the kind of immediate aftermath of his death last year. And so the state attorney released this information on Friday and chose to make a lot of information available. Really all of the supporting documents, all of the interviews, including with the victim and her father, why do you think she chose to handle it this way? Why do you think she chose to release proactively so much of the investigative material? Yeah, I mean, I think they do this from time to time when they are handling a sensitive investigation in which there has been a lot of kind of public interest. And I think that this one certainly qualifies. I also think that they, I don't wanna speak for them, but I think the proactive release of information may have also had the effect, intended or not, of I think maybe pushing back against, there was just a lot of speculation sort of out in the ether after Kent Sturman's death. Just given the nature of who he was, the fact that he did have friends in high places, I think there were people who maybe suspected that this investigation would not be thorough or that there would be some effort to cover things up. And so I think the state attorney proactively releasing all of this information. And it really was a pretty exhaustive amount of information, frankly. I think it had the effect of sort of pushing back on that kind of speculation. And I think pretty effectively, this was a very thorough investigation of Kent's activities. And I think it's important to clarify because after you did some of your initial reporting, I think there was wild rumors that this offense that he was accused of somehow involved children. It did not. You wanna talk about that a little bit? Yeah, so the young woman at the center of this, this kind of troubling story about Taylor Swift tickets, she was in fact significantly younger than Kent Sturman who was 50, but she was not a minor. The investigators have not released her exact age at the time that these alleged crimes were committed, but we do know that she was not a minor. So she was not under 18. And that has obvious implications both in a legal context and also just in the way that we as people probably view the story. And it had been that there were some reports that she was a minor at the time. And so there was some confusion, and especially in those earlier days about the age of this young woman. But we do know that now she is not a minor or she was not a minor. And the conclusion of the investigation was that had he lived, he would have been charged with several criminal charges. Is that right? Yeah, the prosecutors outlined about four or five different charges they were considering. Most of them were kind of misdemeanor solicitation for prostitution. There were a couple of different sort of forms of fraud. The most serious charge was a kind of unlawful imprisonment charge, which would have been a third degree felony could have carried some jail time and are pretty hefty fine. And yeah, so I mean, this was a very serious, this was a very serious issue. And in the state attorney's office, I think certainly sought to communicate to everyone in their disposition report that they viewed it as such. And that given that he had such close ties to elected officials, including the governor, Governor Ron DeSantis, the former sheriff, Mike Williams, and also our former mayor, Lenny Curry. Does any of this impact them? I mean, that's probably something that's maybe a little bit above my pay grade for the moment anyway. I don't know. I will say there has also been a lot of kind of speculation and frankly, this is just kind of a matter of some subjectivity about how close was Kent to some of these people. And I think no more pointedly than how close was he to the governor? There is no doubt that he was a bit of a confidant to Ron DeSantis. I myself know that and other reporters, we're in positions to be able to confirm that too. I think there was always this question with Kent Sturman though about whether he sometimes oversold the kind of access and influence that he had to some of these powerful people. And I've never really been able to answer that question in my satisfaction. I, you know, again, as some other reporters out there, I've had some opportunities to talk to Kent over the years. And I certainly got the impression that he was very, he could be kind of braggadocious about his connections and sometimes even about his wealth. And I think there was, I certainly got the impression from time to time that he might have been the sort of person who was happy to really play up his connections. But, you know, that's a sort of a different question for a different day in some ways. He absolutely did have a relationship with the governor and with some of those other elected officials. And, you know, to the extent voters decide to hold those connections against them, I mean, I guess we'll just have to see. Well, Nate, we, of course, appreciate and love your reporting. Thanks a lot for joining us this morning to kind of give us the lowdown on this investigation.