The director of a top unit of the Florida State Guard has been accused of improperly using state planes on personal flying lessons and wasting millions in taxpayer money, reported the Tampa Bay Times, and top state officials looked the other way as it happened.
"In separate videos on Facebook and Instagram, three members said director Mark Thieme used the organization’s planes to train for his personal pilot’s license when the craft were supposed to be assigned to operations," said the report. "'He used state assets for his personal gain, and he lost control of the budget,' said Michael Pintacura, a former Army Special Forces master sergeant and a command sergeant major in the State Guard."
According to the report, Thieme is also accused by State Guard Capt. Jonathan Howard of covering up a $4 million budget surplus by instructing guardsmen to order unnecessary aircraft parts, and of authorizing millions of dollars in aircraft purchases that weren't needed for State Guard missions.
Thieme heads up the Special Missions Unit, which came to the aid of families in North Carolina endangered by Hurricane Helene and consists mostly of retired servicemembers.
"All three said they went public only after their complaints to supervisors and Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins were ignored," said the report — and now they are asking Gov. Ron DeSantis "to intervene, saying that the situation jeopardizes the organization’s response to future disasters."
The Florida State Guard is a so-called state defense force, a military group that operates under the sole authority of a state, unlike the National Guard, a dual federal-state reserve force that can be called up by the federal government when needed. Several states have active state defense forces, which mostly carry out disaster relief missions, although some have famously been used for other purposes, as when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott used the Texas State Guard to spy on federal military exercises in 2015.
DeSantis reestablished the Florida State Guard in 2022 after it had been defunct for decades, citing the need for disaster readiness.