Federal authorities in Florida have issued an expansive subpoena seeking information related to Andrew Gillum, the former Tallahassee mayor, and the campaign for governor he narrowly lost last year, as well as some of his associates.
In a statement on Thursday night, Mr. Gillum’s lawyer, Barry Richard, acknowledged the subpoena but denied that Mr. Gillum had done anything wrong. “Somebody is out to damage Mr. Gillum politically and is making allegations to different law enforcement bodies,” he said.
The closely watched 2018 campaign — Mr. Gillum, a Democrat, would have been Florida’s first black governor — was shadowed by questions about corruption following a federal investigation into Tallahassee’s community redevelopment agency that resulted in three arrests.
Mr. Gillum has said that he was never a target of that investigation, in which undercover F.B.I. agents cozied up to a businessman with close ties to Mr. Gillum, eventually meeting the mayor on a New York trip that included a boat tour of New York Harbor. The recent subpoena was unrelated to Mr. Gillum’s time as mayor, Mr. Richard said.
The most recent subpoena, issued in March and first reported Thursday by The Tampa Bay Times, appears to open up a new area of inquiry, seeking information about a Massachusetts-based nonprofit for which Mr. Gillum served as a board member, an investor who contributed to Mr. Gillum’s campaign, and Sharon Lettman-Hicks, a longtime friend of Mr. Gillum.
Mr. Gillum, now a CNN contributor, pledged on Thursday to fully cooperate with investigators.
“When you run a campaign that puts the power in the hands of the people, and fights for change, it inevitably invites close scrutiny, regardless of the facts,” Mr. Gillum said in a statement. “We stand ready to assist any future review of our work, because I am confident we always did the right thing and complied fully with the law.”
During the governor’s race last year, Ron DeSantis, the Republican who ultimately won, hammered Mr. Gillum over text messages that surfaced suggesting Mr. Gillum received a ticket to the Broadway show “Hamilton” from men he believed to be businessmen looking to develop property in Tallahassee — but who were actually undercover F.B.I. agents.
At the time, Mr. Gillum said his brother handed him the ticket. “The idea that I accepted a gift never came to me,” he said.
The records also suggested that a lobbyist friend provided Mr. Gillum and his brother with a hotel room in New York — and possibly paid for much of a vacation the mayor took in Costa Rica.
Ms. Lettman-Hicks, whose name is mentioned in the subpoena, according to The Tampa Bay Times, had served as the landlord of Mr. Gillum’s campaign headquarters, collecting rent, and she also had paid the mayor to advise her public-relations consulting firm, The New York Times reported last year.
She could not be reached for comment on Thursday.