By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
For years, there’s been a metaphorical albatross hanging around the smokestacks of every ship in Carnival Corp.’s 93-ship fleet across its nine cruise brands. Yet as billions in revenue keep rolling in, redemption for the titanic company’s environmental sins have seemed less than urgent to chairman Micky Arison and his management crew.
Why? It’s a long and dirty story.
In 2017, Miami-based Carnival was fined a record $40 million after pleading guilty to federal felony charges that one of its Princess Cruise Lines vessels deliberately dumped thousands of gallons of oil-contaminated waste into the ocean near England and then falsified records to try and cover it up. Two years later, Carnival and Princess got hit with another $20 million criminal penalty after admitting to six violations of probation “attributable to senior Carnival management” that included discharging plastic waste in Bahamian waters and for interfering with court-ordered independent inspections. In 2022, Princess was fined an additional $1 million after pleading guilty to a second violation of probation for failing to establish an independent internal investigative office.
Carnival’s continued failure to fix the problem reflects “a culture that seeks to minimize or avoid information that is negative, uncomfortable, or threatening to the company, including top leadership (i.e. the Board of Directors, C-Suite executives and Brand Presidents/CEOs),” the court-appointed monitor and independent third-party auditor told U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz in an October 2021 letter.
In July 2025, in a much-smaller offense that has gone largely unnoticed, the California Air Resources Board assessed a $28,000 penalty against Carnival’s Princess Cruise Lines for failing to use fuel within the state’s sulfur content limits when two of its ships entered the ports of San Diego and Los Angeles.
Carnival has taken steps to satisfy the U.S. Justice Department’s demands. Among other things, it established a Health, Environmental, Safety & Security Committee with a chief investigative officer that reports to it and has the authority to oversee the Incident Analysis Group (IAG) that performs internal investigations. The committee and the investigative officer may, by the group’s charters approved last month by the board of directors, meet without other members of management preset to review the adequacy of the IAG group’s staffing and financial resources, its independence from management and anything else the chief investigative officer “determines should be discussed privately.”
At the same time, perhaps seeking to get in on the action as President Trump wields his clemency power to help both human and corporate criminals, Carnival has hired a Washington lobbying firm to seek “administrative relief for environmental violations issued by EPA and DOJ.”
That language is from the federal lobbying registration filed in May by the government relations arm of the influential Philadelphia-based law firm Blank Rome. It would appear to mean that Carnival wants a presidential pardon to include the return of its $61 million in federal criminal penalties, a relaxation of burdensome environmental rules and conditions imposed by the court, or both.
Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin would seem to offer a receptive audience. In March, he announced sweeping plans to turn the agency’s mission of protection on its head through deregulation. Last month, for example, the agency proposed limiting the Clean Water Act that was passed decades ago to protect U.S. waters from pollution.
Carnival also looks to be uniquely positioned in its dealings with the Department of Justice. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was a lobbyist for Carnival during the final years of Trump’s first term when she worked for Ballard Partners. (Firm founder Brian Ballard ran Florida fundraising for Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign.)
CARNIVAL AND BONDI AND BONDI
Carnival’s Bondi connection doesn’t end there. Tandy Bondi, the attorney general’s sister-in-law, is an in-house lobbyist in Congress for Carnival North America LLC. Tandy Bondi’s Florida pedigree is bipartisan. She is also the granddaughter of the late former Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles.
Each of Tandy Bondi’s quarterly congressional lobbying reports for 2025 states that she works on “general cruise issues” and that in addition to Congress she also lobbied the White House. Those reports also disclose that Carnival has spent an estimated $210,000 a quarter on its in-house lobbying expenses, such as trade association dues and Tandy Bondi’s salary.
A lobbying report filed in July states that Carnival has paid Blank Rome $50,000 to represent it.
The assigned lobbyist is Alan Rubin, a University of Miami graduate who served as the executive director of the Miami-Dade Beacon Council in the 1990s. He helped lead major reconstruction and small business economic recovery efforts after Hurricane Andrew, according to his online biography.
His resume is solid. But he seems a curious choice to deal with the Trump regime for a single reason: “Prior to joining Blank Rome Government Relations, Alan served as a principal at ADR Consulting Services, where he conducted significant fundraising efforts for the Clinton 2016 Election Campaign,” his bio says.
While Blank Rome is the only lobbying firm currently working specifically to ameliorate Carnival’s environmental woes, the company has other lobbying assets available if needed. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, Carnival has paid $110,000 a quarter to Washington’s Penn Avenue Partners to deploy a small squad of politically connected lobbyists to the White House and Congress to keep an eye on matters involving maritime fuel production, security, tax and visa issues.
Can lobbyists help Carnival’s top mariner, the grey-bearded 76-year-old multi-billionaire Micky Arison, attain official forgiveness for the environmental crimes of his companies? Probably, if he’s willing to pay sufficiently.
But can they, or he, redeem the substantial sins committed by his ships when they deliberately fouled the oceans’ waters?
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