Grand jury says DeSantis administration misappropriated $10 million via Hope Florida

In response to questions from CBS News Miami about his role in the settlement, Guard wrote that "requests for the Department of Legal Affairs to join settlements weren't uncommon and this settlement was handled in the ordinary course by the Department."

fact

Moody, who was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 2025 by DeSantis, has refused repeated requests for comment about Hope Florida.

fact

Yet while DeSantis and Uthmeier maintain everything with the diversion of $10 million of taxpayer money was perfectly fine, a state grand jury argues it found significant wrongdoing.

fact

In 2021, Florida officials learned the health care giant Centene had been overbilling the state for prescription drugs under the Florida Healthy Kids program.

fact

Guard, whom Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed to the state appeals court in January, said he could not comment further on grand jury proceedings.

"As a sitting judge, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on past or ongoing court proceedings," he wrote to CBS News Miami.

fact

The report's existence has been the subject of intense interest in recent months, with Democratic officials calling for its release and Republican leaders refusing to acknowledge there even was a report.

fact

Uthmeier, who is up for election in November, has refused to directly address the question of whether he was blocking the release of the report.

fact

The grand jury report describes a coordinated effort involving government officials across multiple state agencies and outside interest groups aligned with the governor.

fact

Florida's share was calculated to be $67,048,611.

fact

As a result of Guard's objections, the settlement was rewritten so that instead of the attorney general directing Centene to send $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, it would now state that DeSantis' Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) was directing Centene to send $10 million to Hope Florida.

"His political concerns were resolved by the change to the agreement making the settlement AHCA's agreement rather than the AG's settlement agreement," the grand jury report states.

fact

Centene demanded the settlement include wording making it clear Centene was being directed by the Florida attorney general to send the $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation.

fact

A draft of the settlement agreement was first sent to Florida officials on July 14, 2021, offering to fully repay the $67 million the state was owed.

fact

Cassandra Pasley, the chief of staff for the Florida Department of Health, told the grand jury that the next day she "was pulled aside by Katie Strickland, the Governor's Chief of Staff in charge of Health Agencies" and was asked to sign the settlement agreement.

fact

The secretary of AHCA at the time of the settlement was Jason Weida. "Mr. Weida testified that he does not recall who suggested that Hope Florida should be the recipient of the" $10 million from the settlement.

fact

The grand jury also found the repayment schedule outlined in the agreement suspicious, noting the state required Centene to wire transfer the $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation within seven days, while it also allowed Centene to take more than a year to repay the remaining $57 million to Florida taxpayers.

fact

Guard, according to the report, was also concerned about the political consequences if the Legislature ever found out about the diversion.

fact

The secretary of AHCA at the time of the settlement was Jason Weida. "Mr. Weida testified that he does not recall who suggested that Hope Florida should be the recipient of the" $10 million from the settlement.

fact

Joshua Hay testified that prior to the Centene wire transfer, the largest donation ever made to the foundation was $100,000.

fact

"As taxpayer money," the grand jury found, "it should have been treated as such instead of being allocated for partisan political purposes and without transparency."

fact

The grand jury said it remains unclear who exactly was responsible for making the decision to misappropriate the funds, making it impossible to press criminal charges. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and former Attorney General Ashley Moody were among those the report implicated in diverting the funds from helping residents get off welfare to the state Republican Party and two Political Action Committees invested in defeating Amendment 3, the initiative to legalize marijuana. One of the PACs was chaired by Uthmeier, who was Gov. Ron DeSantis’s general counsel at the time.

fact

The grand jury deliberated over $10 million in funding that the first lady’s charity group for welfare recipients, the Hope Florida Foundation, received in disbursements from a Medicaid settlement. It questioned why settlement funds were distributed to the Hope Florida Foundation in the first place and determined that the funds were further misappropriated by funding the political effort to defeat Florida’s marijuana legalization amendment. Questions have been brewing about the matter since early last year.

fact

Casey DeSantis’s Hope Florida is an organization that helps residents get off welfare by connecting them with nonprofit groups and faith-based services. It operates as an official function of the governor’s office, and its services are implemented through state agencies, including Florida’s Departments of Education and Children and Families.

fact

Hope Florida Foundation is connected to Hope Florida, but serves as an outside nonprofit organization. The foundation raises private donations to support Hope Florida’s work, disbursing them to charities, churches, and other entities that aid struggling residents.

fact

Hope Florida is Casey’s social welfare initiative that works to make poor people self-sufficient and independent over the long term. The Hope Florida Foundation is a charitable group tied to that initiative. The scandal blew up around the time that Casey was rumored to be considering a run for governor.

…

Her husband is term-limited. Ultimately, she didn’t throw her hat in the ring, and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) has since won the GOP nod.

fact

Her husband is term-limited. Ultimately, she didn’t throw her hat in the ring, and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) has since won the GOP nod.

fact

“The whole reason people tried to make hay of this, was they were trying to use it to smear the first lady of Florida, my wife, and what has come out? Oh, she wasn’t involved in anything,” he said. “She wasn’t involved in any of this.” (The report only has one mention of Casey DeSantis, in which it refers to Hope Florida as an initiative “championed by the First Lady of Florida, Casey DeSantis”.)

fact

The committee was dedicated to opposing two measures on the November 2024 ballot.

fact

One would’ve installed a right to an abortion in the state constitution, the other would’ve legalized recreational marijuana.

fact

Both measures failed to get the 60 percent support required to pass.

fact

The report also named Ashley Moody, who was attorney general at the time, and said the investigation found Moody “authorized” the settlement agreement with Centene, which included the money that would be transferred to the Hope Florida Foundation.

fact

The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

fact

During the House probe, Andrade, an attorney, accused Uthmeier and Jeff Aaron, a lawyer representing the foundation with close ties to the DeSantis administration, of violating the law with the settlement and the foundation’s subsequent grants.

fact

Last October, months after confirming there was an open investigation into the settlement, State Attorney Jack Campbell issued subpoenas for witnesses to appear before the grand jury, but the results of the grand jury investigation had remained hidden from the public until Wednesday, when published by CBS Miami.

fact

In a social media post, Alex Lanfranconi, communications director for DeSantis, called the CBS Miami story about the grand jury report a “baseless smear” that has been “debunked over and over again.”

fact

Jacksonville Rep. Angie Nixon, the Democratic candidate running against Moody for U.S. Senate, called on Moody to resign for her role in the Hope Florida scandal.

fact

No public docket showed the case.

The Second Judicial Circuit told a lawyer for a coalition of news organizations it had “no records responsive” to a request for the case number and docket sheet.

The Leon County Clerk first said it could neither confirm nor deny that any such records existed, then said it had none.

fact

The grand jury found no explanation in the record for why the charity’s cut doubled overnight.

fact

Other states that caught Centene doing the same thing settled quickly and announced it. Florida did not.

fact

The panel rejected the framing offered by Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Jason Weida, now the governor’s chief of staff, who signed the agreement and characterized the $10 million as a “bonus” rather than money owed back to taxpayers.

fact

Within days, $3.75 million went to Keep Florida Clean, the political committee chaired by Uthmeier.

fact

Within a week, $4.75 million of it went to Keep Florida Clean.

fact

Both applications, the grand jury found, “mischaracterized” the purpose of the money and represented that it would not be used politically.

fact

Save Our Society from Drugs received its $5 million on an application approved within hours of submission.

fact

As for the charity at the center of it all — Hope Florida, the welfare-navigation initiative championed by First Lady Casey DeSantis — the grand jury could not verify that it was much of anything.

“Hope Florida was touted by some witnesses as a high-profile project with a high success rate, but we were unable to get any evidence to substantiate these representations,” the report states.

“On the contrary, other witnesses referred to Hope Florida as just a concept and did not have a clear understanding of what it did, where it existed, or how it operated.”

fact

Hurricane Milton made landfall on Oct. 9.

fact

There was no press release, no notice to the Legislature, no restriction on how the money could be spent, and no oversight of what happened to it.

fact

That deputy, John Guard, appointed by DeSantis to the Second District Court of Appeal in January, signed despite “reservations,” having raised concerns that the arrangement violated Florida statutes requiring legislative approval to spend state money.

fact

There was no press release, no notice to the Legislature, no restriction on how the money could be spent, and no oversight of what happened to it.

fact

The grand jury closed by recommending the Legislature pass two laws: one requiring all money received by the state be deposited into the General Fund, with penalties for violations; and one setting clear rules, with tracking, monitoring, and consequences for how entities like Hope Florida may use taxpayer dollars.

fact

But the statute has been amended to incorporate Chapter 119 and Article I, Section 24 of the Florida Constitution, and the Florida Supreme Court held in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Marko that “implicit in the power of the grand jury to investigate and expose official misconduct is the right of the people to be informed of its findings.” Criticism or damage to reputation, the courts have said, is not by itself a reason to bury a presentment.

fact

In March, the Florida Center for Government Accountability, publisher of the Florida Trident, and this reporter, appearing pro se, moved to intervene in the Leon County proceeding. (Disclosure: the author is executive director of FLCGA and a movant in that case.) The motion, filed by attorneys Barbara Petersen and Robert Craig Waters, does not ask the court for the grand jury’s secrets.

fact

Rule 2.420 of the Florida Rules of Judicial Administration forbids a court from making a case number confidential, requires any sealing order to contain specific findings that it is no broader than necessary, and requires the clerk to post that order on its website and in the courthouse.

fact

No such order has been found.

fact

Florida law does not make a grand jury presentment secret forever.

Section 905.28, F.S., delays release so that a person named in a report may ask a judge to repress or expunge material about them.

fact

In March, the Florida Center for Government Accountability, publisher of the Florida Trident, and this reporter, appearing pro se, moved to intervene in the Leon County proceeding. (Disclosure: the author is executive director of FLCGA and a movant in that case.) The motion, filed by attorneys Barbara Petersen and Robert Craig Waters, does not ask the court for the grand jury’s secrets.

It asks for something narrower and, arguably, more basic: that the case exist in public.

…

“If the public has no right to intervene and be heard in these proceedings,” the motion argues, “the result could be a process in which public officials and recipients of public funds are publicly reprimanded by a grand jury while the entire presentment is later suppressed or expunged without meaningful scrutiny.”

fact

Three weeks after the grand jury’s report, Uthmeier announced a public corruption Public Integrity Unit to prosecute “anyone using a position of public trust for personal benefit.” Its mandate: public money routed to nonprofits.

fact

Uthmeier is on the ballot, facing Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez.

fact

The grand jury found he personally called two non-profits as the money switched hands.

fact

This report immediately turned into a political issue.

fact

U.S. Senator Ashley Moody is also a key player.

fact