It was supposed to raise money for a Florida program aimed at moving people off government assistance and into services provided by charities and religious organizations.
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Now, the Hope Florida Foundation is embroiled in a political and legal scandal after a state grand jury found $10 million from a healthcare settlement was “misappropriated” to the foundation and diverted further to Republican political entities.
It’s gotten to the point that the state GOP is suing Democrats and Florida television stations to stop them from airing a political ad criticizing some of the main players in the scheme. Those include Sen. Ashley Moody, who was then state attorney general, and current Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who at the time was chief of staff to Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The 30-second ad asserts that Uthmeier was involved in “conspiracy, concealment, corruption” by diverting the money, which went mainly to a GOP committee campaigning against a 2024 proposed constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana use in Florida. The initiative got a majority in favor but failed to reach the required 60% threshold to pass.
Moody and Uthmeier were both appointed to their current posts by DeSantis and are seeking election on Nov. 3. Moody is opposed by state Rep. Angie Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and Uthmeier by former state Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez.
Rodriguez calls it a “scheme to steal” money intended for Medicaid programs that help needy children and instead use it for pure politics.
“It’s the biggest political crime, sounds like, in Florida history,” Rodriguez said at a recent campaign event. “My opponent was at the center of it. He’s not even hiding it.”
Nixon has been even more blunt.
Moody “stood by and let $10 million for the healthcare of sick, needy kids to instead be funneled into the governor’s political slush fund,” she said. “It’s shameful.”
DeSantis and Uthmeier have called the matter a “hoax” and suggested the real crime was the leak to a Miami television station of a secret grand jury report that detailed what happened and who was involved. They also said a recent appeals court decision quashing the grand jury report should settle the matter.
“This process has now culminated in what I think is probably the biggest judicial smackdown that I have ever seen in my entire career as an elected official,” DeSantis said at a recent news conference. “All the narratives crashed and burned with this opinion.”
Moody said in a statement that the arrangement was negotiated by the state Agency for Health Care Administration and her office simply signed off on the finished deal.
Yet the situation is far from over. A state prosecutor in Orlando, Monique Worrell, is looking into a possible criminal case. Florida’s senior senator, Republican Rick Scott, says it should be investigated anew and state lawmakers could address it early next year.
“This was $10 million that was supposed to go for poor kids,” Scott told media outlets.
The Democratic candidate for governor, David Jolly, says if elected he will reopen a probe into the situation.
“It is a clear violation of the law,” Jolly said.
His Republican opponent, Rep. Byron Donalds, says he will work with state legislators on a measure to prevent such diversion of money in the future and that another investigation of Hope Florida is unnecessary.
“Now it’s about whether you’re going to change the law or not to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Donalds told reporters last month.
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The scandal continues to ripple across Florida just as many recent national polls show voters are as concerned about corruption as they are about the struggling economy.
So what exactly happened?
The grand jury identified Uthmeier, then DeSantis’ chief of staff, as a key figure. The report also said Moody, then the state attorney general, knew about the plan and told her chief deputy, John Guard, to sign the settlement.
Like Uthmeier and Moody, DeSantis later appointed Guard to a new post as a judge on the 2nd District Court of Appeal.
The grand jury, meeting in Tallahassee, said lack of cooperation prevented them bringing any criminal charges.
“Nobody will take responsibility for deciding that $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida,” the report says. “This decision was the original misappropriation, and no witness would take responsibility for making the decision or had any memory of who made it.”
The $10 million was part of a $67 million settlement between the state and healthcare company Centene, which had overbilled Florida’s Medicaid program.
The money was routed in 2024 to Hope Florida – a program championed by first lady Casey DeSantis – to political committees. The report found that $8.5 million went to Uthmeier’s anti-marijuana Keep Florida Clean committee, and that PAC then sent $7 million to the Republican Party of Florida and $1.23 million to another political committee.
After the grand jury report leaked and gained widespread media coverage, Republicans obtained a ruling authored by a DeSantis-appointed appeals court judge saying the entire report should be expunged – as if it never happened.
That sharply worded opinion, from the state 1st District Court of Appeal, found the grand jury report wrongly described a criminal case but then named people without charging them.
“A grand jury may investigate and report, but it may not declare conduct unlawful and then decline to charge it, and it may not condemn people by name without indicting them,” the appeals decision says.
The appeals court has also ordered the Tallahassee prosecutor who oversaw the grand jury, Jack Campbell, to explain under oath how the report got leaked to CBS News Miami in August. Campbell has not yet responded. The appeals court said the report was emailed to 49 people and entities before it was leaked.
There may be additional shoes to drop. A prominent Republican critic of the money transfers, state Rep. Alex Andrade of Pensacola, has filed a whistleblower complaint with the Internal Revenue Service. It’s not clear whether the IRS has opened an investigation.
What’s also not yet clear is how the idea for the transfers came about in the first place. DeSantis initially described the moves as a “cherry on top” of the overall settlement. He and Uthmeier insist no laws were broken, but Andrade and others are not convinced.
“Who on earth thought this was legal, moral or ethical?” Andrade said in a statement earlier this year.
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