A Florida grand jury concluded that money from a Medicaid-related settlement was misappropriated for political purposes after it was routed through the Hope Florida Foundation. But the report left a central question unanswered: who authorized the initial decision to send the money to Hope Florida?
by Tamara Drake, OrlandoAdvocate.com
The grand jury said it lacked sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges because no witness accepted responsibility for that decision or could identify who made it. “Nobody will take responsibility” for deciding the $10 million in taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida, the report said, adding that no witness had a memory of who made the decision.
That conclusion creates an unusual split in the case. Jurors said they could plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes, but they said the evidence did not establish individual criminal responsibility for the transfer.
How $10 million ended up inside Hope Florida
Officially, the stated purpose was charitable: the $10 million was part of a broader roughly $67 million 2024 settlement between Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) and Centene, a Medicaid contractor, over pharmacy-related Medicaid issues.
AHCA said only $57 million of that sum was Medicaid money owed directly to the state, and that the other $10 million was not compensation for the state’s Medicaid losses. AHCA argued that the $10 million could therefore– and should– be donated to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity connected to an initiative led by First Lady Casey DeSantis, to support community-based organizations and families receiving assistance through the Hope Florida initiative. Under the settlement agreement, Centene was specifically required to make the donation to Hope Florida.
What the grand jury concluded
The grand jury rejected the central premise that the $10 million should be treated as separate from taxpayer restitution. Its report said the full Centene $67 million settlement was taxpayer reimbursement and that the $10 million was routed through Hope Florida as part of a scheme to finance political activity, including opposition to the 2024 marijuana-legalization ballot initiative.
It further reported that after Hope Florida received the money, it was moved within days to other organizations and then used for political purposes– particularly efforts to defeat the marijuana-legalization ballot measure, with funds also going to the Republican Party of Florida.
The grand jury report identified then-Gov. Ron DeSantis’ chief of staff James Uthmeier as having involvement in directing money after it reached Hope Florida. It also said then-Attorney General Ashley Moody was aware of the settlement plan and authorized her chief deputy to sign the agreement. Uthmeier, Moody and DeSantis have denied wrongdoing.
Still, the grand jury said the foundational decision—to direct public money to Hope Florida—could not be tied to a specific person with enough evidence to support criminal charges. Although then-Attorney General Ashley Moody authorized her chief deputy, John Guard, to sign the final Centene settlement agreement, the grand jury said it could not conclusively resolve the separate issue of who authorized the original routing of the $10 million to Hope Florida.
The grand jury says it can trace the money, characterize its use, and describe the failure—yet not identify the official responsible for the decision that set it in motion.
For Floridians, the issue is larger than one investigation or one political party: a $10 million public transaction should leave a clear, reviewable chain of authority. When the state can trace where the money went but cannot establish who authorized the first transfer, the failure is not only potentially legal. It is institutional.
The grand jury recommended changes intended to strengthen financial controls and prevent a similar breakdown in accountability.
This is perhaps the literal definition of “too little, too late.”
- Tamara Drake
- Tamara Drake
- Tamara Drake
- Tamara Drake
