A Florida grand jury has found that the administration of the governor, Ron DeSantis, “misappropriated” $۱۰m in taxpayer money from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity with ties to DeSantis’s wife, before the money was reportedly “funneled” into “two political action committees”.
In the grand jury report, which remains sealed but was obtained and published by CBS News Miami on Wednesday, the grand jurors wrote that “we conclude that these funds were misappropriated as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities” but said that they found “insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally”.
The grand jury report, dated ۲۸ January ۲۰۲۶, states that in ۲۰۲۴, the Hope Florida Foundation received $۱۰m from a Medicaid settlement between the state and Centene, a contractor for the government health insurance program for low-income Americans and children.
The report goes on to say that after the money was transferred to Hope Florida, it was “quickly funneled” from there into two political action committees, and that the money was then reportedly used to lobby against a ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana in Florida, and was sent to the Republican party of Florida.
In the report, the jurors write that “nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $۱۰ million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida” and “this decision was the original misappropriation, and no witness would take responsibility for making the decision or had any memory of who made it”.
“While we can’t prove who is responsible, we can plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes and we would like to see changes made to prevent this from happening again,” the report concludes.
When asked by a reporter about the report on Thursday, DeSantis said that the only crime that was “apparent was whoever leaked the grand jury report”.
He described the settlement as “legally sound” and “appropriate” and that it “advanced the interest of state”.
“There was no diversion of any Medicaid funds” he said. “That was a private settlement where a company made a private contribution with one of the state agencies.
“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”.)
In the report, the grand jurors also wrote that they found that the Florida attorney general, James Uthmeier, who was DeSantis’s chief of staff at the time and is currently running for election for a full four-year term, was in a “position of authority over those involved in settling with Centene” and that testimony identified him as “having involvement in directing the money after it went to Hopе Florida”.
The grand jurors wrote that no witness admitted or identified who directed the money to go to Hope Florida and noted that testimony also revealed that Uthmeier’s political action committee, Keep Florida Clean, was the “prime recipient of the majority” of the $۱۰m.
The jurors also noted that the office of Ashley Moody, then Florida’s attorney general who is currently serving her second year in the Senate and is up for re-election, knew of the payment, and that her chief deputy signed the agreement “without conducting his due diligence to ensure the proper appropriation of taxpayer funds”.
Both Moody and Uthmeier have denied any wrongdoing. On Thursday, at an event at the Villages in Florida, Uthmeier was asked about the report, to which he said that under Florida law, he was not allowed to comment on it.
“I can’t say if it’s true or not,” he said. But he added that “if it is indeed true” it shows that “there was no probable cause found that anybody did anything wrong”.
He also said, without evidence, that Democrats had been behind the report, and called it a “hoax that has been debunked time and time and time again”.
“Nobody did anything wrong here,” he added.
In a statement to the New York Times on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Moody said that “the reports confirm what we have said all along”, that “neither the Department of Legal Affairs nor the former attorney general had knowledge of how the settlement money would be spent. Attempts to characterize this any other way are disingenuous.”
In the report, the jury recommended that the Florida legislature “enact a law to prevent this situation from occurring”. They suggest enacting “a law that says any monies received by the state from any source must be deposited into General Revenue, and there should be real consequences for anyone violating this law”.
On Thursday, the Democratic nominee for governor in Florida, David Jolly, said that if elected, he would “reopen an investigation” into the incident and challenged the Republican nominee for governor, Byron Donalds, to do the same.
