For seven months, the finding sat in a sealed envelope at the Leon County Clerk of Court’s office in Tallahassee: a state grand jury had concluded that Florida officials misappropriated $10 million in taxpayer money and funneled it, through a charity tied to First Lady Case DeSantis, into political committees ran by the appointed Attorney General that spent it on an election.
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. The presentment was filed under seal on Jan. 28, and, according to reporting published first by CBS News Miami investigative reporter Jim DeFede, who obtained a copy, the people named in it, including Attorney General James Uthmeier, spent the months since blocking its release through closed court proceedings.
What the report says, DeFede reported, is this: the DeSantis administration diverted $10 million from a Medicaid overbilling settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation as part of what the grand jury called “a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities.” Money owed to Florida taxpayers as compensation for a health care contractor’s overcharges on the program that insures poor children instead ended up in political action committees and the Republican Party of Florida, where it was spent in the fall of 2024 to defeat Amendment 3, the marijuana legalization initiative.
And then, having found the money was taken, the grand jury declined to charge anyone.
“Despite our finding that the money was misappropriated,” the panel wrote, according to the copy DeFede obtained, “we find insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally.”
Read the Hope Florida Grand Jury Report/Courtesy: CBS News Miami
A settlement that sat for three years, then moved in days
The underlying facts have been reported in pieces since April 2025, when state Rep. Alex Andrade’s House health care budget subcommittee began pulling at the thread. The grand jury’s account, as described by DeFede, assembles them into a sequence.
In 2021, Florida determined that Centene, one of the country’s largest Medicaid contractors, had overbilled the state roughly $67 million for prescription drugs under Florida’s Medicaid program — money that, as the grand jury framed it, was owed back to taxpayers who fund health coverage for poor children. Other states that caught Centene doing the same thing settled quickly and announced it. Florida did not. Settlement offers went unanswered for three years.
Then, in September 2024, the state moved abruptly — and with new conditions. On Sept. 12, the draft settlement was modified so that $62 million would go to the state and $5 million to the Hope Florida Foundation. A day later, on Sept. 13, the split changed again: $57 million to the state, $10 million to Hope Florida. The grand jury found no explanation in the record for why the charity’s cut doubled overnight.
Nobody, the grand jury wrote, would own the decision. “Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida,” the report states, “or had any memory of who made it.”
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. “We find that the full Centene settlement was taxpayer reimbursement,” the grand jury wrote. “This money was part of the damages Centene owed to Florida taxpayers.”
Signed during a hurricane
The grand jury’s timeline runs directly through two of the worst weeks Florida had in 2024.
Hurricane Helene came ashore in the Big Bend on Sept. 26, killing at least 18 people in Florida and causing an estimated $14 billion in damage. The next day, Sept. 27, with the state Emergency Operations Center in full response, Cassandra Pasley, chief of staff at the Florida Department of Health, was asked to sign a settlement agreement she had never seen. She testified she would not have signed it had she known the money would end up with political committees.
Centene wired the $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation on Oct. 4. Hurricane Milton made landfall on Oct. 9. On Oct. 11, amid that response, Uthmeier — then the governor’s chief of staff — personally contacted Amy Ronshausen, executive director of Save Our Society from Drugs, and directed her to apply for a Hope Florida grant.
“The Centene settlement itself seems rushed,” the grand jury wrote. “Once reached, it took a mere 7 days to fund. We believe the rush was due to the impending election which was just 45 days away.”
Twenty-five days, two grants, one destination
Within 25 days of receiving the money, the Hope Florida Foundation had given all of it away in two $5 million grants.
Secure Florida’s Future, an arm of the Florida Chamber of Commerce headed by Mark Wilson, received $5 million on an application stating the money would fund “webinars, podcasts, summits” promoting Hope Florida. Within days, $3.75 million went to Keep Florida Clean, the political committee chaired by Uthmeier.
Save Our Society from Drugs received its $5 million on an application approved within hours of submission. Within a week, $4.75 million of it went to Keep Florida Clean.
Both applications, the grand jury found, “mischaracterized” the purpose of the money and represented that it would not be used politically. In total, Keep Florida Clean took in $8.5 million. From there, $7 million went to the Republican Party of Florida and $1.23 million to the Florida Freedom Fund, another committee associated with Uthmeier.
Joshua Hay, chair of the Hope Florida Foundation, testified that he approved the transfers without asking questions, under the impression the money was needed to help hurricane victims.
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.”
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.
Who the report names — and who never testified
The grand jury placed Uthmeier “in a position of authority” directing the funds once they reached Hope Florida. It concluded that then-Attorney General Ashley Moody, now a U.S. senator, knew of the diversion plan and “authorized” her chief deputy to sign the settlement. 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.
Gov. Ron DeSantis was not called to testify. Neither was Moody. Neither was Uthmeier.
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.
The fight to make it public
Florida law does not make a grand jury presentment secret forever. Section 905.28 delays release so that a person named in a report may ask a judge to repress or expunge material about them. 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.
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. Rule 2.420 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. No such order has been found.
“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.”
Uthmeier’s office has declined to say whether he sought to keep the report sealed, noting only that “grand jury proceedings are confidential” and that “unauthorized disclosure of those proceedings is a crime.” In April he called the matter a “big nothingburger,” adding: “I have not been indicted. I’ve not been a suspect or a target. I have not been involved in any criminal activity.” Asked about Hope Florida on Wednesday, DeSantis said he “wasn’t involved in the settlement agreement, but I’m very happy with how everything was done,” and called the controversy a hoax.
Voters go to the polls in November. Uthmeier is on the ballot, facing Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez. The grand jury’s report is not.
The Florida Trident is an investigative news outlet focusing on government accountability and transparency across Florida. The Trident was created and first published in 2022 by non-profit investigative, a non-profit organization that facilitates local investigative reporting across the state.
Michael Barfield is an award-winning investigative reporter who helps strengthen transparency and accountability across Florida. He assists reporters and the public with public records questions and requests, and he oversees and supports the organization’s litigation to enforce open government. He’s a frequent lecturer on Florida’s Public Records Act and Sunshine Law, serves on the governance committee of Investigative Reporters & Editors, and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. Barfield is a former President of the ACLU of Florida, a life member of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and has twice been named by Sarasota Magazine as one of the most influential people in Sarasota. He lives in Sarasota with his wife, Iru.
