A Florida grand jury concluded that Gov. Ron DeSantis's administration funneled $10 million in Medicaid settlement money through a charity tied to the first lady and into political committees, yet found no one willing to take responsibility for the decision.
The Leon County grand jury report, obtained by CBS News Miami, describes what it calls "a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities" using taxpayer dollars originally meant to compensate the state after its largest Medicaid contractor was caught shortchanging coverage for poor children. The money went first to Hope Florida, an organization connected to First Lady Casey DeSantis, then moved through a linked charity and into two nonprofit groups that campaigned against Amendment 3, the 2024 ballot measure that would have legalized recreational marijuana in Florida. Voters defeated that measure.
The grand jury did not hold back about what happened to the money. But it stopped short of criminal charges, saying no witness would own the decision that started the chain.
The funds trace back to a $67 million settlement with Centene Corporation, Florida's largest Medicaid contractor. Out of that total, $10 million was routed to Hope Florida as a "donation." Hope Florida was described in the settlement paperwork as a community-based welfare program meant to serve as a cost-efficient alternative to government assistance. That is not where the money ended up.
Instead, The Hill reported that the grand jury traced the funds from Hope Florida through a connected charity and into two unnamed nonprofit organizations involved in the campaign against the marijuana ballot measure. The grand jury identified James Uthmeier, now Florida's attorney general, formerly DeSantis's chief of staff, as a central figure. His political action committee, Keep Florida Clean, was described as "the prime recipient of the majority of the $10 million taxpayer funds."
That finding landed with force. Medicaid settlement dollars earmarked for a welfare alternative wound up bankrolling a political campaign run through a PAC chaired by one of the governor's closest allies.
The grand jury also implicated former Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, now a Republican U.S. senator whom DeSantis appointed to fill Marco Rubio's seat. The report states Moody was aware of the plan to divert the payment and authorized her chief deputy, John Guard, to sign the settlement agreement. Moody was not called to testify before the grand jury.
As AP News reported, the grand jury found that no one would take responsibility for sending the money to Hope Florida, and that the lack of a clearly identifiable decision-maker left prosecutors without enough evidence to bring charges. The report put it bluntly:
"Despite our finding that the money was misappropriated, we find insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally. Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida... or had any memory of who made it."
That language, "nobody will take responsibility", is the core problem the grand jury identified. The scheme worked in part because accountability was diffused across multiple offices and organizations, each pointing at the other.
The grand jury's findings about Uthmeier were specific. The report noted that testimony placed him "in a position of authority over those involved in settling" and identified him as having "involvement in directing the money after it went to Hope Florida." His PAC, Keep Florida Clean, received the bulk of the diverted taxpayer funds, the Washington Examiner confirmed.
Uthmeier has denied wrongdoing. Moody, for her part, has said the attorney general's office had no knowledge of how the funds would ultimately be spent. Both have deflected blame. DeSantis has not responded to The Hill's request for comment on the grand jury report.
Florida is no stranger to political figures facing uncomfortable legal scrutiny. Andrew Gillum, once a Democratic rising star in the state, saw his own career collapse under the weight of legal troubles. But the Hope Florida matter is different in kind: it involves the machinery of state government allegedly being used to move public money into partisan campaign accounts.
The Newsmax report on the grand jury findings added context that the original $10 million was part of a Medicaid settlement intended to help poor children get health insurance. That detail sharpens the contrast: money recovered because a contractor cheated sick kids ended up funding political ads about marijuana.
DeSantis has pushed back against investigations into the Hope Florida funding since at least 2025, when he told reporters the scrutiny was manufactured.
"It was all political. People smear what they fear. If Hope Florida represents a threat to their world view, they're going to go after it."
After the grand jury report surfaced, DeSantis went further. Just The News reported that the governor dismissed the findings and said "the only crime that was apparent was whoever leaked the grand jury report." The report had been sealed, and CBS News Miami obtained it, a fact DeSantis used to redirect attention toward the leak itself rather than the substance of the findings.
But the criticism is not limited to Democrats. Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade, who chaired a legislative investigation into the matter, publicly accused Uthmeier of stealing the funds. Andrade stated that Uthmeier "stole $10,000,000 in Medicaid funds in 2024." That is a sitting Republican lawmaker leveling a theft accusation at his own party's attorney general.
Florida's political landscape has seen no shortage of intraparty friction in recent cycles. Ethics scandals have already cost Republican candidates in the state's recent primaries, and the Hope Florida matter adds another layer of accountability questions within the GOP.
Florida Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have called for the resignations of both Uthmeier and Moody. Their caucus released a statement describing the diverted funds as "compensation for ripping off sick poor children" that was "knowingly and willingly misappropriated in a sophisticated scheme." Whether those calls gain traction depends on whether Republican leaders in Tallahassee treat the grand jury's findings as a serious governance failure or dismiss them as partisan overreach.
The grand jury's inability to assign individual criminal responsibility is the most consequential part of the report. The panel found that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes. It identified the path the money traveled. It named the officials who sat at key decision points. And then it said it could not prove which person pulled the trigger.
The New York Post noted a second passage from the report that underscored the jury's frustration with that outcome:
"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."
That sentence reads less like a legal conclusion and more like a plea. The grand jury saw the problem clearly. It just could not find anyone willing to admit they caused it.
Moody's position adds a political dimension. DeSantis appointed her to the U.S. Senate, and she faces reelection in 2026. The grand jury's finding that she was aware of the plan to divert the Medicaid payment, and that she authorized Guard to sign the settlement, will follow her into that campaign. Whether voters treat it as disqualifying depends on whether anyone in Tallahassee is forced to answer the question the grand jury could not resolve: who decided to send $10 million in Medicaid money to a political action committee?
Florida has taken steps in other areas to tighten oversight of how public dollars are spent. The state recently set first-in-the-nation limits on welfare cash spent on items like tattoos and vapes. That kind of granular accountability for small-dollar welfare spending stands in sharp contrast to a system that apparently allowed $10 million in settlement funds to pass through multiple organizations and land in a PAC without anyone claiming they authorized it.
Several questions remain unanswered. The names of the two nonprofit groups that received the diverted funds have not been disclosed. The specific amount that reached Keep Florida Clean, described only as "the majority" of $10 million, has not been pinned down. And the grand jury report itself was sealed, raising questions about how CBS News Miami obtained it and whether its release will prompt its own investigation.
Taxpayers deserve to know who decided their money should fund a political campaign instead of helping the children it was meant to serve. A grand jury looked for that answer and came up empty, not because the scheme was invisible, but because nobody in the governor's orbit would own it.
