A Florida grand jury concluded that Gov. Ron DeSantis's administration "misappropriated" $10 million in Medicaid settlement funds through the Hope Florida Foundation, but declined to file criminal charges because no one would take responsibility for the decision.
The sealed grand jury report, obtained by CBS News Miami and first reported by The Hill, lays out what the panel called "a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities" using taxpayer dollars originally meant to compensate the state for Medicaid fraud. The $10 million came from a $67 million settlement between Florida and Centene, the state's largest Medicaid contractor. Instead of flowing to programs for the poor children the settlement was designed to help, the money was routed to Hope Florida, a charity championed by First Lady Casey DeSantis, and from there into political action committees that campaigned against a 2024 ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana.
The grand jury named names. It identified James Uthmeier, formerly DeSantis's chief of staff, now Florida's attorney general, as someone "in a position of authority over those involved in settling." Testimony placed Uthmeier at the center of directing the money after it reached Hope Florida. His political action committee, Keep Florida Clean, was tagged as "the prime recipient of the majority of the $10 million taxpayer funds."
The path the money traveled tells the story. Centene paid the state $67 million to resolve a Medicaid dispute. Ten million of that was labeled a "donation" and sent to Hope Florida, which was supposed to serve as "a community-based welfare program that serves as a cost-efficient alternative to government assistance programs." That description came from the organization's own stated purpose.
From Hope Florida, the funds moved through a charity connected to the foundation and into two unnamed nonprofit groups. Those nonprofits campaigned against Amendment 3, the 2024 Florida ballot measure that would have legalized recreational marijuana. The grand jury report and multiple outlets confirmed the money also flowed to the Republican Party of Florida and two PACs tied to Uthmeier.
The Washington Examiner reported the grand jury concluded the funds were diverted to the state Republican Party and two PACs specifically aimed at defeating the marijuana amendment. The panel's language left no ambiguity about what it believed happened. What it could not establish was who, specifically, gave the order.
The grand jury put it bluntly:
"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 collective amnesia is what kept the case from becoming a criminal prosecution. The panel wrote that "despite our finding that the money was misappropriated, we find insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally." No one was arrested. No indictments came down. The grand jury could see the money trail but could not pin the decision on a single person willing to own it.
Sen. Ashley Moody, the Republican who served as Florida's attorney general when the settlement was struck, drew pointed attention in the report. The grand jury implicated Moody as aware of the plan to divert the payment and found she had "authorized" her former chief deputy, John Guard, to sign the settlement agreement with Centene. DeSantis later appointed Moody to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Marco Rubio, now serving as secretary of state.
One detail stands out: the grand jury never called Moody to testify. The report does not explain why. That gap raises an obvious question about how thoroughly the panel pursued the chain of command. Moody faces reelection this year, and the report's findings now hang over that campaign.
Accountability in government is not a partisan principle, it is a baseline expectation. When political figures face corruption findings, voters deserve clear answers about who authorized what and why.
Florida Democrats wasted no time. The Florida Senate Democratic Caucus called for the resignations of both Uthmeier and Moody, framing the findings in the sharpest terms available. As Just The News reported, the caucus argued that "ten million in Medicaid settlement money, money that the grand jury found was compensation for ripping off sick poor children, was knowingly and willingly misappropriated in a sophisticated scheme."
DeSantis has pushed back on the scrutiny surrounding Hope Florida since earlier probes surfaced in 2025. He told reporters then:
"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 leaked, the governor shifted his fire to the leak itself. He told reporters, as Just The News reported, that "the only crime that was apparent was whoever leaked the grand jury report." The report had been sealed, and how CBS News Miami obtained it remains unexplained. DeSantis did not respond to The Hill's request for comment on the substance of the findings.
Dismissing the leak as the real offense is a familiar move in political scandals. It redirects attention from the content of the findings to the process by which they became public. Whether or not the leak violated the law, and that is a legitimate question, it does not change what the grand jury actually found about the $10 million.
Florida is not the only state where elected officials face serious legal scrutiny. A separate federal criminal investigation into a sitting Florida congressman has raised similar questions about accountability among the state's political class.
AP News confirmed the grand jury's core conclusion: the administration misappropriated $10 million in taxpayer money originally meant for poor children's health insurance, and no criminal charges followed because no individual could be identified as the person who authorized the diversion.
The New York Post reported the grand jury stated plainly: "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 captures the frustration embedded in the report, a panel that found clear wrongdoing but could not hold any single person accountable for it.
The grand jury's inability to assign criminal liability does not erase its factual findings. It found that $10 million in settlement money, extracted from a Medicaid contractor accused of defrauding the system, was redirected away from its intended purpose and into political campaigns. It found that Uthmeier's PAC received the bulk of the money. It found that Moody was aware of the diversion and authorized her deputy to sign the agreement. And it found that no one in the DeSantis administration would claim responsibility.
Several key questions remain unanswered. The names of the two nonprofit groups that received the funds and campaigned against the marijuana ballot measure have not been disclosed. The charity connected to Hope Florida that served as the pass-through entity has not been identified publicly. Whether any state or federal authorities plan further action in response to the report is unclear.
The political fallout, meanwhile, is already spreading. Moody's Senate reelection bid now carries the weight of a grand jury finding that she was implicated in the scheme, even as she was never asked to testify about it. Uthmeier serves as the state's top law enforcement officer while a grand jury report identifies his PAC as the destination for misappropriated taxpayer dollars. And DeSantis, who has positioned himself as a champion of fiscal responsibility, must answer for an administration that could not explain where $10 million of the public's money went, or who decided to send it there.
Conservatives rightly demand accountability from government at every level. When taxpayer money meant for sick children ends up in political committee accounts, and no one in charge can remember how it got there, that is not a smear campaign, it is exactly the kind of failure voters expect their leaders to answer for.