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Hope Florida Grand Jury Report Leaked

Rick Outzen

Investigation

Someone leaked a sealed grand jury report to CBS News Miami that found that the DeSantis administration misappropriated $10 million in taxpayer money by diverting funds from a Medicaid settlement to the Hope Florida Foundation, CBS News Miami reported Aug. 26.

The CBS News Miami has the report online, and I reviewed it.

The Leon County grand jury concluded what I reported last year that $10 million from a Medicaid overbilling settlement with Centene Corporation was misappropriated after it was funneled through the Hope Florida Foundation to two political committees that ultimately steered money into the fight against last year’s marijuana legalization amendment and into the Republican Party of Florida.

The grand jury inquiry began after Pensacola Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade raised allegations of fraud and abuse during the 2025 legislative session. The grand jury voted in August 2025 to investigate under its broad authority to examine whether public officials acted incompetently, illegally, or contrary to good morals in the conduct of public affairs.

How the money moved

Centene originally offered Florida $67,048,611 in February 2023 to settle claims that it had overbilled the state’s Medicaid program through its pharmacy benefits management structure. By the time the deal was finalized in September 2024, the terms had changed: the state would collect $57,048,611, and $10,000,000 would go as a “donation” to the Hope Florida Foundation, the direct-support charity championed by First Lady Casey DeSantis.

The settlement was signed by four officials: then-Chief Deputy Attorney General John Guard, Agency for Healthcare Administration (AHCA) Secretary Jason Weida, Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky, and Department of Health Chief of Staff Cassandra Pasley.

Within days of landing in Hope Florida’s account, the $10 million was split into two $5 million grants and sent to a pair of 501(c)(4) political nonprofits — which then moved nearly all of it into a political action committee chaired by then-Governor’s Chief of Staff James Uthmeier.

According to forensic accountant Julian Dozier, whose bank-record analysis the jury called “thorough, credible, and detail oriented,” the money trail ran like this:

Both nonprofits’ grant applications explicitly stated they would not engage in political activity or “electioneering communications.” Both organizations then used the bulk of the money to help defeat Amendment 3, the ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana, which failed at the polls.

Who Said What

Mark Wilson, Secure Florida’s Future’s director and the Florida Chamber’s president, testified he applied for the grant at the suggestion of a fellow board member, Frank Walker, and denied the money “passed through” his organization. But the jury noted his group’s typical bank balance ran between roughly $110,000 and $158,000 in the months surrounding the grant. The $5 million deposit was an outlier the panel says was quickly diverted for political purposes in contradiction of the group’s own application.

Amy Ronshausen of Save Our Society from Drugs testified that Uthmeier personally called and texted her in October 2024 directing her to apply, then connected her with Hope Florida’s outside attorney, Jeff Aaron, who advised her to request $5 million. She got the money three days after applying and sent $4.75 million to Keep Florida Clean within a week, saying she believed it was the best way to fight the marijuana amendment. However, the jury found such a use at odds with her own grant application’s promise to avoid political activity.

Joshua Hay, then-chairman of the Hope Florida Foundation, approved both $5 million grants without the vetting the charity’s other requests normally went through. He told the jury he assumed the money was tied to hurricane relief and used the phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” in describing his own judgment. The jury found his testimony “transparent and credible.”

Katie Strickland, then a deputy chief of staff to Gov. Ron DeSantis, fared worst in the jury’s assessment. Despite being identified by other witnesses as present for key conversations, she said she never read the settlement agreement and couldn’t recall who directed the money to Hope Florida. The jury found her “not credible” and said she was “the least informative” of all the witnesses.

AHCA Secretary Jason Weida testified the $10 million was a “bonus” Centene offered to incentivize a quick settlement, not core Medicaid reimbursement. The jury rejected his explanation, calling it inconsistent with Weida’s own decision to reimburse the federal government using the full settlement amount rather than the reduced figure his “bonus” theory would imply.

John Guard, the former chief deputy attorney general, acknowledged he had “political concerns” about the Hope Florida carve-out but said those concerns were resolved once the agreement was restructured to make AHCA—not the Attorney General’s Office—the lead party. The jury found he signed without doing the due diligence the money required.

James Uthmeier, now Florida’s Attorney General, did not testify before the panel. The jury noted that “no witness admitted or identified who directed the money to go to Hope Florida” in the first place, even as testimony established that his PAC, Keep Florida Clean, was the ultimate destination for most of the funds and later moved money to the Republican Party of Florida and to the Florida Freedom Fund, another Uthmeier-chaired committee.

Why no charges? The grand jury said it found the $10 million was misappropriated but couldn’t identify who made the original decision to route it to Hope Florida. “Virtually everyone involved is a lawyer and acted on the advice of other lawyers,” which the panel said complicates any criminal case. Jurors said they wanted changes made to state law instead, even though they couldn’t recommend charges.

The findings

The jury laid out several reasons it concluded the $10 million was misappropriated rather than legitimately donated:

The panel also found that AHCA’s Weida reduced the disputed portion from $10.8 million to an even $10 million specifically to stay under the $10 million threshold in Florida Statute 216.216, which requires settlement money the state receives to go into General Revenue rather than be spent independently by an agency.

What the jury wants changed

The grand jury issued two recommendations to the Legislature:

Since the money was diverted, what has happened to the main players:

Gov. DeSantis appointed:

Ashley Moody to the U.S. Senate

James Uthmeier – Florida Attorney General

John Guard – Judge on the Second District Court of Appeal

Responses

Uthmeier’s deputy chief of staff wrote to CBS News Miami: “Grand jury proceedings are confidential. Unauthorized disclosure of those proceedings is a crime.”

“This baseless smear has been debunked over and over again,” DeSantis spokesman Alex Lanfranconi posted on X. “In fact, if any confidential grand jury report was leaked to the press, that’s the only crime committed here.”

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