The weekend is the perfect time to recap the history of news stories. Last week, I covered the dispute between the Escambia Children’s Trust and the Escambia County Commission over CRA funds. This week, I tackle the Hope Florida Scandal.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier denied being involved in the Hope Florida Foundation’s wire transfers to nonprofits that eventually put $8.5 million in a political action committee, Keep Florida Clean, that Uthmeier chaired. He blames the scandal on marijuana industry, which his PAC successfully battled to defeat Amendment 3 last fall.
- The Pensacola News Journal asked the Attorney General about the scandal when he was in town last Friday to tout his newly created Office of Parental Rights and its agreement with Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, who used the visit to drum up community support for his bid to be the next UWF president.
- Uthmeier accused a local lawmaker (Rep. Alex Andrade) of being “in bed” with the marijuana industry.
- Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken the scandal personally and made it about his wife, Casey DeSantis, who launched the Hope Florida initiative in 2021, though no one has accused her of being involved in the wire transfers.
Inweekly has covered the Hope Florida Foundation scandal since April 2, when Rep. Alex Andrade, chair of the Health Care Budget Subcommittee, announced plans to investigate it.
Basics
State House committee investigations have outlined a clear financial trail. After Florida settled with Centene for $67 million over Medicaid overbilling, $10 million of that settlement was directed, by contract, to the Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit supporting First Lady Casey DeSantis’ Hope Florida initiative.
Within days, Hope Florida granted $5 million each to two nonprofits: Secure Florida’s Future and Save Our Society from Drugs.
These two nonprofits then rapidly transferred a combined $8.5 million to the political action committee (PAC) “Keep Florida Clean,” which was chaired by James Uthmeier, then Governor DeSantis’ chief of staff and now Florida Attorney General.
Timeline
SEPT. 27, 2024: Florida reached a $67 million settlement in an overbilling dispute with the Centene Corp., the state’s largest Medicaid contractor. Under the deal, Centene donates $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation. The settlement was not reported to state lawmakers, as required by law. Medicaid was reimbursed for its percentage of the $67 million.
In a May 15 podcast interview, Andrade said, “We would’ve never even known about this settlement if we hadn’t gotten our hands on one set of minutes from the Hope Florida Foundation that vaguely referenced it.”
- He added, “We were the only state in the country not to put out a notice without putting out a press release about our settlement with Centene. Every other state was proud of their settlement with Centene. We were the only state that hid it from the public. It was just so blatantly glaringly inappropriate and illegal.”
OCT. 11, 2024: James Uthmeier, DeSantis’ then-chief of staff, sets up a conversation with Amy Ronshausen, executive director of the nonprofit Save Our Society From Drugs, according to text messages obtained by The Associated Press. At the time, Uthmeier chaired a political committee campaigning (Keep Florida Clean) against Amendment 3, the doomed marijuana referendum.
OCT. 13, 2024: Secure Florida’s Future, a nonprofit led by the president of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, applies to the Hope Florida Foundation for a $5 million grant. Secure Florida’s Future Chair Mark Wilson proposes a “long-term, targeted business partner recruitment strategy and public awareness campaign.” The application does not specifically outline how the funds will be spent.
OCT. 14, 2024: The Hope Florida Foundation board is formally notified of the $10 million donation, which amounts to more than 10 times what the charity raised the previous fiscal year, according to recently released tax documents. The board is also briefed on the $5 million grant application from Secure Florida’s Future. “This proposal has been developed in alignment with the Department and Executive Administration,” reads a copy of the meeting minutes obtained by AP. Meeting minutes_10.14.24
OCT. 16, 2024: The Hope Florida Foundation wires $5 million to Secure Florida’s Future, according to Joshua Hay, chair of the foundation’s board.
OCT. 17, 2024: Secure Florida’s Future donates $2 million to Keep Florida Clean, the PAC controlled by Uthmeier, according to the state’s campaign finance database. Days later, Secure Florida’s Future sends $1.75 million more.
OCT. 18, 2024: Ronshausen messages Hope Florida Foundation attorney Jeff Aaron about a grant application she plans to submit to the charity, according to texts shared with AP. Aaron texts Ronshausen a copy of the letter that was submitted days earlier by Secure Florida’s Future.
- “I’d do it like that for the same amount, and let’s see what the board agrees to,” Aaron texts.
- “Just emailed it,” Ronshausen replies.
- Aaron responds: “Received! Can you send me wire instructions?”.
We posted the text messages on April 19.
OCT. 22, 2024: The Hope Florida Foundation wires $5 million to Save Our Society From Drugs, according to Hay.
OCT. 23, 2024: Save Our Society From Drugs donates $1.6 million to Keep Florida Clean, followed by $3.15 million more in the following days.
NOV. 5, 2024: The marijuana amendment is backed by a majority of voters but falls short of the 60% threshold needed to pass.
FEB. 17, 2025: DeSantis appoints Uthmeier as state attorney general.
APRIL 9, 2025: In the House Health Care Budget Committee meeting on April 9, Rep. Alex Andrade engaged in a heated exchange with officials from the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) regarding a $10 million settlement that the state directed to the Hope Florida Foundation.
- “Instead of taking the settlement money that was paid by this large company and putting it back into the state coffers, they said, $10 million of what you owe us, just give it to the Hope Florida Foundation at DCF, which makes no sense,” Andrade said on a April 10 podcast. “It’s a completely separate agency, and no one has been able to explain why AHCA did it, why that money was necessary to go to the DSO (Direct Support Organization) for the Department of Children and Families, or what that money’s being used for.”
Andrade pointed out that the Hope Florida Foundation had never registered with the state or filed a tax return.
- “They’ve never filed a 990 with the IRS and are refusing to share with us who’s donated to them and when and what they’re spending their money on,” Andrade noted. “These are simple questions. This is not rocket science. This is just good governance, and they’re just refusing to participate in that conversation.”
APRIL 11, 2025: The flow of funds from the Hope Florida Foundation to the nonprofits, which in turn donated millions to Uthmeier’s PAC, is first reported by the Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay Times.
APRIL 15, 2025: Hay testifies under oath in a Florida House subcommittee chaired by Republican Rep. Alex Andrade. He defends Hope Florida’s mission but acknowledges that “mistakes were made.”
“I cannot confirm what the funds were used for,” Hay says. “We have no monitoring procedures.”
He testified, “In recent weeks, the public reporting has made evident that mistakes were made. There are lapses in reporting procedures. The foundation was not provided with the staffing support necessary to ensure all matters were being quickly and appropriately handled.”
In a stand-up after the hearing, Andrade said, “Given Mr. [Uthmeier’s] involvement in the settlement and then the transfer to Hope Florida and then soliciting these grant proposals and then immediately receiving that to his PAC… That’s very much what it looks like [criminal behavior].”
Jeremy Redfern, speaking on behalf of Attorney General Uthmeier, challenged Andrade’s motivations, accusing him of having connections to Trulieve, a medical-marijuana company that reportedly spent approximately $150 million supporting the ballot initiative.
- “This is Democrat-style lawfare by a representative who is in the pocket of Big Weed,” Redfern, who is Uthmeier’s communications director, posted on social media platform X. “He’s pushing this hoax because his Canadian-traded marijuana bosses are mad they spent $150 million to have unrestricted marijuana use in public and lost.”
Gov. DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis come to Pensacola State College to defend Hope Florida. The governor addressed what he described as “manufactured smears” against the Hope Florida program, suggesting that House leadership is “colluding with liberal media and the Democratic party in Florida” to undermine the Hope Florida initiative.
APRIL 16, 2025: The Hope Florida Foundation publicly releases its tax documents and bylaws. Board member Stephanie White of Pensacola took center stage at the Hope Florida Foundation board meeting yesterday, questioning discrepancies in the organization’s financial reporting. White challenged the foundation’s Form 990 reporting, noting that substantial distributions appeared missing.
- “They were only listed four (distributions) for $40,000. I know for a fact that more money was given,” White stated firmly. “My church was given $20,000 in 2024. None of that is listed.”
Florida Politics broke the news earlier today that Erik Dellenback, Executive Director of Hope Florida, has resigned from his position effective May 1, just months after joining the charity in January.
- In a podcast, Andrade questioned the Hope Florida Foundation chair Joshua Hay’s ties to the DeSantis administration.”The chairman of the Hope Florida Foundation, he volunteers in that capacity, but he’s part of a company that has received over a hundred million dollars in state contracts,” Andrade said. “When you have that type of relationship, obviously you want to go along to get along. You want to do everything in your power to make the governor and the executive branch happy because they’re your meal ticket. Unfortunately, for Josh Hay, the chairman of the Hope Florida Foundation, he received terrible advice from Governor DeSantis’ personal attorney, Jeff Aaron, and he was put in a terrible position to be the one actually approving these two grants and then distributing them immediately.”
APRIL 22, 2025: Uthmeier tells reporters that he “wasn’t part of securing the deal” for Centene’s donation but “everything looks legal.”
“I’m glad for what we did,” Uthmeier says. “I’m very thankful those groups stepped up and helped us secure a big win.”
- Florida’s Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections, which is chaired by Sen. Don Gaetz (R-Crestview), will not confirm Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Shevaun Harris and Department of Children and Families Secretary Taylor Hatch before the legislative session ends on May 2.
APRIL 23, 2025: Restore Our Nation PAC is sending out texts from Gov. Ron DeSantis asking voters to contact Pensacola lawmaker Alex Andrade: “Tell them (sic) to stand with the people and me to keep Florida free.”
APRIL 24, 2025: Andrade announces that he is wrapping up his committee’s probe, after Aaron, Ronshausen and Wilson decline to testify.
- “I am firmly convinced that James Uthmeier and Jeff Aaron engaged in a conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud and that several parties played a role in the misuse of $10 million in Medicaid funds,” Andrade says. “I’ll leave the rest of the investigation up to the FBI and Department of Justice.”
About an hour and a half later, Gov. DeSantis calls the probe a “smear” ahead of the 2026 campaign: “Some of these people, you know, view it as a way to attack the first lady,” he says, adding that those people “view her as a threat.”
Ann Ronhausen, Executive Director of Save Our Society for Drugs (SOS ), sent a letter to Florida House Speaker Danny Perez addressing allegations surrounding a grant her organization received from the Hope Florida Foundation. In her statement, Ronhausen claims she had a phone call with Rep. Alex Andrade, chairman of the House Healthcare Budget Subcommittee, after he allegedly pressured her lobbyist, RJ Myers, to make her appear for the call.
- According to Ronhausen’s account, she participated in this meeting under duress due to concerns about potential funding losses for the Drug Free America Foundation and the threat of a subpoena if she didn’t cooperate.
In a podcast interview, Andrade said, “Well, one thing I think people need to kind of internalize is that the governor’s office runs far more akin to say’ Veep’ than it does’ House of Cards.”
The lawmaker added: ”These people might be petty, they’re certainly incompetent, but it’s comical how incompetent they are. These people, we’re not sending our best to the governor’s office right now. These people are not doing a good job of even covering their tracks, and they just simply refuse to produce information and hope people kind of forget about it and get swept under the rug.”
MAY 14, 2025: At a roundtable held at a church in Brandon yesterday, Gov. Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis defended Hope Florida, describing it as not merely a program but a “movement” that represents one of the “only meaningful reforms to the welfare state since the Great Society of the late 1960s.” DeSantis directly addressed these allegations when questioned by a reporter about the appropriateness of the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) settlement.
- “They did a good job negotiating it. They did a good job across the board,” DeSantis responded. “The reality is no one would say anything about this if it wasn’t for, some people have an agenda. Some people want to try to obliquely hit the First Lady, even though she wasn’t involved in the AHCA thing.”
While Gov. Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis were defending Hope Florida, the chairman of Save Our Society from Drugs (SOS), the nonprofit focused on preventing substance abuse that received $5 million from the Hope Florida Foundation, submitted his resignation from the organization’s board.
- James Holton’s resignation letter stated that the SOS board had been completely unaware that the organization’s executive director, Amy Ronshausen, had accepted $5 million from the Hope Florida Foundation.
Adding another layer to this complex situation, the Tampa Bay Times reports that Ronshausen was suspended as executive director at Save Our Society from Drugs on April 22, according to a whistleblower complaint she sent to Holton on May 7.
MAY 19, 2025 In Tallahassee, the State Attorney’s office confirmed it had opened an investigation into the Hope Florida Scandal.
Today, during the 10-minute Q&A in Tampa, a reporter asked for the governor’s comment on the investigation.
- “On what?” DeSantis replied. “Well, I mean, I can tell you this has been a very successful program. It’s made the lives change dramatically, and I think that everything that’s been thrown at it is pure politics, and I don’t think it’s appropriate to be doing politics, whether it’s a congressional or a state committee or any of these other things. I believe in this program deeply, and I stand by 100%.”