The 1st District Court of Appeal has ordered State Attorney Jack Campbell to explain under oath how the unredacted Hope Florida grand jury presentment reached CBS News Miami one day after the court barred him from disclosing it. He has five days to answer. The court is asking why he told lawyers in the case that a clerk’s office probably sent the record out when neither clerk’s office had the document.
Judges Lori Rowe, Ross Bilbrey, and M. Kemmerly Thomas signed the Oct. 9 order. It directs Campbell to show cause why the court should not appoint a special master to investigate the leak and decide whether its Aug. 25 injunction was violated. It asks why he should not be sanctioned for the statements in his Aug. 26 email to the petitioners’ lawyers, and why the court should not refer him to The Florida Bar for discipline.
The order requires “a detailed explanation of any information he is aware of” about how the unredacted presentment got to the media, or to anyone else, after the petition was filed.
Spectrum News 13 Florida Capitol Correspondent Jason Delgado first reported the order Sunday, posting all seven pages on X.
On Aug. 25, the 1st DCA granted an emergency petition from people named in the presentment, including Attorney General James Uthmeier, and issued a writ of injunction. The court’s Marshal served it on Campbell that afternoon. The State had conceded the writ should issue.
On Aug. 26, CBS News Miami’s Jim DeFede published an unredacted presentment.
At 5:49 p.m. that day, Campbell emailed the petitioners’ lawyers. “I have no idea where it came from other than I am guessing the record got sent from our clerk to the DCA in the past couple of days,” he wrote. “We lost control of sealed Adelson records this way.” He added: “I am going to still stonewall the press, though they are blowing me up now.”
According to the order, the Leon County Clerk’s Office had not transmitted, and the 1st DCA’s Clerk had not received, an unredacted copy as of Aug. 26. The appellate clerk did not have any version of the presentment until Aug. 28, when a heavily redacted copy arrived attached to one of six cross-notices of appeal. The unredacted version was hand-delivered with the record on appeal on Sept. 9.
The judges wrote that the timing “raises questions as to whether the Court’s injunction was violated” and that they have “concerns” about Campbell’s “unfounded and speculative assertion” that a clerk was responsible.
The court issued an earlier show-cause order to Campbell on Aug. 31 in the companion appeal over the presentment itself. In his response, Campbell admitted two unauthorized disclosures from January.
Within an hour of receiving the 116-page presentment on Jan. 28, Campbell emailed the unredacted version to a list of witnesses and lawyers that did not match the recipients he named in the body of the message. The next day, he asked the trial court for permission to share it with eight people and entities referenced in the document. The court approved seven, excluding Keep Florida Clean because it had disbanded.
Two hours after that order, Campbell sent the presentment to 30 recipients, seven of whom the court had never authorized: Centene, the Shutts & Bowen firm, Bank of America, the general intake inbox for U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody’s office, the general intake inbox for the Florida Freedom Fund, and Brian Newman, who was unconnected to the proceedings. Campbell later said he meant Ryan Newman, then general counsel to Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The 1st DCA’s Oct. 7 opinion put the total at 49 recipients. State law gives people named in a presentment 15 days to move to suppress or expunge it before it can be released.
That opinion ordered the presentment fully expunged. It found the grand jury exceeded its authority by accusing people of a “sophisticated scheme” without indicting anyone, and that Campbell’s distribution violated the grand jury secrecy statute. On Oct. 8, DeSantis held a news conference in Miami and said, “Whoever leaked this report needs to be prosecuted.” Uthmeier has said law enforcement is looking at the leak.
Campbell has said he is legally prohibited from discussing anything concerning the grand jury. The five-day deadline passed last week. Campbell made no public response as of Sunday.
The order was served on Chris Kise, Jesse Panuccio, Henry Coxe, former Florida Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson, Circuit Judge James Lee Marsh, and Brad Thomas, the former 1st DCA judge Uthmeier appointed acting Attorney General for the proceedings.
The $10 million came out of a 2024 settlement with Centene, the parent company of Medicaid managed-care contractor Sunshine Health, over Medicaid overbilling. Florida’s share was about $67 million. The final version of the deal sent $57 million to the state and $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, the direct-support organization for First Lady Casey DeSantis’ Hope Florida initiative.
Within weeks, the Foundation made two $5 million grants to Secure Florida’s Future and Save Our Society from Drugs. Those groups sent money to Keep Florida Clean, the political committee chaired by Uthmeier, then DeSantis’ Chief of Staff, that was fighting Amendment 3, the 2024 recreational marijuana initiative.
House Health Care Budget Subcommittee Chair Alex Andrade began examining the payment in Spring 2025. The House inquiry ended in April 2025 after the central witnesses declined to appear, and Andrade sent his findings to Campbell’s office, which opened a criminal investigation the following month. A grand jury was impaneled that August.
Uthmeier has defended the deal as lawful.
The grand jury returned no indictment on Jan. 28, 2026. Its presentment concluded that the $10 million “was misappropriated as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities” and found insufficient evidence to charge anyone.
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Ed. note: This story was drafted with assistance from AI. Peter Schorsch and the Florida Politics editorial team performed editorial judgment, sourcing, and final review.