Attorney General Ashley Moody speaks during a roundtable discussion at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora in Miami’s Coral Way neighborhood on Monday, February 7, 2022.
MATIAS J. OCNER
mocner@miamiherald.com
Reality Check is a Herald series holding those in power to account and shining a light on their decisions. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email our journalists at tips@miamiherald.com.
The Hope Florida Foundation has moved its financial records and documents out of Tallahassee and into the same nondescript Alabama building as the super political action committee backing Florida Sen. Ashley Moody’s re-election campaign, new tax filings show.
Crosby Ottenhoff Group helps a wide set of conservative political committees ensure they don’t run afoul of state and federal campaign finance laws from a building in the wealthy Birmingham suburb of Mountain Brook.
But their Rolodex now also includes Florida’s state-created charity. The Hope Florida Foundation previously housed its records in the state’s Department of Children and Family Services headquarters, according to an older tax return.
The re-homing of the foundation backing first lady Casey DeSantis’ flagship initiative to an out-of-state political hub follows political and criminal investigations into how the Hope Florida Foundation helped move $10 million in taxpayer funds from a Medicaid settlement to a political committee run by now-Attorney General James Uthmeier, which he used to help defeat Florida’s marijuana ballot amendment in 2024.
The choice by the foundation to use a politically connected legal compliance company is the latest in the string of ways the ostensibly nonpartisan nonprofit has been tied to Republican political operators.
Another one of Florida’s state-created charities, the Florida Emergency Management Assistance Foundation — a nonprofit organization that supports the state’s emergency management agency — runs its finances in-house, tax filings show.
The main super PAC backing Moody, called Stronger Safer Nation, has paid Crosby Ottenhoff Group $38,000 for campaign finance consulting services.
That the Hope Florida Foundation’s record-keeping is being held in the same building as the super PAC backing Moody’s re-election campaign is notable, in part, because of her office’s role in the drafting of the settlement agreement that started the chain of events resulting in millions of taxpayer dollars going to political ads.
Eric Gorovitz, a nonprofit tax law attorney based in San Francisco, told the Herald/Times that from a legal perspective, “there’s nothing culpable in hiring a known accounting firm with appropriate expertise” that also does political work, as long as the reporting is done accurately.
But it does raise important questions about the Hope Florida Foundation’s oversight processes and open a door for potential misconduct, according to Nathan Goldman, an associate professor of accounting at North Carolina State University.
“Is this creating opportunities for nefarious behavior? I think the answer is yes,” Goldman said.
Former Hope Florida Foundation President Joshua Hay, right, leaves the Leon County Courthouse on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025. Justin Garcia Tampa Bay Times
“Why did they change how this is being done? Was there a competitive selection process? Are there any conflicts of interest that were considered? And is the board documenting its decision?” asked Goldman. “These aren’t IRS violations, but there are certainly legitimate questions that need to be asked, not just by the organization, but by these policymakers and by the public as a whole.”
The potential for the same staffers to be working on the books for both the Hope Florida Foundation and the PAC backing Moody “creates opportunities for people that are doing things that they’re not supposed to be doing,” he said.
Crosby Ottenhoff Group advertises itself as a one-stop shop “focused on building strategic, quality services for political committees.” The company’s clients include the two biggest political committees aimed at keeping Republican control of the House: the National Republican Campaign Committee and Congressional Leadership Fund.
The firm also runs the books for American Mission Florida — an AI industry-backed political committee that’s been running ads in support of Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds.
The Crosby Ottenhoff Group website states that the company works with nonprofits as well as political committees, and handled the paperwork for a few dozen nonprofits nationwide in 2024, according to a search of tax filings compiled by the investigative journalism nonprofit ProPublica. Many of those nonprofits are tied to conservative political organizations.
But Crosby Ottenhoff Group only publicly operated the books for one other Florida nonprofit in 2024: the Miami-based group called America Issues Movement Inc., which was run by Republican political strategists and has since been administratively dissolved, according to state corporate records.
Crosby Ottenhoff Group is not a contractor state agencies work with, according to state financial records. The Crosby Ottenhoff Group did not respond to questions from the Herald/Times about how the firm came to work with the Hope Florida Foundation.
Neither the Department of Children and Family Services nor the Hope Florida Foundation responded to questions from the Herald/Times about why the state-created charity chose to outsource its financial compliance tasks, or how they selected Crosby Ottenhoff Group.
Renewed scrutiny on Moody’s role
Moody has been facing increased pressure from her Democratic opponents over her office’s role in negotiating the settlement as her November Senate election approaches. She was nominated to Florida’s vacant U.S. Senate seat by Gov. Ron DeSantis after Marco Rubio was named Secretary of State.
“Ashley needs to stop keeping secrets from the people of our state. It’s time she owns up and shows up,” Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said Wednesday during a press conference pressing Moody to address her office’s role in routing Medicaid settlement dollars toward the Hope Florida Foundation.
The leading Democratic candidate against Moody, Alexander Vindman, also slammed Moody this week, saying that throughout the election cycle, “corruption will be an essential issue. I think this one’s particularly heinous.”
Records obtained by the Herald/Times last year showed that Centene, the healthcare contractor that paid out the settlement, insisted that Moody’s office be cited in the agreement to help contextualize the unusual decision to reroute $10 million of the $67 million settlement to a charity.
John Guard, her chief deputy attorney general, removed references to her during the drafting process, those records showed, but Moody’s name appears on the final agreement.
From left- Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and U.S. FBI Deputy Director Christopher G. Raia listened U.S. Senator Ashley Moody speaks during the announcement of a federal indictment against Raúl Castro for the shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996, during an event to honor the victims of that tragic event, celebrated at the iconic Freedom Tower, in Miami, on Wednesday, May 20, 2026. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com
In a statement, Moody’s communications director Cameron Gambini distanced the senator from the settlement: “This was an Agency for Health Care Administration agreement that AHCA chose to negotiate and settle through AHCA-lawyers and outside counsel almost two years ago,” he said.
He added that she was not involved in the grand jury investigation into how the settlement money ended up paying for political ads. The grand jury has not yet released the findings of its investigation.
“The Senator has had no role in any grand jury proceedings and would certainly have no issue with the public release of any report,” Gambini said.
Moody is not directly tied to Stronger Safer Nation, the super PAC housed in the same Alabama building as Hope Florida’s records. In a federal race, candidates can not legally coordinate with the super PACs backing their campaigns.
But the PAC is ground zero for major donors and corporations who want to back Moody without hitting direct-campaign-contribution limits. Miami billionaire Ken Griffin gave $2.5 million to Stronger Safer Nation earlier this summer to support her re-election bid.
New tax filings detail flow of funds
The Hope Florida Foundation’s new tax filing also provides the clearest public documentation that the Hope Florida Foundation did little in 2024 besides wiring the Medicaid settlement funds to donors giving millions to Uthmeier’s political committee.
The foundation — which described itself to the Internal Revenue Service as a charity created to “foster community collaboration between the public and private sector, faith-based communities, and nonprofits, to break down traditional community silos” — only distributed a handful of grants that year.
Those included $100,000 to Florida Emergency Management Assistance Foundation, a state-created charity. Other grants included $87,000 to seven individuals related to Hurricane Milton recovery, and the $10 million split between Secure Florida’s Future, a group run by the Florida Chamber of Commerce, and Save Our Society From Drugs, a St. Petersburg organization associated with Drug Free America.
In the days following the transfer of the $10 million, those two groups wired $8.5 million into Uthmeier’s political committee, funding ads in opposition to Florida’s 2024 ballot amendment legalizing marijuana.
Save Our Society From Drugs and Drug Free America gave Keep Florida Clean a total of $9.6 million in 2024, according to the nonprofits’ recent tax filings.
Uthmeier’s committee spent $25 million during the election cycle, and the proposal he opposed to legalize marijuana in Florida failed to reach the necessary 60% threshold for passage.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, center, speaks alongside federal and state law enforcement officials during a press conference at the FDLE Miami Regional Operations Center announcing a new unit focused on investigating public corruption and government spending.on Thursday, February 19, 2026, in Miami, Florida. Left to right are: U.S. Attorney for Southern District of Florida Jason A. Reding Quinones, Attorney General James Uthmeier, and Assistant Statewide Prosecutor Richard Mantei, Office of Statewide Prosecution. Carl Juste cjuste@miamiherald.com
The Hope Florida Foundation’s tax filing could raise additional scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service if the agency under the Donald Trump administration chose to pursue it.
Nonprofit experts told the Herald/Times earlier this year that the foundation’s actions could jeopardize its tax-exempt status because of the strict restrictions on how nonprofits can engage in politics or lobbying.
READ MORE: Criminal Hope Florida probe wrapped, but IRS inquiry could soon begin
In the tax filing, under a question about whether the nonprofit had been involved in any lobbying activities, the foundation wrote “no.”
It described all of its grants — including the $10 million that led to the grand jury investigation — as funds that “were provided after an assessment of the donee organizations’ mission and programmatic activities.”
According to records previously obtained by the Herald/Times, the grant proposals Save Our Society From Drugs and Drug Free America submitted to the Hope Florida Foundation did not detail how the groups planned to spend the money.
The Hope Florida Foundation’s listed email address for submitting new grant proposals on its website was nonfunctional and emails automatically bounced back Wednesday.
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau reporter Romy Ellenbogen contributed to this report.
This story was originally published July 31, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
.jpg)
Miami Herald
Claire Heddles is the Miami Herald’s senior political correspondent. She previously covered national politics and Congress from Washington, D.C at NOTUS. She’s also worked as a public radio reporter covering local government and education in East Tennessee and Jacksonville, Florida.