![\"Florida](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/MIA_05UTHEMEIERINMIAMI.JPG\" "\\"Florida")
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Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, right, 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, and Attorney General James Uthmeier.<\/p>\n
Carl Juste<\/p>\n
cjuste@miamiherald.com<\/p>\n
This story is an exclusive report<\/a> published by Miami Herald news partner CBS Miami.<\/p>\n A state grand jury found the DeSantis administration \u201cmisappropriated\u201d taxpayer money when it diverted $10 million from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation, arguing the transfer was \u201cpart of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities,\u201d according to a copy of the sealed grand jury report obtained by CBS News Miami.<\/p>\n The grand jury report said the money, which was supposed to be used to provide health insurance for poor children, was instead hastily passed through multiple organizations before eventually landing in the bank accounts of two political action committees and the Republican Party of Florida. Those funds were then used in 2024 to defeat Amendment 3<\/a>, the citizen initiative to legalize marijuana<\/a> in Florida.<\/p>\n \u201cDespite our finding that the money was misappropriated, we find insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally,\u201d the report concluded. \u201cNobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida\u2026 or had any memory of who made it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe recognize that this would be an impediment to criminal prosecution,\u201d the report noted. \u201cWhile we can\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The grand jury identified the nexus for much of the activity surrounding the transfer as the state\u2019s current attorney general, James Uthmeier<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe find that James Uthmeier, as the Governor\u2019s Chief of Staff at the time of settlement, was in a position of authority over those involved in settling \u2026,\u201d the grand jury wrote. \u201cTestimony identified him as having involvement in directing the money after it went to Hope Florida. Testimony also revealed that Mr. Uthmeier\u2019s Keep Florida Clean, a political action committee, was the prime recipient of the majority of the $10 million taxpayer funds.\u201d<\/p>\n The grand jury also concluded that Ashley Moody<\/a>, who was the attorney general at the time, was aware of the plans to divert the $10 million to Hope Florida and \u201cauthorized\u201d her former chief deputy, John Guard, to sign the settlement agreement. The grand jury noted that Guard signed the settlement \u201cwithout conducting his due diligence to ensure the proper appropriation of taxpayer funds.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to questions from CBS News Miami about his role in the settlement, Guard wrote that \u201crequests for the Department of Legal Affairs to join settlements weren\u2019t uncommon and this settlement was handled in the ordinary course by the Department.\u201d<\/p>\n Guard, whom Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a> appointed to the state appeals court in January, said he could not comment further on grand jury proceedings.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a sitting judge, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on past or ongoing court proceedings,\u201d he wrote to CBS News Miami. \u201cEven if I weren\u2019t a sitting judge, to the extent that there was a grand jury, Florida law also makes it unlawful to disclose such proceedings.\u201d<\/p>\n Moody, who was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 2025<\/a> by DeSantis, has refused repeated requests for comment about Hope Florida. She is up for election in November.<\/p>\n DeSantis has also avoided publicly answering questions about what he knew of the diversion and who in his administration made the decision to send the $10 million to Hope Florida.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, DeSantis was asked about Hope Florida during a news conference and he said, \u201cI wasn\u2019t involved in the settlement agreement, but I\u2019m very happy with how everything was done.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued to call it a \u201choax.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither Moody nor DeSantis nor Uthmeier was called before the Tallahassee grand jury to testify.<\/p>\n The grand jury report was filed under seal with the Leon County Clerk\u2019s Office on Jan. 28. The report\u2019s existence has been the subject of intense interest in recent months, with Democratic officials calling for its release and Republican leaders refusing to acknowledge there even was a report.<\/p>\n One source familiar with the investigation said that multiple individuals named in the report, including Uthmeier, have been blocking its release for the last seven months through closed court proceedings. It is not clear where those court proceedings currently stand. Earlier this year, the Florida Center for Government Accountability filed a brief with the circuit court in Tallahassee asking to intervene in the case so it could argue for the report\u2019s release. Its request is still pending.<\/p>\n Uthmeier, who is up for election in November<\/a>, has refused to directly address the question of whether he was blocking the release of the report. Uthmeier\u2019s deputy chief of staff wrote to CBS News Miami: \u201cGrand jury proceedings are confidential. Unauthorized disclosure of those proceedings is a crime.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Uthmeier dismissed the entire affair surrounding Hope Florida as a \u201cbig nothingburger.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody cares about this topic any more than the liberal media,\u201d he said in April. \u201cAgain, there was a grand jury proceeding. Under Florida law the contents thereof are confidential. That\u2019s not my choice. That is Florida law. What I can tell you is I have not been indicted. I\u2019ve not been a suspect or a target. I have not been involved in any criminal activity. Nobody did anything wrong here.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet while DeSantis and Uthmeier maintain everything with the diversion of $10 million of taxpayer money was perfectly fine, a state grand jury argues it found significant wrongdoing.<\/p>\n The grand jury report describes a coordinated effort involving government officials across multiple state agencies and outside interest groups aligned with the governor. And the report suggests that administration officials took advantage of the chaos surrounding two deadly hurricanes \u2014 Hurricanes Helene<\/a> and Milton<\/a> \u2014 to help obscure their plans to siphon taxpayer money into the political campaign against the marijuana initiative.<\/p>\n In fact, the former chair of the Hope Florida Foundation, Joshua Hay, testified to the grand jury that he agreed to send the $10 million to a pair of political committees without asking many questions because \u201che assumed the money was needed to assist hurricane victims.\u201d<\/p>\n Hay then told the grand jury: \u201cThe road to hell is paved with good intentions.\u201d<\/p>\n History of the settlement<\/p>\n In 2021, Florida officials learned the healthcare giant Centene had been overbilling the state for prescription drugs<\/a> under the Florida Healthy Kids program. Florida wasn\u2019t the only state affected. At least 20 other states were overbilled nearly a billion dollars.<\/p>\n Florida\u2019s share was calculated to be $67,048,611.<\/p>\n In 2021, Ohio and Mississippi both announced settlements of $88 million and $55 million, respectively. In 2023, Indiana was reimbursed $66.5 million, Massachusetts $14 million, and California received $215 million.<\/p>\n Yet, while other states settled their cases, Florida did nothing, even ignoring Centene\u2019s request to get the case resolved so it could put the overbilling affair behind it.<\/p>\n A draft of the settlement agreement was first sent to Florida officials on July 14, 2021, offering to fully repay the $67 million the state was owed.<\/p>\n It is not known why DeSantis allowed the settlement to languish for three years, but in early September 2024, state officials contacted Centene and said they wanted to immediately resolve the dispute.<\/p>\n Only this time, the state had a new condition.<\/p>\n On Sept. 12, 2024, the state altered the agreement and instead of returning the entire $67 million to state coffers, the DeSantis administration decided only $62 million should be returned to the state and $5 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit set up to help fund first lady Casey DeSantis\u2019 Hope Florida initiative<\/a>. The idea behind Hope Florida was to move individuals away from government assistance and instead encourage them to receive help from religious-based organizations.<\/p>\n The next day, on Sept. 13, 2024, the state changed the settlement agreement again, this time lowering the amount returned to Florida taxpayers to $57 million and increasing the amount going to Hope Florida to $10 million<\/a>. No reason was given as to why the amount doubled.<\/p>\n Centene\u2019s lawyers, however, were concerned about any diversion of money, especially since it was going to a charity aligned with the governor\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n Centene demanded the settlement include wording making it clear Centene was being directed by the Florida attorney general to send the $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation.<\/p>\n Moody, however, did not want to be responsible.<\/p>\n According to the grand jury report, Moody\u2019s chief deputy, John Guard, said he had \u201creservations\u201d about the deal and that \u201cesoterically\u201d he agreed the $10 million was taxpayer money and \u201cbelonged to the state of Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n During his testimony in front of the grand jury, Guard also explained that \u201cFlorida Statutes require the legislature to decide how money is spent,\u201d according to the grand jury report.<\/p>\n Guard, according to the report, was also concerned about the political consequences if the Legislature ever found out about the diversion.<\/p>\n \u201c[Guard] did have political concerns about the dedication of $10,000,000 to Hope Florida, which he raised with AG Moody, because he knew the deal would be viewed by the legislature as a constraint on their spending authority,\u201d the grand jury noted.<\/p>\n As a result of Guard\u2019s objections, the settlement was rewritten so that instead of the attorney general directing Centene to send $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, it would now state that DeSantis\u2019 Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) was directing Centene to send $10 million to Hope Florida.<\/p>\n \u201cHis political concerns were resolved by the change to the agreement making the settlement AHCA\u2019s agreement rather than the AG\u2019s settlement agreement,\u201d the grand jury report states, \u201cas the problem would now be AHCA\u2019s problem rather than the AG\u2019s problem.\u201d<\/p>\n In its review of Guard\u2019s testimony, the grand jury noted that \u201cafter consulting AG Moody, she authorized Mr. Guard to sign the settlement agreement in its final form.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked by CBS News Miami when he became aware that the $10 million sent to Hope Florida was moved into the political action committees campaigning against the marijuana amendment, Guard wrote: \u201cI first learned that money had been transferred from Hope Florida months after the settlement either from watching a House Healthcare Appropriations committee hearing on the Florida Channel or from a phone call placed by [State] Representative [Alex] Andrade to me well after the election.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrade was the state representative who exposed the diversion of $10 million from the Centene settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation.<\/p>\n In 2025, President Donald Trump<\/a> nominated Guard to the federal bench, but his appointment was held up by Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who had emerged as a vocal critic of the transfer of $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation. In December, Scott posted on social media: \u201cMillions in tax dollars for poor kids have no business funding political ads.\u201d<\/p>\n In January 2026, Guard withdrew his appointment to the federal judiciary and DeSantis appointed Guard to be a judge on the state\u2019s Second District Court of Appeal. Guard did not comment for this story.<\/p>\n Conflicting memories<\/p>\n The secretary of AHCA at the time of the settlement was Jason Weida. Not only did Weida ultimately sign the agreement, but emails reveal he was one of the key negotiators with Centene over the settlement in September 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cMr. Weida testified that he does not recall who suggested that Hope Florida should be the recipient of the\u201d $10 million from the settlement. Weida testified that he thought it was OK for Centene to \u201cdonate\u201d $10 million to Hope Florida, calling it a bonus, over and above what was owed to taxpayers, a view he said was affirmed when he consulted with the general counsel for AHCA. The general counsel also testified before the grand jury that he thought the diversion was permissible.<\/p>\n The grand jury, however, found otherwise.<\/p>\n \u201cWe find that the full Centene settlement was taxpayer reimbursement,\u201d the grand jury wrote. \u201cWe reject Agency for Healthcare Administration Secretary Jason Weida\u2019s explanation that $10 million was a `bonus.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The grand jury added: \u201cThis money was part of the damages Centene owed to Florida taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n Weida is currently serving as the governor\u2019s chief of staff. He did not respond to an email seeking his comment about Hope Florida.<\/p>\n Confusion amid the storms<\/p>\n