By Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida <\/p>\n
Democrats on Thursday called for more investigations and resignations of top state officials after a leaked state grand jury report found Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 administration \u201cmisappropriated\u201d Medicaid money in 2024 that ended up in political committees.<\/p>\n
But since the grand jury also didn\u2019t find enough probable cause to pursue criminal charges against anyone, DeSantis, Attorney General James Uthmeier and U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Tampa, responded to\u00a0the grand jury findings as a \u201cmisrepresentation\u201d of facts, a \u201choax\u201d and an effort to \u201csmear people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we\u2019ve said from the beginning, this has been a politically motivated witch hunt driven by the Democrats and a far-left Democrat state attorney in Tallahassee,\u201d Uthmeier said during an event in The Villages.<\/p>\n
The report, though, shows it was \u201callegations of fraud and abuse\u201d made by Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican who led the House probe in the matter in 2025, that led to the grand jury proceedings.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, CBS Miami obtained and published the Leon County grand jury report that found $10 million from a total $67 million settlement in 2024 between Florida and Centene Corp., a vendor for the state\u2019s Medicaid program, was sent to the Hope Florida Foundation, the charity arm of an initiative helmed by First Lady Casey DeSantis. The money was then split equally between two nonprofit groups \u2014 Secure Florida\u2019s Future and Save Our Society From Drugs.<\/p>\n
Days later $8.5 million was given from the two groups to Keep Florida Clean, a political action committee staffed by Uthmeier, who was DeSantis\u2019 chief of staff at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then Keep Florida Clean sent $9 million to the Republican Party of Florida and another $1.23 million to the Florida Freedom Fund, another political committee chaired by Uthmeier.<\/p>\n
The committee was dedicated to opposing two measures on the November 2024 ballot. One would\u2019ve installed a right to an abortion in the state constitution, the other would\u2019ve legalized recreational marijuana. Both measures failed to get the 60 percent support required to pass.<\/p>\n
David Jolly, a former Republican U.S. representative who is now the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, said if elected he\u2019d support renewing the investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a highly\u00a0orchestrated\u00a0scheme to launder Medicaid money from\u00a0childrens\u2019\u00a0health services into the First Lady\u2019s charity, to be passed through to political committees for the governor. It is clear\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0a violation of the law,\u201d Jolly said in an online call with reporters on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The Florida Senate Democratic Caucus\u00a0issued a statement Thursday calling for the resignations of Uthmeier and Moody. The Democrats pointed to the grand jury report finding Uthmeier \u201cwas in a position of authority over those involved in settling with Centene\u201d and Moody, then Florida\u2019s Attorney General, authorized her deputy to sign the settlement agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe grand jury report in the Hope Florida case is truly damning. $10 million in Medicaid settlement money \u2014 money that the grand jury found was \u2018compensation for ripping off sick poor children\u2019 \u2014 was knowingly and willingly misappropriated in a sophisticated scheme that the grand jury found was motivated by partisan political purposes,\u201d all 12 state Senate Democrats said in a joint statement.<\/p>\n
In a statement posted on X, Moody disputed the characterizations of the attorney general\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
She noted the settlement was negotiated by the Agency for Health Care Administration, the state department in charge of the Medicaid program; that her office was \u201cone of multiple agencies that signed the final agreement;\u201d and that her office \u201chad no knowledge of how funds would be spent\u201d by the Hope Florida Foundation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAttempts to characterize this any other way are disingenuous,\u201d Moody stated.<\/p>\n
Uthmeier during his stop in The Villages responded when the report was brought up that \u201cnobody did anything wrong here\u201d and \u201cthere was not even\u00a0probable\u00a0cause to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a hoax, and all it did was show that the Democrats\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0win on policy and they\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0win on the law,\u201d Uthmeier said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Uthmeier added that he couldn\u2019t comment further as grand jury proceedings are confidential.<\/p>\n
DeSantis, during an event in Lake City on Thursday, said \u201cthe only crime that was\u00a0apparent\u00a0was with whoever leaked the grand jury report.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe settlement that AHCA\u00a0did\u00a0was legally sound,\u201d DeSantis added. \u201cIt was\u00a0appropriate, and it advanced the interests of the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeSantis appointed Moody, twice elected Florida\u2019s attorney general, to the U.S. Senate in January 2025 after Marco Rubio was appointed U.S. Secretary of State. Uthmeier was appointed as Moody\u2019s replacement by DeSantis in February 2025.<\/p>\n
Both Uthmeier and Moody are up for election in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida Democrats on Thursday called for more investigations and resignations of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-383725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}