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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Attorney General then-chief of staff of Ron DeSantis, James Uthmeier collected the $10 million in taxes and distributed it in their committees amongst them. The investigation reflected that Uthmeier was “identified as having involvement in directing the money” to divert them into their committees for use in their personal accounts.
A Tallahassee grand jury said Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration “misappropriated” $10 million in taxpayer money for political purposes, according to a report first obtained by CBS Miami.
The money was funneled through the Hope Florida Foundation to two nonprofits and ultimately sent to a political committee fighting Amendment 3, a proposal to legalize marijuana.
While the grand jury said it could “plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes,” it declined to charge anyone with a crime, citing lack of clarity from witnesses as a hurdle to pursuing charges.
The report details frustration with several witnesses, noting that almost everybody involved is a lawyer or was acting on the advice of their lawyer.
“Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida,” the report said. “This decision was the original misappropriation, and no witness would take responsibility for making the decision or had any memory of who made it.”
The Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald first reported in 2025 about the state’s transfer of Medicaid settlement money to the Hope Florida Foundation and later traced the money’s movement through two nonprofits to a political committee run by DeSantis’ then-chief of staff.
Some witnesses said the money went to Hope Florida because it was a high-profile project with a high success rate, but the jury was not able to get any evidence to back up that claim. Other witnesses said Hope Florida was “just a concept” and that they “did not have a clear understanding of what it did, where it existed, or how it operated.”
The report said the grand jury members hope to see legislative changes to “prevent this situation from occurring” again. It suggested a law to require that any money received by the state be deposited into a general revenue fund, with “real consequences” for any violation.
Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, held legislative hearings about the Hope Florida Foundation and the settlement in 2025. He sent the records he collected in that process to the Second Judicial Circuit, which then decided to form a grand jury to investigate in August 2025, according to the report published online by CBS Miami. Andrade declined to comment Wednesday.
DeSantis’ then-chief of staff, James Uthmeier, controlled the political committee Keep Florida Clean, which the grand jury said was the main recipient of the $10 million in taxpayer dollars. Keep Florida Clean sent money to other political committees, including the Republican Party of Florida and the Florida Freedom Fund, another DeSantis-backed organization.
DeSantis in February appointed Uthmeier as attorney general. Uthmeier is running to keep his seat and has been endorsed by President Donald Trump.
The grand jury did not call Uthmeier as a witness, according to the report. But others interviewed during the investigation “identified him as having involvement in directing the money” after it went to Hope Florida.
The report includes a date stamp of Jan. 28, 2026. But it has been confidential for months, and may remain sealed – a secrecy that any person named in the report can request if they object to portions of the report or the report as a whole being released. It’s unclear how CBS Miami obtained it.
It isn’t clear which parties have held up the release of the report. Uthmeier, when asked about the report by Times/Herald reporters in April, declined to say whether he asked for it to be kept secret.
“What I can tell you is, I have not been indicted,” the attorney general said. “I’ve not been a suspect or a target. I’ve not been involved in any criminal activity. Nobody did anything wrong here.”
A spokesperson for Uthmeier did not immediately return requests for comment on Wednesday.
Alex Lanfranconi, a spokesperson for DeSantis on Wednesday dismissed the report as a “baseless smear campaign” which has been “debunked over and over again.”
“In fact, if any confidential grand jury report was leaked to the press, that’s the only crime committed here,” Lanfranconi said.
At a news conference in Miami on Wednesday, the governor was asked about the Hope Florida money transfer and defended it. He said he wasn’t involved in the settlement agreement but was “very happy with how everything was done.”
What witnesses said
The grand jury interviewed several state government officials and nonprofit leaders in October to get to the bottom of how the money moved from the settlement to political campaigns.
Several of the witnesses interviewed by the grand jury denied knowledge of key portions of the money transfer, which made it difficult for the grand jury to place blame.
The jury noted that Katie Strickland, the then-deputy chief of staff for DeSantis, was “not credible” and was the “least informative in her testimony.” While other witnesses said Strickland was a part of the meetings, she could “hardly recall any details.”
Amy Ronshausen, executive director of Save Our Society from Drugs, told the grand jury she received a text and phone call from Uthmeier on Oct. 11, 2024, advising her to apply for a Hope Florida grant.
The grant application said that Save our Society from Drugs “does not and will not engage in any political activities.” Within a week, she distributed $4.75 million to Uthmeier’s Keep Florida Clean political committee.
The jury also interviewed Mark Wilson, the executive director of a Chamber of Commerce-affiliated nonprofit that received a Hope Florida grant. Like Ronshausen, Wilson’s grant application stated that his organization “does not and will not engage in any political activities.”
Within weeks, $4.85 million was sent to Uthmeier’s Keep Florida Clean PAC.
Sen. Ashley Moody, who was attorney general at the time of the money transfer, authorized her chief deputy, John Guard, to sign the settlement agreement that provided the cash ultimately funneled to Hope Florida, according to the report.
A spokesperson for Moody, who is up for election to keep her seat that DeSantis appointed her to in January 2025, did not immediately return a request for comment. Guard appeared before the grand jury; Moody did not, according to the report.
Guard told the jury he thought the $10 million was going toward attorney’s fees. The jury report said it was “unknown why Mr. Guard made this assumption as the agreement clearly states that the money was to be paid to Hope Florida.”
Guard told the grand jury he had political concerns about the money going to Hope Florida and told Moody that the Legislature would see the plan as an undermining of their spending authority. He was appeased when the settlement agreement was changed to have the Agency for Health Care Administration, not the attorney general’s office, as the responsible party.
Guard did not return a request for comment on Wednesday. In a quote to CBS Miami, he said if there were a grand jury, Florida law makes it unlawful for him to disclose any information.
DeSantis appointed Guard as a judge on the Second District Court of Appeal in January.
The jury also heard from Jason Weida, who was the head of the health agency at the time and is now DeSantis’ chief of staff. He said he believed that the Legislature did not need to be notified about the agreement.
Joshua Hay, the former chairman of the Hope Florida Foundation, told the jury that, prior to the $10 million the foundation received, its largest donation was $100,000. The foundation’s attorney, Jeff Aaron, told Hay about the $10 million and said there would be an immediate grant proposal for money to go out.
Hay assumed the money was going to help hurricane victims, he told the grand jury.
He said he was not pressured by Aaron or anyone else to approve the grants, but he said he used poor judgment to vet the proposals.
The “road to hell,” Hay told the grand jury, is “paved with good intentions.”
Times/Herald reporters Liv Caputo and Claire Heddles contributed to this report.
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Source: Morgan & Morgan