A Florida grand jury found that the diversion of $10 million to Florida first lady Casey DeSantis’ Hope Florida Foundation was “part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities,” according to a sealed copy of the panel’s report recently obtained by CBS News Miami.

According to the report, a witness told the grand jury that Republican Sen. Ashley Moody, then Florida’s attorney general, had approved the arrangement.

The report, filed in January, said that the grand jury had found that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration had “misappropriated” taxpayer money from a settlement with a managed care company by directing the payment be transferred to the nonprofit.

In 2024, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) and Centene Corporation, a for-profit health insurance and managed care company, agreed to a settlement over claims that Centene had overbilled the state for prescription drugs, with Centene agreeing to pay $67 million.

According to the grand jury report, the DeSantis administration directed that $10 million of the settlement money be sent to the tax-exempt Hope Florida Foundation, which then sent much of the money to political committees that funded campaign ads against a cannabis legalization referendum and a reproductive rights amendment and to the Republican Party of Florida.

The grand jury concluded that there was insufficient evidence to hold anyone criminally liable in the case, but that steps should be taken to prevent a recurrence: “While we can’t 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.”

Michael Barfield, executive director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a nonprofit organization, said the lack of accountability for the misappropriation is par for the course, despite the fact that Florida officials have recently called for crackdowns on government waste and for greater public integrity.

“It seems like we’re in this ‘Alice in Wonderland’ looking glass at accountability and justice in this state, but not for the people who we entrust to carry out our laws at that very highest level of state government,” he told the Florida Independent.

Citizens of Florida were harmed by the scandal in multiple ways, Barfield said. “It started with money being stolen from Florida taxpayers by a Medicaid provider. It then got stolen by public officials and routed to a charity that was the signature charity of first lady Casey DeSantis, and that money was then routed to ultimately the Republican Party of Florida to use against a ballot initiative that would have lifted the absolute ban that Florida has for abortion, and also on a marijuana amendment to allow Florida to become a recreational marijuana state,” he said.

According to testimony, Moody approved the arrangement. John Guard, Moody’s chief deputy, testified that he had flagged concerns about the settlement proposal when the attorney general’s office was asked to approve it.

“After consulting AG Moody, she authorized Mr. Guard to sign the settlement agreement in its final form,” the report said. “Regarding Mr. Guard’s initial concerns about a lack of direction in the agreement as to how the money would be spent, he advised that these were resolved to his satisfaction when the agreement was amended to make it AHCA’s settlement rather than the AG’s settlement. … He did have political concerns about the dedication of $10,000,000 to Hope Florida, which he raised to AG Moody because he knew the deal would be viewed by the legislature as a constraint on their spending authority.” According to the report, Guard was satisfied with the change because “the problem would now be ACHA’s problem rather than the AG’s problem.”

Barfield said he found it odd that the grand jury made no recommendation of criminal charges. “That’s to me a novel way of conducting a criminal investigation, that you have to have some kind of confession or that somebody owns up to the crime. Never seen that as a standard in Florida before now,” he said. He noted that state law prohibits the use of taxpayer money for political campaigns and advocacy on ballot initiatives.

Gov. DeSantis appointed Moody in January 2025 to temporarily fill the open Senate seat of Marco Rubio after Rubio was named U.S. secretary of state. He appointed Guard to be a Florida appellate court judge in January 2026.

Neither Moody’s office nor Guard’s responded to requests for comment for this story.

On Aug. 27, Moody wrote on X that the settlement had been negotiated by AHCA: “As is standard practice, and would be expected.”

A DeSantis administration spokesperson said in an email to the Florida Independent: “This baseless smear 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.”

Reprinted with permission from The Florida Independent