On January 28, 2026, a grand jury of ordinary Florida citizens handed a nineteen-page report to the Leon County Clerk of Court in Tallahassee. It found that senior officials in the DeSantis administration had misappropriated ten million dollars of taxpayer money and moved it through a charity into political committees, in what the grand jury called “a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities” (WGCU and the Florida Trident).
Then the report went into a sealed envelope, and for the next seven months the state behaved as though it did not exist. There was no public docket. The Second Judicial Circuit told a lawyer for a coalition of news organizations that it had “no records responsive” to his request, and the Leon County Clerk said it had none (WGCU and the Florida Trident).
On the night of August 26, 2026, someone handed a copy to Jim DeFede at CBS News Miami, and he posted all nineteen pages online. Within a day, the governor was telling the public that the only crime in the whole affair was the leak (CBS News Miami, South Florida Sun Sentinel).
The Sordid Details
In 2021, Florida found that Centene, one of the largest Medicaid contractors in the country, had overbilled the state roughly sixty-seven million dollars for prescription drugs owed back to the taxpayers who fund health coverage for poor children. Other states caught Centene doing the same thing and settled quickly, while Florida let the offers sit for three years (WGCU and the Florida Trident).
Then, in the fall of 2024, with a statewide election weeks away, everything moved at once.
A September 12 draft sent sixty-two million dollars to the state and five million to the Hope Florida Foundation, the charity arm of an initiative led by First Lady Casey DeSantis. One day later, the charity’s share had doubled to ten million. The grand jury found no explanation for the change and no one willing to claim it, and the report calls that moment “the original misappropriation” (WGCU and the Florida Trident, Miami Herald).
Hurricane Helene came ashore on September 26, killing at least eighteen people in Florida. The next day, with the Emergency Operations Center running the response, Cassandra Pasley, chief of staff at the Department of Health, was asked to sign the settlement. She testified that she had never seen the document and would not have signed had she known where the money was going (WGCU and the Florida Trident).
Centene wired the ten million dollars on October 4. After three years of silence, the grand jury noted, “once reached, it took a mere 7 days to fund.” Hurricane Milton made landfall on October 9, and two days later James Uthmeier, then the governor’s chief of staff, personally called the director of an antidrug group and told her to apply for a Hope Florida grant. It was approved within hours (WGCU and the Florida Trident).
The money left as quickly as it arrived. Hope Florida gave away all ten million dollars in twenty-five days, in two grants of five million each, one to Save Our Society from Drugs and one to Secure Florida’s Future, an arm of the Florida Chamber of Commerce.
Within days, those two groups sent a combined eight and a half million dollars to Keep Florida Clean, a political committee chaired by Uthmeier, which passed seven million to the Republican Party of Florida and another $1.25 million to a second Uthmeier committee. Both grant applications had stated that the money would not be used politically (WGCU and the Florida Trident).
It was spent against Amendment 3, the ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana. On November 5, 2024, 55.9 percent of Floridians voted yes, and because Florida requires sixty percent, the amendment failed (The New York Times).
The administration called the ten million dollars a “bonus” the state was never owed, in the words of Jason Weida, then head of the Agency for Health Care Administration. The grand jury rejected that outright: “We find that the full Centene settlement was taxpayer reimbursement” (WGCU and the Florida Trident).
Now consider the people who touched it. Ashley Moody, the attorney general whose office signed off, is a United States senator. John Guard, the deputy who raised concerns and signed anyway, sits on a state appeals court, and Andrew Sheeran, the agency’s general counsel, is now a circuit judge. Weida became the governor’s chief of staff. Uthmeier is the attorney general of Florida, and he was never called as a witness before the grand jury examining his own committee (WUSF, CBS News Miami).
Every one of them advanced.
Both Parties Have Failed Us
Republicans hold every statewide office in Florida and supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature. When one party holds every lever of power, the offices meant to catch conduct like this all answer to the same leadership. Our last issue examined the Virgin Islands, where a Democratic monopoly produced six federal convictions. The party label on the door changes from one state to the next, but the result for the public is much the same.
What makes Florida instructive is that the officials who did the most to expose this were themselves Republicans. State Representative Alex Andrade of Pensacola opened the House investigation in April 2025 and said publicly that officials had engaged “in a conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud.”
Andrade then wrote House Bill 593, barring agencies from routing settlement money to outside groups and making a violation a crime. The House passed it unanimously, the Senate never took it up, and Andrade is term-limited and in his final year (Miami Herald, USA Today).
Florida law also requires that legislative leaders be told when the state settles a case, so the people who write the budget know when money owed to taxpayers is redirected. House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell testified that on this settlement, “there was none, and there has been no accountability for that” (WUSF).
Look at who actually held anyone to account here. A grand jury with no power to charge did the investigating. A term-limited legislator carried the legislation. A small nonprofit had to sue just to establish that the case existed, and in the end it took an anonymous person handing nineteen pages to a reporter before the public learned any of it. Barbara Petersen, who runs that nonprofit, had warned the court of exactly this, describing a process in which “public officials and recipients of public funds are publicly reprimanded by a grand jury while the entire presentment is later suppressed” (WGCU).
The grand jury asked lawmakers to send every dollar the state receives into the General Fund and to write clear rules for tracking taxpayer money once it leaves state hands. Because the report stayed sealed, the Legislature never saw either recommendation while it was in session (WGCU and the Florida Trident, South Florida Sun Sentinel).
What the Centercratic Party Stands For
Principle 4 of the Centercratic Party is One Law for All: “The law applies equally to all. Independent courts ensure fair process and protect basic rights.”
Twelve citizens found that ten million dollars belonging to Florida taxpayers had been taken and spent on politics, and then wrote this: “Despite our finding that the money was misappropriated, we find insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally.” Not one witness would take responsibility for the decision, and not one could say who made it.
The grand jury added that “virtually everyone involved is a lawyer and acted on the advice of other lawyers.” An ordinary Floridian who moved ten million dollars of public money into a political committee and then could not recall doing it would not be excused on those grounds (CBS News Miami, Miami Herald).
A democracy that works this way has stopped correcting itself. The Centercratic Party was built to protect our democracy. The law must reach an attorney general the same way it reaches the people who pay his salary. No citizen should ever be told that a case sitting in a public courthouse does not exist.
We must save our democracy before it is too late.
That is the wave.
Sources
CBS News Miami, “Grand jury finds DeSantis administration ‘misappropriated’ $10 million,” August 26, 2026. https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/grand-jury-report-hope-florida/
WGCU and the Florida Trident, “Sealed for seven months,” August 26, 2026. https://www.wgcu.org/investigation/2026-08-26/sealed-for-seven-months-grand-jury-found-10-million-misappropriated-to-hope-florida-but-no-one-will-be-charged
Miami Herald, “Breaking down the findings from the Hope Florida grand jury report,” August 27, 2026. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article317023664.html
PBS NewsHour, “Florida grand jury finds DeSantis administration misused $10 million,” August 31, 2026. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/florida-grand-jury-finds-desantis-administration-misused-10-million-but-no-charges-have-been-filed
Politico, “Hope Florida reemerges as midterm issue with leaked grand jury report,” August 27, 2026. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/27/hope-florida-midterms-grand-jury-moody-uthmeier-01052995
South Florida Sun Sentinel editorial board, “A scandal’s secrets are lifted for all of us to see,” August 27, 2026. https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2026/08/27/a-scandals-secrets-are-lifted-for-all-of-us-to-see-editorial/
WUSF, “Florida House Democrats want AG Uthmeier impeached,” September 3, 2026. https://www.wusf.org/politics-issues/2026-09-03/florida-house-democrats-want-ag-uthmeier-impeached-how-does-impeachment-work
WLRN, “Grand jury findings called politically motivated, spurs call for resignations,” August 27, 2026. https://www.wlrn.org/light/government-politics/2026-08-27/grand-jury-findings-called-politically-motivated-spurs-call-for-resignations
Miami Herald, “Florida House passes bill to ban settlement fund diversion,” February 25, 2026. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article314834719.html
USA Today Network, “Hope Florida grand jury report leaked. Here’s what it says,” August 26, 2026. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/state/2026/08/26/hope-florida-grand-jury-report-leaked-heres-what-it-says/91481836007/
WGCU, “Leon County circuit judge grants limited intervention in Hope Florida grand jury case,” March 25, 2026. https://www.wgcu.org/investigation/2026-03-25/leon-county-circuit-judge-grants-limited-intervention-in-hope-florida-grand-jury-case
The New York Times, “Florida Amendment 3 Election Results 2024.” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/05/us/elections/results-florida-amendment-3-legalize-marijuana.html
Orlando Sentinel editorial board, “Beyond scandal, big questions about Hope Florida,” September 8, 2026. https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/09/08/editorial-beyond-scandal-big-questions-about-hope-florida/