$10 Million Meant for Florida’s Children’s Health Care Was Misappropriated to Help Kill Legal Weed, Grand Jury Finds

A Leon County grand jury concluded the DeSantis administration misappropriated $10 million owed to a children’s health program and that the money was moved “as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities,” most of it into the committee fighting marijuana legalization. No one was charged: the grand jury said it lacked sufficient evidence, in part because no witness would take responsibility for the decision or identify who made it.

The money that helped defeat marijuana legalization in Florida came out of a settlement over the overbilling of the program that insures Florida’s low-income children.

That is the finding of a Leon County grand jury, in a report sealed since January 28 and obtained and published by CBS News Miami. The grand jurors concluded that the DeSantis administration “misappropriated” $10 million from a Medicaid overbilling settlement, and that the funds “were misappropriated as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities.”

No one will be charged. The grand jury explained why in a single sentence that is now the center of the story.

“Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida… or had any memory of who made it.”

Leon County grand jury report, dated January 28, 2026

“While we can’t prove who is responsible,” the report continues, “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.”

High Times traced this money in April, from the settlement through two nonprofits and into the committee chaired by Ron DeSantis’s then chief of staff. The grand jury has now confirmed that route with sworn testimony and a forensic accountant, and added the parts we could not see: the rewrites, the timing, and the hurricanes.

Three Years of Nothing, Then Two Days

Centene, the state’s largest Medicaid contractor, had overbilled Florida’s Healthy Kids program. Florida’s share came to $67,048,611. A draft settlement returning the full amount reached state officials on July 14, 2021.

Other states collected. Ohio settled for $88 million, Mississippi for $55 million, Indiana for $66.5 million, Massachusetts for $14 million, and California for $215 million. Florida did nothing for three years, even after Centene asked to resolve it.

Then, in early September 2024, with the election 45 days out, the state suddenly wanted it done. On September 12, the agreement was altered so that $62 million would go back to the state and $5 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, the charity supporting First Lady Casey DeSantis’s welfare initiative. The next day it was altered again: $57 million to taxpayers, $10 million to Hope Florida. The grand jury reports no reason was given for the doubling.

The repayment terms are their own tell. Centene had to wire the $10 million to Hope Florida within seven days. It was given more than a year to repay the $57 million owed to Florida taxpayers.

“The Centene settlement itself seems rushed as it materialized rapidly after years of inactivity. Then, once reached, it took a mere 7 days to fund. We believe the rush was due to the impending election which was just 45 days away.”

Leon County grand jury report

There was no press release announcing the recovery, which the grand jury found odd given that other states publicized theirs. And there was no notification to the Legislature, which under Florida law decides how state money is spent.

Signed the Day After a Hurricane

Hurricane Helene hit the Florida Panhandle on September 26, 2024, killing at least 18 people. The next day, Cassandra Pasley, chief of staff at the Florida Department of Health, was working in the state’s Emergency Operations Center when, according to her testimony, she was pulled aside and asked to sign the settlement. She had never seen it and did not know a settlement was in the works. She signed that evening.

She told the grand jury she was not aware any of the money would end up in a political action committee, and would not have signed if she had known.

Hurricane Milton made landfall on October 9, killing 12 people and leaving three million Floridians without power. Two days later, on October 11, then chief of staff James Uthmeier was on the phone and texting Amy Ronshausen, executive director of Save Our Society From Drugs, telling her to apply for a Hope Florida grant and to contact the foundation’s attorney, Jeff Aaron. The grand jury notes Aaron advised her to apply for $5 million.

The report suggests administration officials took advantage of the chaos surrounding both storms to help obscure what was happening.

Twenty-Five Days

Centene wired the $10 million on October 4. Joshua Hay, then chairman of the Hope Florida Foundation, testified that the largest donation the foundation had ever received before that was $100,000.

It was gone within 25 days. The board approved one $5 million grant unanimously. Hay approved the second on his own. He testified that he did not ask many questions because he assumed the money was needed for hurricane victims, and told the grand jury: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Ronshausen filed her application on October 18 and was approved within hours. The $5 million landed on October 22. Within a week, she moved $4.75 million to Keep Florida Clean, the committee chaired by Uthmeier. She told the grand jury nobody directed her on how to spend it. Secure Florida’s Future, run by Florida Chamber of Commerce president Mark Wilson, applied on October 13, was approved within a week, and passed $3.75 million to the same committee.

Both applications stated the money would not be used for political purposes. The grand jury found that both “mischaracterized” the purpose of the funds.

A forensic accountant who analyzed the bank records for the grand jury traced $8.5 million from the two nonprofits into Keep Florida Clean. According to CBS News Miami’s account of the report, the committee then sent $7 million to the Republican Party of Florida and $1.23 million to the Florida Freedom Fund, another committee Uthmeier chaired. Published tallies of what moved between those committees vary, in part because some count total committee activity rather than only the Hope Florida funds.

Amendment 3 got 56% of the vote that November. Florida requires 60% for a constitutional amendment to pass, a threshold voters themselves approved in 2006. It failed.

The Bonus That Wasn’t

The administration’s explanation has been that the $10 million was not taxpayer money at all but a voluntary donation from Centene, over and above what it owed. Jason Weida, then secretary of the Agency for Health Care Administration and now the governor’s chief of staff, testified he considered it a bonus, and said AHCA’s general counsel agreed.

The grand jury rejected it outright: “We find that the full Centene settlement was taxpayer reimbursement. We reject Agency for Healthcare Administration Secretary Jason Weida’s explanation that $10 million was a ‘bonus.’ This money was part of the damages Centene owed to Florida taxpayers.”

Weida also testified that he does not recall who suggested Hope Florida as the recipient.

Two Names on the November Ballot

The grand jury identified Uthmeier, now Florida’s attorney general, as the nexus of the activity around the transfer. It found he was “in a position of authority over those involved in settling with Centene,” that testimony identified him as “having involvement in directing the money after it went to Hope Florida,” and that his committee was the prime recipient of the majority of the $10 million.

It also found that Ashley Moody, then attorney general and now a U.S. senator, knew of the plan and authorized her chief deputy, John Guard, to sign the settlement, which he did “without conducting his due diligence to ensure the proper appropriation of taxpayer funds.” Guard, according to the report, had told Moody he had reservations, agreed the $10 million belonged to the state, and worried the Legislature would see the deal as a constraint on its spending authority. Those concerns were resolved by rewriting the agreement so that AHCA, rather than the attorney general’s office, was directing Centene to send the money.

A spokesperson for Moody told the New York Times the report confirms what her office has said all along, that “neither the Department of Legal Affairs nor the former attorney general had knowledge of how the settlement money would be spent,” and that characterizing it otherwise is disingenuous. Guard, whom DeSantis appointed to the state appeals court in January, told CBS News Miami that requests for his department to join settlements were not uncommon and that this one was handled in the ordinary course, and said that as a sitting judge he could not comment further.

Neither Moody nor Uthmeier nor DeSantis was called to testify. The Tampa Bay Times reported that Uthmeier does not appear as a witness in the report at all, and quoted experts who said that absence can indicate someone was a central subject or target of the investigation rather than a source of testimony.

Both are on the ballot in November, roughly ten weeks out. Uthmeier faces Democrat José Javier Rodríguez, a former state senator. Moody faces state Representative Angie Nixon. Both deny wrongdoing. Uthmeier, asked about the report Thursday, said Florida law bars him from commenting, added that if the report is accurate it shows no probable cause was found, suggested Democrats were behind the leak, and called the renewed scrutiny a politically motivated hoax. In April he called the whole affair a “big nothingburger.”

DeSantis called the report a hoax on Wednesday and said the settlement was legally sound. Asked again Thursday, he said the only apparent crime was whoever leaked it. His communications director, Alex Lanfranconi, put it in a statement: “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.” He has also said he was not involved in the settlement agreement, and that he is very happy with how everything was done.

The report has been sealed since January 28. One source familiar with the investigation told CBS News Miami that people named in it, including Uthmeier, have spent seven months blocking its release through closed court proceedings. The Florida Center for Government Accountability’s motion to intervene and argue for release is still pending.

Ten Weeks Out, and Republicans Are Talking Too

The report landed in the middle of two statewide races, and the candidates running against the two officials it names went straight at them. Rodríguez called it “the most brazen act of political corruption we have seen here in Florida” and said Uthmeier should resign. Nixon said Moody “stole $10 million from children in Florida” and called it the ultimate betrayal of working families.

That is what opponents do in an election year. More striking is who else spoke up.

Republican U.S. Senator Rick Scott, Florida’s former governor, called the findings deeply concerning. “Money designated to help poor kids was diverted to political ads,” he told Politico. “Florida families deserve accountability, not more finger-pointing in Tallahassee.” Republican state Senator Don Gaetz went further, saying the affair brings disgrace onto Florida government and that he wants to be part of a bipartisan coalition to make sure it does not happen again.

Worth remembering how this started. The investigation exists because of a Republican: state Representative Alex Andrade of Pensacola, who ran the House hearings in the spring of 2025 and turned his findings over to the Tallahassee prosecutor. Andrade told the Florida Phoenix it would be inappropriate for him to discuss the grand jury report.

Where the Trail Still Goes Cold

The grand jury followed the money to Keep Florida Clean, to the Republican Party of Florida, and stopped. Two questions we raised in April are still open, and the report does not touch either.

Save Our Society From Drugs sent $4.75 million of its $5 million grant to the committee. What happened to the remaining $250,000 is not documented in available public records. The organization’s Form 990 covering the fiscal year that ended September 30, 2025, which would show how it handled the grant, has still not been published.

And Save Our Society From Drugs is closely affiliated with the Drug Free America Foundation, sharing its St. Petersburg address and its executive director. Ronshausen has longstanding ties to Smart Approaches to Marijuana, the national anti-legalization group. In the same year all of this happened, SAM Action, SAM’s 501(c)(4) arm, reported $8,601,743 in contributions, up from $1,576,210 the year before. Donors to a 501(c)(4) are shielded by federal tax law, and SAM has consistently declined to disclose them.

Public records reviewed by High Times do not show that Save Our Society From Drugs transferred any portion of the Hope Florida grant to Smart Approaches to Marijuana or SAM Action, and this article does not assert that such a transfer occurred. The grand jury report does not address the question.

The grand jury’s only recommendation is that the Legislature require every dollar the state recovers to be deposited into General Revenue, with real consequences for violating it, and that it set rules for how organizations like Hope Florida may use public funds.

David Jolly, the Democratic nominee for governor, said Thursday he would reopen the investigation if elected, and challenged Republican nominee Byron Donalds to commit to the same.

The campaign this money helped pay for told Florida voters that legal cannabis would put children at risk. The settlement that produced the money came from overbilling the program that insures them.

Editor’s note: The grand jury report remains under seal. This article is based on the copy obtained and published by CBS News Miami, on subsequent reporting by the Guardian, the New York Times, the Tampa Bay Times, WFLA and the Florida Phoenix, and on our own April review of public records, campaign finance disclosures and IRS filings. Where facts remain disputed, that is stated in the text. No one has been charged, and the grand jury found insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally. Everything you read here is based on reliable sources, public records, or personal accounts, but it is not meant to be the final word on what happened. Only a court of law can decide someone’s guilt or innocence. We do not support or promote any illegal actions, and we encourage readers to approach these topics with care and respect.