The Hope Florida scandal, explained
Trump's DOJ will look the other way. But there could still be consequences.
🛟 🏖️ 🌊 With corporate outlets obeying in advance, supporting independent political media is more important right now than ever. Public Notice is possible thanks to paid subscribers. If you aren’t one already, please click the button below and become one to support our work. 🛟 🏖️ 🌊
After his presidential run crashed and burned, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been in the news much less. It turns out Republicans preferred the uniquely blustering viciousness of Donald Trump rather than the workaday viciousness of DeSantis.
Just as DeSantis was a wan, pale copy of Trump on the campaign trail, he’s now a wan, pale copy of Trump when it comes to using his elected office to grift. So, while Trump and family have a crypto company selling access to the president, with the family fortune increasing by at least $2.9 billion in the last six months, DeSantis only managed to divert $10 million to his wife’s nonprofit.
That’s weak sauce even in comparison to other Florida GOP elected officials. Sen. Rick Scott crimed so hard in the healthcare sector before running for office that he had to pay the largest fine for Medicare fraud ever — a cool $1.7 billion.
The story of how Casey DeSantis, Ron’s wife, came into $10 million for her Hope Florida program, $10 million that then made its way to DeSantis-related PACs, is predictably messy. Let’s start at the beginning.
Follow the money
The governor and the first lady started Hope Florida in 2021. It was yet another in a long line of conservative initiatives to strip needy people of government aid and instead rely on churches and nonprofits.
Two years later, the DeSantis administration created the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity to receive donations to distribute to churches and other nonprofits. The state would also have “hope navigators” (ugh) that would connect people to community resources, with an explicit mission of getting them off of government aid such as Medicaid.
(This is somewhat beside the point, but it’s grimly hilarious that rather than simply providing government assistance directly, Florida now has this Rube Goldberg monstrosity, a state-created charity accepting private donations that it then gives to private charities.)
The $10 million at issue here was part of a settlement that Centene, Florida’s biggest Medicaid contractor, paid to the state. Centene had overbilled the state by millions and, in September 2024, agreed to pay $67 million to settle the matter. Those millions were to be returned to state and federal coffers. Only $57 million made its way back to the state, however. $10 million was sent to the Hope Florida Foundation, run by Casey DeSantis.
You might be wondering how DeSantis could divert $10 million of Medicaid settlement money to his wife’s version of Be Best. The answer is most likely that he couldn’t, but did it anyway. DeSantis tried to say that the $10 million was an additional donation from Centene to Hope Florida above and beyond the $67 million owed, but that was just a lie.
After Hope Florida got that $10 million, it then turned around and gave $5 million each to Secure Florida’s Future and Save Our Society from Drugs, both of which had applied for grants, conveniently, just a couple of weeks after the $67 million settlement was finalized. Neither of those organizations is required to disclose their donors. Those organizations then gave $8.5 million to Keep Florida Clean. Keep Florida Clean just happened to be run by James Uthmeier, who was DeSantis’s chief of staff at the time. Keep Florida Clean was created to oppose Amendment 3, a ballot initiative seeking to legalize recreational marijuana.
Over the next few months, Keep Florida Clean sent $10.5 million to Florida’s state Republican Party, which was also campaigning against recreational weed. In addition, it gave Ron DeSantis’s Florida Freedom Fund $1.1 million. Both DeSantis and his wife campaigned extensively against Amendment 3.
And that’s how money designed to make taxpayers whole after Centene’s overbilling instead ended up helping Ron DeSantis kill the prospect of legal weed in the state.
A note from Aaron: Working with brilliant contributors like Lisa takes resources. If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, please sign up to support our work.
Even if Hope Florida had just hung on to the $10 million, this would still be bad, and not just because it should never have been diverted to them in the first place. It’s also because Hope Florida does not seem to actually do very much.
When news of the $10 million was bubbling up, the DeSantises did a joint press conference to boast that Hope Florida liaisons were in all 67 sheriff’s offices in the state. However, 13 offices contacted by the Tampa Bay Times said they had no Hope Florida personnel at their office, and their work with Hope Florida was limited to providing a contact name. Hope Florida also said it had placed 125 hope navigators in state agencies, but when the Florida House reviewed the program, it could not determine how many people worked in which agencies. Nor could the House determine which state agencies have contracts with Hope Florida.
The Tampa Bay Times also reported that as of April 2025, it did not appear that Hope Florida had ever filed federal tax returns. Additionally, the organization must provide information to the state legislature, including a three-year plan, tax returns, and a code of ethics, but hasn’t done that either. It finally filed paperwork regarding its organizational status in mid-April 2025, well after an investigation by the state House had started.
Notably, that investigation was spearheaded by another Republican, Rep. Alex Andrade. Ultimately, the probe was halted because Hope Florida’s lawyer and the leaders of the groups that received money from Hope Florida refused to appear to answer questions. Andrade said he believes both James Uthmeier, DeSantis’s former chief of staff who is now the state’s attorney general, and Jeff Aaron, Hope Florida’s attorney, engaged in a conspiracy to launder money and commit fraud. Andrade also told reporters he had talked with the federal Department of Justice about the matter.
Kompromat
Of course, no one expects the DOJ to do anything here. Trump and everyone around him are big fans of dark money. Trump doesn’t see any problem with diverting public money to private interests, and his early pardons have sent a loud and clear message: corruption and financial crime are fine, particularly if you donate large sums to Trump.
Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall highlights another looming problem: the overall corruption of the DOJ under Trump and another ethically-compromised Floridian, Attorney General Pam Bondi. It’s not just that Bondi has massive conflicts of interest thanks to her work as a high-powered lobbyist. She’s also been perfectly happy to let money sway her decision-making, such as when she declined to pursue complaints against Trump University after the Trump Foundation gave $25,000 to a political action committee backing her.
At first glance, that corruption is a boon to people like DeSantis, an assurance that the DOJ will look the other way even when it looks a lot like DeSantis played a role in grifting Medicaid money intended for the state. But, as Marshall points out, that open and obvious criminal behavior comes with an inherent risk: what happens if Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like DeSantis any longer?
If that happens, the DOJ will no longer be a safe haven for DeSantis's family corruption. Instead, they’d face the other dominant feature of Trump’s DOJ: weaponization. Trump has already personally directed the DOJ to investigate two of his own appointees from his first term, Miles Taylor and Christopher Krebs. He’s unhappy with Taylor for criticizing him publicly and with Krebs for not agreeing that the 2020 election was stolen. He issued an executive order demanding an investigation into ActBlue, the large Democratic fundraising platform. Should DeSantis fall out of favor or display any presidential ambitions again, there’s no reason he wouldn’t face the same scrutiny.
Or DeSantis could end up like Eric Adams. Yes, Trump’s DOJ killed the corruption case against the embattled New York mayor, a move so shady that multiple prosecutors resigned rather than play a role. Sure, those charges were eventually dismissed with prejudice, meaning those specific charges can’t be refiled. But nothing is stopping the DOJ from bringing different charges, and Adams knows it.
Adams can stave that off only as long as he keeps sucking up to Trump and supporting his lawless and brutal immigration crackdown. It’s literally his get-out-of-jail-free card. The lawful course of action for the DOJ would have been to continue pursuing the case against Adams. By dropping it with this unspoken (but very obvious) quid pro quo about immigration policy, the DOJ is also subverting the will of New York City voters. Those voters didn’t vote for a red-state hyper-violent immigration policy, but since the DOJ has Adams over a barrel, that’s what they’re getting.
In elevating Trump, Republicans have committed themselves to corruption. Not just the sort of tawdry grift and money-shuffling DeSantis did here, but to a bone-deep debasement of democracy. All the rules are out the window, save for one: show fealty, financial and otherwise, to Donald Trump.
That’s it for today
We’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate today’s newsletter, please support us by signing up. Paid subscribers make Public Notice possible.
Thanks for reading.
This, and the Tampa Bay Times reporting, are the kind of quality reporting that Republican voters in Florida should read, but unfortunately likely won't.
A couple questions though. It seems odd that Rep. Andrade was leading the Florida House investigation. Indeed, it's quite off brand for a Republican politician *anywhere* to investigate another Republican politician.
So, what did DeSantis do to gain Andrade's ire? Is this "really" about the fact Andrade wants to be Florida's next governor? And what did DeSantis (finally) do to get enough Florida Republicans angry at him that they didn't shut down Andrade's investigation immediately? Lastly, any sign that Republican voters in Florida have a pulse and brain and actually care about this rampant graft in their state, or are they merely yawning at the (approximately) 65th crime Republican politicians have committed recently?
Surprisingly, it seems like Floridians may actually finally care about the grift. Casey's star is fading fast as are her political aspirations. There's a first time for everything.