TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The state legislative investigation involving funding for First Lady Casey DeSantis’ Hope Florida program had an abrupt, surprise end Thursday when the witnesses called to testify about a $10 million money trail declined to show up.
The House investigation may have to end with the witnesses defying legislators’ request to go in.
But the question remains: Did those close to Gov. Ron DeSantis divert $10 million in taxpayer money to the private Hope Florida Foundation to eventually fund the governor’s political activities?
Thursday’s hearing was supposed to be a Q&A with the people involved in the transfer of $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation, which funds the first lady’s Hope Florida program.
Instead, the House committee chair gave a detailed outline and timeline of texts and letters and documents, connecting what should have been taxpayer money instead diverted, eventually, to political committees the governor was working with, all behind the scenes and without the foundation’s leadership and board knowing,
The principal player throughout was James Uthmeier, who was then the governor’s chief of staff and is now Florida’s attorney general.
The governor has been calling press conferences during which he labels the investigation a witch hunt, and an attempt to tank his wife’s potential run for governor.
“You see some of these political attacks,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “That’s just because people know this is effective.”
The first lady has said repeatedly, “Hope Florida is not a program. Hope Florida is an idea. Hope Florida is a philosophy.”
The investigation is not about the Hope Florida program. It’s about the foundation that funds it, created two years after, and the absence of accountability in $10 million that was transferred in and out of it behind the scenes.
About half of the $10 million in the settlement could be federal Medicaid money, so it remains to be seen whether the U.S. Department of Justice might get involved.
