DeSantis: $10M Medicaid Scandal Is “Smear” Campaign

April 23, 2025 Republicans, Scandal

Florida Politics reports:

As First Lady Casey DeSantis continues to draw scrutiny along with Hope Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is urging people to differentiate that program’s “smashing success” from the finances of the Hope Florida Foundation.

“I think what they’re doing with this Foundation is they’re trying to smear the program by implication and trying to smear the First Lady, which is totally unfair in terms of what they’re trying to do,” he said to WINK.

There is an ongoing probe of the $10 million directed to the Hope Florida Foundation in a Medicaid settlement. DeSantis has called that funding pot a “cherry on top” of the overall settlement payment, while Attorney General James Uthmeier dubbed it a “sweetener.”

From yesterday’s Miami Herald report:

The $10 million that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration diverted to a state-created charity last year consisted of Medicaid dollars owed to state and federal taxpayers, contrary to what the governor and other officials have publicly asserted. Three years ago, lawyers working with the state drew up a settlement agreement that said Florida’s largest Medicaid contractor, Centene, overbilled taxpayers $67,048,611 for medications, according to a copy of a draft agreement obtained by the Herald/Times.

That’s the exact amount DeSantis officials settled on with Centene last year. But instead of returning all $67 million to state and federal coffers, they sent $10 million of it to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity overseen by first lady Casey DeSantis. The money was then sent to two nonprofit organizations that aren’t required to report how they spend their funds. Those “dark money” groups later gave $8.5 million to a political committee overseen by DeSantis’ chief of staff.

That political action committee was set up by DeSantis to run ads against legalizing weed.

The PAC itself was illegal as the state is not supposed to weigh in on public referendums.

Of note, now-Florida AG James Uthmeier was the above-cited chief of staff who ran the committee that dispersed the $10 million to the dark money group that ultimately passed along the windfall to the DeSantis PAC.



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