A sealed Florida grand jury report details how $10 million intended to reimburse taxpayers following a Medicaid overbilling settlement was quietly redirected toward efforts to defeat a 2024 marijuana legalization amendment — and why, despite findings of clear misappropriation, no one will face criminal charges.

The funds originated in a settlement with health care giant Centene, which had overbilled Florida's Healthy Kids program by tens of millions of dollars, CBS News reported. Rather than returning the full $67 million owed to taxpayers, the DeSantis administration rewrote the settlement terms twice within two days in September 2024, ultimately steering $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit tied to first lady Casey DeSantis.

The grand jury was blunt in describing what happened next.

"Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida," the report states.

Within 25 days of receiving the money, Hope Florida had funneled it out through two $5 million "grant" applications submitted by organizations that had been coached to apply by James Uthmeier, now Florida's attorney general and at the time DeSantis' chief of staff. Nearly all of that money — $8.5 million in total — landed directly in Uthmeier's own political action committee, Keep Florida Clean, which then transferred $7 million to the Republican Party of Florida to help defeat the marijuana legalization amendment.

Hope Florida was founded as an initiative to reduce public dependence on government assistance programs. Questions about its opaque backroom dealings have left even many Republican lawmakers disturbed, especially because the report ties the money’s path not just to a taxpayer-funded settlement, but to a political fight over a ballot measure that was set to shape Florida’s 2024 election conversation.

Although the grand jury found clear misappropriation, it concluded that no one could be identified for criminal charges, largely because officials repeatedly claimed they did not recall key decisions.

Then-Attorney General Ashley Moody, now a U.S. senator, authorized her deputy, John Guard, to sign off on the arrangement despite Guard's own reservations that it might anger the Legislature. Guard has since become a state appellate judge, appointed by DeSantis after Trump's nomination of him to the federal bench collapsed under pressure from Senator Rick Scott.

DeSantis has publicly called the entire episode a "hoax," while Uthmeier has dismissed it as a "nothingburger." Neither testified before the grand jury, whose report has remained sealed for seven months amid ongoing legal battles over its release.