TALLAHASSEE — In a surprising twist to a tortuous political controversy, a state appeals court has now expunged the confidential Hope Florida grand jury report leaked two months ago that accused key state officials of a “sophisticated scheme” to misappropriate $10 million in taxpayer dollars from a Medicaid settlement for political purposes.
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The First District Court of Appeal issued a blistering takedown of the Leon County grand jury and State Attorney Jack Campbell, ruling Wednesday that the report, known as a “presentment,” exceeded the jury’s authority. It also said state law was violated when the presentment was disclosed.
The jury had criticized members of the DeSantis administration by name but declined to bring charges, saying no one interviewed would take responsibility for diverting the Medicaid money to help pay for a campaign against a statewide measure legalizing marijuana.
” A grand jury may investigate and report, but it may not declare conduct unlawful and then decline to charge it, and it may not condemn people by name without indicting them,” Appellate Judge Lance E. Neff wrote in the court’s opinion. “Nor may the State release a confidential presentment before those it impugns have had the opportunity Florida law guarantees to seek its repression or expungement.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Neff to the First DCA in March.
On Thursday morning, a jubilant DeSantis lavishly complimented Neff’s judicial acumen while insisting the court’s order validated his long-running contention that no wrongdoing occurred when the funds were diverted.
“There was an attempt to weaponize this using the legal system,” DeSantis said, referring to the Hope Florida grand jury investigation at a press conference in Miami. He called the court’s opinion “the biggest judicial smackdown that I have ever seen . . . All the narratives crash and burn.”
The court’s ruling gives DeSantis and other top GOP officials plenty of rhetorical power to dismiss a political corruption allegation that has been flogged in multiple campaigns this fall. But it leaves the Hope Florida scheme itself in an odd limbo, with Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell declaring earlier this week that she too intended to investigate the fund diversion, and suggesting the grand jury had not gone far enough.
The court’s opinion, however, said the opposite. It said the grand jury was wrong to have named those involved in the scheme, “yet returned no indictment, conceding it lacked sufficient evidence to charge anyone.” The DCA also said the $10 million was not actually public money because it was paid by a private company in a legal settlement, and that the jury failed to establish it was misappropriated.
The appeal was filed by Attorney General James Uthmeier, who was represented by Chris Kise, a former solicitor general of Florida who has also served as defense counsel for President Trump. Uthmeier, who was among those criticized in the presentment, appointed former First DCA Judge Brad Thomas as acting attorney general for these proceedings.
The court’s ruling reversed a Leon County Circuit Court ruling in July by Judge J. Lee Marsh denying full expungement.
Campbell said Wednesday he was “legally prohibited from discussing anything concerning the grand jury proceeding. The fact that others discuss it doesn’t change anything for me.”
Campbell convened the grand jury in August to begin investigating allegations of a conspiracy to commit fraud brought forward by state Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola. Andrade submitted information gathered during hearings he held during the 2025 legislative session on how $10 million of a $67 million Medicaid settlement agreement wound up being used to combat a citizen-driven ballot initiative to legalize marijuana.
Instead of issuing a true bill or indictment, the grand jury in January issued a 116-page presentment consisting of a 19-page report and 97 pages of exhibits. The report summarized confidential witness testimony and evidence, concluding that the $10 million was “misappropriated as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities.”
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The presentment named high-ranking state officials, including Uthmeier, who was DeSantis’ chief of staff at the time of the settlement negotiations and directed the movement of the funds to two nonprofits that in turn donated most of the money to a political committee he ran, according to the grand jury report.
The presentment reported that Jason Weida, then secretary of the Agency for Health Care Administration and the agency’s attorney Andrew Sheeran were involved in the negotiations that led to Hope Florida receiving $10 million of the settlement with the Centene Corp. for allegedly overbilling the state.
Weida and Sheeran were among those who obtained legal counsel to have the presentment expunged.
While the grand jury blasted the administration for a lack of transparency it found insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges, saying people couldn’t remember whose decision it was to give a portion of the settlement to the Hope Florida Foundation, or wouldn’t take responsibility for the actions.
Instead, the grand jury recommended legislative reforms.
The presentment was automatically made confidential for 15 days to give people named in the report a chance to seek to have their names removed or the document expunged from court records.
But after the grand jury issued its report, and while it remained confidential, Campbell sent it to at least 49 recipients in two mass emails. The first set went to those he believed were entitled to a copy under state law, the court said.
The second set of emails, sent with the circuit court’s permission, included two generic intake email addresses and a recipient mistakenly included who had nothing to do with the proceeding.
“Disclosures to persons the Presentment does not impugn, not the furnishing of copies to the individuals concerned, constitute the violation” of state law, the court said. It has not been revealed who actually leaked the presentment to CBS News Miami.
In February, motions were filed to repress and expunge the report. Around the same time, Marsh, the judge in the case, allowed the Florida Center for Government Accountability to intervene in any court action related to any motions to repress or expunge and ordered the state attorney to notify the organization of any appeal.
Marsh expunged the witness section with their names and titles, all 97 pages of exhibits and several findings, “but denied repression and expungement in full,” the DCA opinion said. His ruling and other court proceedings — which have never become public, a fact government watchdogs have challenged — “held that the redactions did not change the Presentment’s tenor and that the Presentment did not allege that any named individual committed a crime.”
Michael Barfield, executive director of the Florida Center For Government Accountabliity, said it was “disappointing that this was a one-sided appellate procedure.”
Despite an order from Marsh giving the center the right to intervene, the court never notified them of the motions to appeal, nor did the appellate court invite them to participate. “We had no opportunity to present our arguments on the issues,” he said.
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