Hope Florida charity board asks about legality of $10 million donation

Lawrence Mower, Tampa Bay Times on Apr 17, 2025

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The lawyer for the Hope Florida Foundation said Thursday that he couldn’t answer questions about what to do with a $10 million donation until it hired another attorney.

During the charity’s first public board meeting, attorney Jeff Aaron said he didn’t want to answer questions about whether the donation was legal because of “allegations” against him.

Florida officials “directed” Medicaid contractor Centene to give the charity the $10 million as part of a larger settlement last year over overbilling.

The donation — and where the money went afterward — has been called “illegal” by some state lawmakers and threatens the future of the Hope Florida program and its charity arm. The program, launched by first lady Casey DeSantis, aims to help Floridians get off government assistance.

After the charity received the $10 million, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ then-chief of staff told two nonprofit groups to each request $5 million grants from the foundation, Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican, said this week. The foundation’s chairperson approved the two grants after getting legal advice from Aaron.

The two organizations then sent $8.5 million to a political committee controlled by the then-chief of staff, James Uthmeier. DeSantis named Uthmeier Florida attorney general this year.

Hope Florida Foundation, which was created in 2023, has previously met three times but only recorded minutes from one. It had no budget or bylaws in violation of state law and didn’t file its tax returns.

Thursday’s virtual meeting, which was delayed for six hours after being hijacked by racist and pornographic images, was supposed to remedy those issues.

The $10 million donation didn’t come up until near the end, when board member Stephanie White, a Pensacola adoption attorney and husband to former Republican state Rep. Frank White, asked about it.

“The elephant in the room is the $10 million settlement,” White said. “I would like counsel’s advice as to, was it public money that was used?" She asked whether everything the board did in relation to the money was legal.

Aaron said he couldn’t discuss it without getting another lawyer because of Andrade’s accusations against him. Andrade said he would ask Aaron to testify in a House committee next week.

“In light of those allegations, and in light of the noise around that, I would probably bring in conflict counsel just to keep everything looking good and to avoid any appearance of impropriety‚" he said. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

He said after the meeting that the move to hire an outside lawyer should be made “ out of an abundance of caution.”

Andrade said this week that the state’s use of the money “is looking more and more like a conspiracy to use Medicaid money to pay for campaign activity.” He said federal prosecutors should be “concerned” about it.

At the beginning of Thursday’s meeting, Andrade said the board should ask to recoup the $10 million so it didn’t jeopardize its charity status with the IRS, which forbids 501(c)(3)’s from spending a significant amount of money on political activities.

The two groups that received the $5 million grants were Secure Florida’s Future, overseen by Florida Chamber of Commerce CEO Mark Wilson, and St. Petersburg-based Save Our Society from Drugs. Both are 501(c)(4)’s that don’t have to disclose their donors.

“I believe, based on the information you received from Save Our Society from Drugs and from Secure Florida’s Future, that a fraud was committed on y’all in order to extract those two $5 million grants,” he told the board.

Board member Tina Vidal-Duart, executive vice president of major state contractor CDR Maguire, echoed White’s comments and said the board should hire an outside lawyer.

“I think we should have a legal opinion on that,” she said.

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