President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have spent the past year launching political — and often brazenly racist — attacks against liberals and institutions they’ve accused of “waste, fraud and abuse” of taxpayer money.
We’ve seen federal agencies effectively closed and bogus investigations dubiously opened over such baseless allegations. Meanwhile, the most glaring examples of these things seem to be coming from Republicans themselves — and the MAGA movement is hardly uttering a word.
The latest example comes out of Florida, where a state grand jury has concluded that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration engaged in a “sophisticated scheme” to misappropriate taxpayer money for political purposes.
A state grand jury found the DeSantis administration “misappropriated” taxpayer money when it diverted $10 million from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation, arguing the transfer was “part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities,” according to a copy of the sealed grand jury report obtained by CBS News Miami.
I previously wrote about this controversy surrounding the Hope Florida Foundation, the nonprofit arm of an organization launched by Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife. At the time, the DeSantis administration was trying to pressure the Orlando Sentinel out of reporting on the fiasco.
And this grand jury finding might explain the motives behind that gambit. As CBS News Miami noted, the grand jurors said that although there was insufficient evidence for criminal charges, the evidence of misconduct was apparent:
“Despite our finding that the money was misappropriated, we find insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally,” the report concluded. “Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida… or had any memory of who made it.”
“We recognize that this would be an impediment to criminal prosecution,” the report noted. “While we can’t prove who is responsible, we can plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes and we would like to see changes made to prevent this from happening again.” The grand jury identified the nexus for much of the activity surrounding the transfer as the state’s current attorney general, James Uthmeier.
Uthmeier, a Republican, is currently running to retain his position as Florida attorney general. According to the grand jury’s report:
“Testimony identified him as having involvement in directing the money after it went to Hope Florida. Testimony also revealed that Mr. Uthmeier’s Keep Florida Clean, a political action committee, was the prime recipient of the majority of the $10 million taxpayer funds.”
Sen. Ashley Moody, a Florida Republican who preceded Uthmeier as attorney general, is also criticized in the grand jury’s report:
The grand jury also concluded that Ashley Moody, who was the attorney general at the time, was aware of the plans to divert the $10 million to Hope Florida and “authorized” her former chief deputy, John Guard, to sign the settlement agreement.
In June, I wrote about about a billion-dollar school voucher program in Arizona that the state’s auditor general found has been used by wealthy people to purchase iPhones, TVs and Disneyland tickets. The Hope Florida program — albeit on a smaller scale — is similar in that it’s another GOP-backed program that has largely escaped MAGA condemnation despite seemingly being a prime example of taxpayer waste.
Uthmeier’s deputy chief of staff told CBS News Miami: “Grand jury proceedings are confidential. Unauthorized disclosure of those proceedings is a crime.” The outlet said Moody has declined multiple requests for comment, and it cited comments from DeSantis at a press conference Wednesday in which he called the situation a “hoax” and said he “wasn’t involved” but is “very happy with how everything was done.”
MAGA world’s silence is remarkable here. It’s safe to assume that if a grand jury released a report about a “sophisticated scheme” in which Democrats misappropriated taxpayer money — in a scenario involving a top Democratic governor, his wife and two of his attorneys general — conservatives would be loudly sounding the alarm, if not calling for arrests.
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