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Sam Stein
Hey, guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark. I am joined by Alex Glorioso, who is the state government reporter at the Miami Herald. Thankfully, she agreed to do this. I really appreciate it, Alex. We're going to talk about something we haven't really talked about yet, but seems to be constantly popping up in my feed, at least. But I'm a junkie. But it seems to be gaining a lot of steam, which is this saga and scandal down in Florida around a quasi welfare initiative, an anti Pot Initiative, Governor Ron DeSantis's top AIDS, his wife and Republican state lawmakers. It's a real mix, a malou, if you want to call it. Before we get into it, subscribe to our feed, please. We really appreciate it. We get to bring you great stories like this with great reporters who can help you unpack the story. So, Alex, thank you. Florida. Never a dull moment, I have to say. I want you to walk us through the scandal in a way that sort of just treats us like we're fourth graders, like we just don't know anything about it. All I know is that there's an initiative, it's called Hope Florida. It's designed to sort of be a hybrid, right? It's getting SNAP benefits, welfare benefits, not through traditional means, which is the government, but through sort of non governmental means like churches. It's the brainchild or baby of Casey DeSantis or Ron DeSantis or both. And somehow it became a conduit for political activity, specifically $10 million in donations to donations to anti pot initiatives that were on the ballot this past cycle that Ron DeSantis was very much against. That's all I know. Tell us about how this came to life and if I got any of those facts terribly wrong.
Alex Glorioso
No, that was a really good summary. And thank you for having me on your show today, Sam. I really appreciate it. Of course, it's just been a wild April here in Tallahassee, Florida. I mean, we are ending our legislative session today, theoretically, but we're not really ending because the Hope Florida saga has taken over the entire legislative session and everyone needs cooler heads to prevail. So they're probably going to come back later in the month or in June, which is I don't know if it's unprecedented, but it's very unusual. So, you know, this whole thing started when there was a settlement last year between the state of Florida and a major Medicaid company called Centene. Centene, you know, provides Medicare and Medicaid insurance all over the United States. It's a major company that administers the Medicaid program here in Florida, which is, you know, health insurance for low income people.
Sam Stein
Right.
Alex Glorioso
Well, as part of a multi state settlement, Centene agreed to settle with different states around the country and, you know.
Sam Stein
Give them Centine done wrong.
Alex Glorioso
It was all related to overbilling in the prescription drug program.
Sam Stein
And actually they overbilled in Florida and Florida said, we're going to make a settlement with you. And what was the amount?
Alex Glorioso
It was $67 million. And this was quietly done. Whereas, you know, many of the other states involved had promoted getting this money back for Medicaid. And nobody knew about this settlement until we started reporting on the whole Florida saga last month. And so it came to light.
Sam Stein
There was six. There's a $67 million settlement with the state of Florida that was never publicized.
Alex Glorioso
It was never publicized. It came out in the health care budget committee this year.
Sam Stein
Wild. Okay, so you look. So people start looking into a totally different initiative, Hope for Florida. And that's where to discover the news of the settlement.
Alex Glorioso
Yeah, so we started looking into the HOPE Florida program because the governor who, you know is.
Sam Stein
Well, let's stop right there. Just what is the HOPE Florida program? Let's start there.
Alex Glorioso
The HOPE Florida program is an initiative spearheaded by the first lady, Casey DeSantis, intended to get people off of government aid that includes traditional welfare benefits like, you know, food stamps, cash assistance. But it's also, we've discovered, written into the Medicaid contracts for 25 through, you know, 2025 to 2030. So it's also designed to get people off of Medicaid.
Sam Stein
And how does it get them off of that? I mean, is it providing medical services, providing food services? What is it doing?
Alex Glorioso
The whole point is that people come to the state government because they need services and the state government can connects them with these so called HOPE navigators who then connect them to the private community, you know, through a lot of it is faith based, a lot of churches, a lot of Christian churches and also some non profits.
Sam Stein
So instead of getting some SNAP benefit, I go to, I get connected through HOPE to a private church which then may help me get a job or some food or things I need. But it's not just a direct cash benefit in forms of food assistance.
Alex Glorioso
Exactly. It's like a diversion from the state program.
Sam Stein
And Casey DeSantis spearheaded this. And the idea was you were going to save state money by contracting out essentially with churches and other non governmental groups that help with these types of things.
Alex Glorioso
Yeah, the governor has been saying that They've saved about $108 million through the program.
Sam Stein
Okay, all right, so why do people start looking into it if it's such a great thing?
Alex Glorioso
Well, you know, it all began about three weeks into the legislative session, you know, at the end of March, essentially, when I was looking for a story to write and I was working on stories about the condo crisis in Florida. And there just wasn't an appetite this session from lawmakers to really talk about that or do anything on that. And so I was looking for something and I noticed that the governor, you know, he doesn't have a bill, but, you know, state lawmakers had bills that would enshrine the governor's wife's key initiative, Hope Florida, into state law. So far, it's been acting under the governor's authority. He's on his way out from state government. You know, we have term limits here in Florida, so he's terming out. And he wanted to, in his legacy, have this government program enshrined into statute. And it would also give Casey DeSantis, should she decide to run for governor to replace her husband, a significant legislative win, which would be great for her because she doesn't have any actual political experience in office.
Sam Stein
And it would need to be enshrined because what you're doing is taking state funds, you're spending some state funds because you're sending them to navigators and I think maybe some non governmental groups in, in terms of administrative help. So you need an appropriation, need to put into law. I can't just operate off of the. I don't even know what were they where, how. I guess I should ask how. If it wasn't in law to begin with, it was just being administered by the governor. How were they doing it statutorily? What was the legality of it? Where were they getting the money for it?
Alex Glorioso
Well, the governor has been putting in asks, you know, for money for this program, and different departments have been putting in asks for money for program. But it has been operating under his executive authority. He has pretty broad authority. But after he leaves, anything that he administers under his executive authority from the governor's office effectively shuts down.
Sam Stein
All right, so lawmakers are looking to codify this and you're looking for a story, which is a totally rational journalistic instinct. I've been there many times, need a good story. And what do you find out?
Alex Glorioso
Well, what I find out is that his, you know, key bill is stalled and, you know, the legislative session is 60 days long. Around three weeks is when you really start to get a landscape as a journalist and also as a politician in the process and a lobbyist in the process of what's going to really move and, you know, what are people's priorities. And it's just a good time to reevaluate the stories that I'm working on, I find usually. And so, so I find this bill, I realize that it hasn't been heard in committee. And I start asking the committee chair people, you know, why that is. One of them is now Congressman Randy Fine, and the other one is Representative Lauren Mello. And they both kind of, you know, put me off to some degree, saying that there's no real reason why this isn't being heard. But we're all backed up because we had three legislative, we had three special sessions in January, all related to immigration, and it just logistically backed everything up. But then, you know, my husband, Lawrence Maurer with the Tampa Bay Times were colleagues. He started pulling, you know, all the documents for the Hope Florida foundation, which was part of the program. And we realized that there were no documents and that they weren't. And then we figured out what the foundation was that was supposed to be, you know, supporting the Hope Florida program. It's like a state sanctioned charity and has a lot of reporting requirements. And we realized it wasn't doing any of those reportings, like an independent audit, for instance, or it's bylaws and it's supposed to be reporting back to the legislature. So when we realized that, we wrote a story about like, what's the hold up here for the governor's key initiative and what's this going to do to his wife's campaign and what is this program? Why doesn't it have any of the required documentation?
Sam Stein
Right. Because we knew it was supporting things, but we didn't know where the money was coming from and they weren't giving any documentation around it.
Alex Glorioso
Yeah. Back in February, we requested the foundation's ledger. And so while there's like the whole Florida program that's in state government, there's the separate charity that is financially supporting the program by giving money to the outside community organizations to help bolster them in their effort to get people off of government aid. So they're supposed to. They're like a symbiotic organism.
Sam Stein
Got you. So when you start asking around, how do you get from that to discovering the what is called Centenny Corp. Centene, how do you get from point A to discovering Centene had given $10 million in what should have been state settlement money to this Hope Florida initiative.
Alex Glorioso
Well, somebody said something to me really interesting when I wrote that first story with Lawrence Maurer. They told me that the chairwoman of the House committee had, quote, questions about Hope Florida. And while she wasn't really answering my questions about what her questions were, I thought that was really compelling, you know, like, why does she have questions? And we had questions then, and we knew the governor the following week was going to come and do a press conference, so we were planning to ask him about it. Our story came out on Thursday, it came out on my birthday, which I was really excited about. And then the following week, we got ready to ask the governor questions about this foundation attached to his wife's legacy program. And that morning for his press conference, we woke up and started looking to see if there were any bill analyses out, which in state government are like layman's, A summary of what the bill does, and it's written by committee staff in each chamber. And the Senate one was pretty. You know, I don't even remember what was in the Senate staff analysis, but the House staff analysis answered why the chairwoman had questions. It said in the footnotes of the analysis that they had been asking for the same documentation. We were back in February, you know, so like five weeks, you know, before at that time, six weeks before, and they still had.
Sam Stein
So the lawmakers, lawmakers had not gotten anything on the books of Hope Florida. Always, by the way, always read the footnotes again, though, how do we. So how do we start discovering what's going. What the funding.
Alex Glorioso
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Sam Stein
No, I like this. This is good drama. I appreciate it.
Alex Glorioso
Well, okay, so that day we asked the governor, why hasn't your foundation filed any of its tax returns? And he like, explodes. I've never seen him react like this at the time. I mean, he's had some similar things before that, but at the time, and it was just like on after that, like, everyone knew that this was really touchy for the governor and everyone knew that there was something weird going on with this foundation. And we ended up getting. I ended up getting the like one meeting minute from last October, you know, which said that Hope Florida foundation was getting a $10 million allocation from a, quote, long standing dispute between the state Agency for Health Care Administration and I don't know if it's had a third party, but it definitely said the state Agency for Health Care Administration and It was getting $10 million from that. And that was the only donation we had known about Hope Florida because it wasn't Filing any of its documents.
Sam Stein
Did it. Did it note in there that it was the sentent. I'm going to mispronounce it again. Centene Corporation, or was it not noted in there?
Alex Glorioso
It did not, but I knew that there was not just $10 million lying around at the Agency for Healthcare Administration because most of its money comes from Medicaid, which is highly regulated money. And.
Sam Stein
But the settlement had not been made public yet.
Alex Glorioso
It had not been made public. And so we started reporting on the document, you know, and we saw in the documents, properties that the chairman was the author. The chairman of the board was the author of the document. So we believe that. And we wrote a story just about this mystery settlement and how the legislature wasn't notified about it. And that on its own could be illegal because.
Sam Stein
Right. This is not the. This is money. This is the state's money.
Alex Glorioso
Right, right. But we didn't even know that it was Medicaid money. We just had, like, a hunch at that point, you know, but regardless, they didn't notify the state because it was more than a million dollars, and they legally have to notify the state of a settlement more than a million dollars, and I think send it back to state coffers, and nobody knew about it, like, so it was a mystery of where this came from. So that was the first story. The next story we wrote, which was, you know, there was a $10 million donation to Hope Florida Foundation. Was it legal? And then there was rumblings that it was Centene, but it was for the wrong reason. We had known about one other large Centene settlement from a story I had written a few years earlier that was kind of like a landmark settlement, which was for $9.1 million with the state over some other problems the company had. So we wondered if it was Centene, and we started pushing about Centene. And then I think the chairman of the House Healthcare Budget Committee decided to hold a hearing and as part of. Asked for Centine documents. I don't know. I don't know how he did that or how the settlement came to possession, but he announced it during the first, like, committee hearing on this. And who was the chairman? Sorry, that's Representative Alexandra, a Republican.
Sam Stein
He's the chair of the House Health. Yeah, he's the chair of the House Health Care Budget Subcommittee.
Alex Glorioso
That's right. Yeah.
Sam Stein
Okay. So Alexandra is going to play a big role here. But the first. Our first introduction to him is he's hosting this hearing and then out of the blue, although he probably knew something, he Requests documents around the Centene settlement, and those documents are produced, I presume.
Alex Glorioso
Like I said, I don't know how he got these documents, but in the committee meeting, he referenced them. When we knew that there was a settlement with Centene, we started asking our sources for, you know, the document 10 million.
Sam Stein
Right. Because you're putting two and two together, like, okay, there's a settlement here. We know that a settlement money went into here. Are these the two things?
Alex Glorioso
Exactly. And I was confused because in the committee meeting, he said the settlement was for $67 million. And I'm like, it was. So this is carved out from that. What's the 10 million up to? You know, what's this money up to? And what kind of money is this? All right, is this Medicaid money?
Sam Stein
Yeah. So we now have the source of the funds. But that's only half of the saga here, because the other half is that Hope Florida, ostensibly there to facilitate quasi welfare for people, is spending that money, the 10 million, on two donations, and that's $5 million each to the Amendment 3 initiative, which is to defeat recreational marijuana in Florida, which they did successfully, if I'm correct. Am I correct?
Alex Glorioso
You're right. Yeah.
Sam Stein
Okay. Okay. All right. So how do we get from point A to point B? So you've. You kind of pieced together where that $10 million came from, but how do we then discover what the $10 million went to?
Alex Glorioso
So once we got the settlement, we realized in the settlement, the state directed the company to send 10 million of it to the charity, the Hope Florida Foundation. And we, from the meeting minutes, which we had that, you know, below the part where they said that there was an allocation of $10 million, there was also a grant proposal listed from Secure Florida's Future, which is a 501c4 dark money organization because it doesn't list its donors controlled by the Florida Chamber of Commerce. And so I don't remember if it said the amount that they got in that in those meeting minutes, but just after several days of bugging people reporting, doing the basic stuff, we found out that two groups, Secure Florida's future and Save our Society from Drugs, which were both against the Amendment 3 initiative to legalize recreational marijuana, applied using nearly identical letters for $5 million apiece, and then shortly thereafter donated similar amounts, $8.5 million total, to a political committee controlled by the governor's then chief chief of staff, James Ethmeyer, which then went on and used that money to fight the amendment. Like that committee was dedicated to it. It was called Keep Florida Clean.
Sam Stein
So as I'm reading this, the minutes made clear that Hope Florida was a carve out. They were going to give $10 million from the settlement to Hope Florida. But very clearly it was going to then go to these two 501C3s that were devoted to defeating the marijuana initiative. Hope Florida never was going to receive that money as far as you understood.
Alex Glorioso
Oh, Florida had that money for very little time. I mean, their grant applications. Well, we know that the meeting minutes were in October of 2024 where they announced this. We know that the settlement with Centene was signed at by, I think, one of the parties in late September. So at the end of September. And then, you know, they ended up doing these transactions with the political committee in October. So it was all largely done in the same month.
Sam Stein
Okay, tell me about Jeff Aaron.
Alex Glorioso
Jeff Aaron is the attorney for the Hope Florida foundation, and he is, you know, close with the DeSantis administration, has represented them, I think, on different matters. But where he's really central in this, you know, saga is that he is the attorney for the foundation and he's instrumental in, it appears, the transfer of these funds to at least one of the dark money organizations.
Sam Stein
What was the role he played in the transfer?
Alex Glorioso
Well, text messages that we obtained from Representative Andrade and published on our news sites show that around the time this was all going down, you know, the chief of staff, James Ethmeyer, reached out to the executive director, Amy Ronshausen from Save Our Society from Drugs, and asked her to call him. And then a little bit later, she reaches out to Jeff Aaron, the attorney, and says she's getting ready to submit her grant application and how much should she request and who should she send it to? He responds with Secure Florida's futures application and tells her to copy that. So they both end up applying for $5 million. And then after she submits it, he, like, you know, remains with her throughout the, you know, like this was like on a Friday and on Monday he's like, did you get the wire? Like, you know, he asked her, you know, where he should send the money. He follows up with her like, are we good? Did you get the wire transfer? And we've published this. She responds with the receipt. She responds with the screenshot of the wire, which we redacted, you know, to protect sensitive information. But she responds saying, yep, got it. And he responds in all caps. Excellent. So that is why Representative Andrade has accused Aaron and Utmy or of being in a scheme to defraud health care and Money and money laundering. You know, it all starts well, the first, you know, possible crime would have been diverting Medicaid money. And then after it starts to travel to different places, it's like, you know, it could be money laundering.
Sam Stein
So, Centene, what does the Florida statute about, say about settlement money from Medicaid fraud? Fraud? Is there laws specific to what the state had to do with the $67 million that Centene settled?
Alex Glorioso
Well, there are federal guidance, you know, really regulating this at the end of the day. And like, the buck stops with the federal government. The laws are about settlement, you know, dollars in general. In Florida, where if it's a million dollars, you have to notify the legislature and send it back.
Sam Stein
Notifications, one thing, notifications, one thing. But, oh, so you do have to send it back to the state.
Alex Glorioso
Yeah, you have to send it back to state coffers. But then in terms of federal guidance, because Medicaid money is mostly federal money.
Sam Stein
In Florida with a small, small state match.
Alex Glorioso
Yeah, yeah, it's a 57% federal match in Florida. And you have to notify the federal government of the settlement. You have to send back the full amount to state coffers. And in Florida, it gets earmarked into the medical trust fund. And then you divide out what you owe to the general government in like a separate line item. You send them a specific, you know, Form 64 and you notify them of the full amount and then what you will owe them.
Sam Stein
Right now, the. The thing you could say is, well, why wouldn't Centene just, you know, I mean, the way to think about it, the way I think thought about is what if Centene had just decided, you know what, we're going to give 10 million straight to Hope, straight to the anti pot initiatives. We're not even going to go through Hope for Florida. We're just going to go right into those anti pot initiatives. People would have been like, like, no, that's crazy. These are, these are Governor DeSantis political initiatives. You can't do that with settlement money. So it seems very clear to me that they used Hope Florida as a conduit. But I think for the viewer, they might not understand, and this is where I could use your help, how important defeating that recreational marijuana initiative was to DeSantis, like, why did he care so much? What is the motivation for getting that $10 million into those two groups?
Alex Glorioso
Florida has historically been a purple state. Florida elections have historically been very, very close. Presidential elections have been very, very close. But the Republicans have been in government for several Decades now. They've done a very good job gerrymandering a lot of the elections. And also the governor takes great pride on having a kind of self selection go down in Florida. And he has said publicly to members of the party that it was crucial that they defeat the recreational marijuana amendment and the amendment that would have legalized abortions up until probably 24 weeks, because that means that then people who come to Florida will be more likely to be Republican. And he has really try to make sure that Florida will remain a red state. And so these two amendments were very important to him politically and they would have affected not only his legacy, but also his wife's ability then to run for governor. So he had a lot going, he had a lot personally at stake and politically at stake in defeating those amendments. And they almost passed. I think the marijuana amendment had 57% support and the, you know, you know, pro abortion amendment had 54% support. So they both were over 50%. But in Florida, we have a very high threshold of 60% for constitutional amendments to pass.
Sam Stein
Yeah. All right, so where do things stand now with three people? First, let's talk about James Earthmire. He is now the state Attorney general. Is he in? Is he under suspicion for anything more than what we talked about? Is he. Is his job at Jeopardy? What is going on with him?
Alex Glorioso
I mean, the DeSantis administration denies this. He denies this. Their supporters deny this.
Sam Stein
What do they say?
Alex Glorioso
What they're specifically saying is that this was not Medicaid money, that it was a, it was a donation that Centene decided to make on its own. I don't know why it would be pinned in the Medicaid settlement if that is the case. And also, you know, we obtained in our reporting an early draft agreement from 2022 of the settlement because this settlement has been taking years. And you know, there was counsel and then the council was let go by the state.
Sam Stein
Sorry, let me stop you for a second. So their contention is they made a $67 million settlement and then in addition to that, they gave $10 million to Hope Florida, that this is not. This was nothing to do with that $67 million, is that right?
Alex Glorioso
Yeah. They argue that the actual damages in the over billing case were about $57 million.
Sam Stein
So it's 57 million. And then on top of that, 10 more million dollars. Have they accounted for the other $57 million?
Alex Glorioso
Yeah, they have said that this, you know, is going back to state coffers and back to the federal government. What Andrade, the representative looking into this has said. And I have, you know, gone through the state ledger and seen the numbers myself, though not. It doesn't say specifically for the centene settlement, it says for a Medicaid fraud, but they are setting aside, it appears, the full amount for the federal government of what is owed of the 67 million, not of the 57 million.
Sam Stein
Got you. So Desantis claims is innocent. Has Meyer said anything?
Alex Glorioso
Yeah, Meyer and DeSantis are saying essentially the same thing, that this was, you know, their whole argument is that this was not Medicaid money. Because if it is Medicaid money, then that's when all of you know, we've interviewed former federal prosecutors who have said the original crime starts with a diversion of federal funds like Medicaid. And so their. Their whole argument is centered on the fact that they say this is not Medicaid money.
Sam Stein
Okay. And then the last thing I want to get is that the sort of politics here, because from the outsider's perspective, DeSantis is, you know, not a God king, but close. That he's. That Florida is reliably Republican, that he's turned the state ruby red, that he's basically romped over state lawmakers to this point and, you know, putting aside a fairly disastrous presidential run, that he has, you know, rather unchecked powers. But. And in this case, the people who are pushing back on him are Republicans. Andrade is a Republican. The speaker, Daniel Perez is Republican. You know, what does this say about DeSantis's own standing both in the state and within his party?
Alex Glorioso
Well, DeSantis is experiencing what it means to be a lame duck. So he is really on the tail end of his governorship. And I think that that pushback that he's getting from his own party to some degree is inevitable. But also, the legislature did many favors for him when he was running for president. They really executed his agenda, his culture war agenda, because he convinced them that this would be politically advantageous. I mean, that's. That's just clearly what they were doing and what they said they were doing at the time, that we wanna support the governor, we believe in the governor. We want the governor to have a full agenda to run on. And he did. He ran on. His policy wins. But I think that there's a feeling of resentment by Republican leaders who, you know, you're a Senate president in Florida and you have a nice life. Like, you have a lot of power, you touch a lot of people's lives, you shape policy, you sometimes get books written about you, like, you know, occasionally. So These are not people who are used to having their power minimized. And I think that you're seeing now the pushback when they see that the governor is politically vulnerable. And it's also been an unusual session in that the two leaders of the chambers have not exerted as much top down control as they usually do. And so people are just bucking. They're expressing themselves in ways that they haven't been able to in the last six years.
Sam Stein
Wow. All right, well, we'll be watching this very closely, thanks to you. What's the, what's the next chapter here? Before we let you go, what are you looking for next?
Alex Glorioso
Well, like I said, you know, we on Thursday published a story about the possible federal crimes in the Hope Florida saga. The representative has accused the Attorney General James Utmire and the Hope Florida foundation attorney Jeff Aaron of, you know, a conspiracy to defraud health care, of money laundering. So I think we're gonna see where that goes. You know, there's nothing I can say about that. Right.
Sam Stein
I hope you see where that goes. That's a big one. And yes, I understand why you might not be able to get it ahead of it, but wow, this is, this is wild stuff. I appreciate your reporting on this. I would encourage everyone to read your story. It's called Former Federal Prosecutors Layout Possible Crimes in Hope Florida Saga. I will note that you are the first byline. Not your spouse, just saying, not going to employ. I gotta make, gotta make note. But we'll be reading the Herald. Everyone should be subscribing to the Herald to follow the story. Alex, thank you so much. I genuinely appreciate this and thank you guys for tuning in and watching this. I hope you watch the whole thing. It's fascinating. We will be talking to you again shortly. And thanks for tuning in.
Alex Glorioso
Thank you, Sam. I really appreciate being here.
Bulwark Takes: The $10M Scandal That Could Bring Down DeSantis!
Release Date: May 2, 2025
In this compelling episode of Bulwark Takes, Sam Stein, the managing editor at The Bulwark, delves into a tumultuous political scandal unfolding in Florida that threatens to tarnish Governor Ron DeSantis's legacy. Joined by Alex Glorioso, the state government reporter at the Miami Herald, they unpack the intricate web of financial maneuvers, legal controversies, and political implications surrounding the HOPE Florida program and a significant $10 million settlement. This summary captures the essence of their discussion, highlighting key points, insights, and conclusions.
Sam Stein opens the conversation by introducing Alex Glorioso and setting the stage for the discussion about a persistent and escalating scandal in Florida. He succinctly outlines the issue:
"There's an initiative, it's called Hope Florida. It's designed to sort of be a hybrid... It's the brainchild or baby of Casey DeSantis or Ron DeSantis or both. And somehow it became a conduit for political activity, specifically $10 million in donations to donations to anti pot initiatives..."
(00:00)
Alex Glorioso provides a foundational understanding of the HOPE Florida program, emphasizing its origins and objectives:
"The HOPE Florida program is an initiative spearheaded by the first lady, Casey DeSantis, intended to get people off of government aid..."
(04:07)
She explains that HOPE Florida was designed to transition individuals away from traditional welfare benefits by connecting them with private community organizations, many of which are faith-based. The program operates under Governor DeSantis's executive authority, aiming to reduce state expenditures by outsourcing welfare support to non-governmental entities.
The conversation shifts to the crux of the scandal: the $67 million settlement between the state of Florida and Centene Corp., a major Medicaid provider.
Alex Glorioso details the settlement:
"Centene agreed to settle... related to overbilling in the prescription drug program. The settlement was $67 million."
(02:52 - 03:16)
Surprisingly, this settlement was never publicized and only emerged in reports after investigative efforts by journalists.
The discovery process is meticulously outlined as Alex Glorioso narrates her investigative journey:
"We started looking into the HOPE Florida program... and realized there were no documents and that they weren't filing any of those required reports."
(08:09 - 10:06)
The investigative team unearthed that the HOPE Florida Foundation, intended to support the program, lacked necessary documentation such as independent audits and bylaws. This raised red flags about the legitimacy and transparency of the program's operations.
A pivotal moment in the investigation occurred when documents revealed a $10 million allocation from the Centene settlement to the HOPE Florida Foundation, which was subsequently funneled into political activities:
"Hope Florida was getting a $10 million allocation... It ended up donating $5 million each to two dark money organizations... and $8.5 million to a political committee called Keep Florida Clean."
(12:48 - 19:31)
These donations were directed towards defeating Florida's Amendment 3, which sought to legalize recreational marijuana. The successful campaign to overturn this amendment is directly tied to the misappropriated funds, raising significant legal and ethical concerns.
The scandal implicates several prominent figures:
Alex Glorioso highlights Aaron's involvement through documented communications:
"Text messages show that James Ethmeyer reached out to Amy Ronshausen... Aaron responded by directing her to Secure Florida's Futures application."
(20:34 - 22:51)
These interactions suggest a coordinated effort to channel funds into anti-marijuana initiatives, potentially involving fraud and money laundering.
The misuse of Medicaid settlement funds is a grave violation of both state and federal laws. Alex Glorioso explains the legal framework surrounding such settlements:
"In Florida, if it's a million dollars, you have to notify the legislature and send it back to state coffers."
(23:06 - 23:26)
Governor DeSantis and Attorney General James Ethmeyer maintain that the $10 million was separate from the Medicaid settlement and propose that it was a voluntary donation by Centene. However, this defense is undermined by the timing and lack of transparency in the settlement process.
The scandal poses a significant threat to Governor DeSantis's political future and his wife's potential gubernatorial ambitions. Alex Glorioso discusses the political stakes:
"DeSantis is experiencing what it means to be a lame duck... There's pushback from his own party because they're not used to having their power minimized."
(29:55 - 31:31)
The diversion of funds to defeat popular voter initiatives could erode public trust and lead to internal conflicts within the Republican Party, especially as DeSantis approaches the end of his term.
As the investigation unfolds, key figures like Attorney General James Ethmeyer and Jeff Aaron face increasing scrutiny:
"Representative Andrade has accused Aaron and Ethmeyer of being in a scheme to defraud health care... and money laundering."
(31:41 - 32:18)
The Miami Herald's ongoing reporting continues to shed light on potential federal crimes, with former federal prosecutors outlining possible charges related to the HOPE Florida saga.
The episode concludes with a sense of anticipation for further developments. Alex Glorioso emphasizes the gravity of the situation:
"There's nothing I can say about that. Right."
(31:41)
Sam Stein encourages listeners to stay informed and follow the Miami Herald's coverage for updates on this high-stakes political scandal.
Sam Stein: "Florida. Never a dull moment, I have to say."
(00:00)
Alex Glorioso: "The HOPE Florida program is an initiative spearheaded by the first lady, Casey DeSantis..."
(04:07)
Sam Stein: "Did it note in there that it was the Centene Corporation, or was it not noted in there?"
(14:05)
Alex Glorioso: "They started pushing about Centene. And then... Representative Alexandra... decided to hold a hearing and requested Centene documents."
(16:10)
Sam Stein: "How important defeating that recreational marijuana initiative was to DeSantis, like, why did he care so much?"
(24:56)
The scandal underscores a potential rift within the Republican Party, highlighting tensions between established party leaders and loyalists to Governor DeSantis. As the investigation progresses, it remains to be seen how this internal conflict will shape the party's future dynamics and electoral strategies.
This episode of Bulwark Takes meticulously dissects a complex political scandal that intertwines state governance, legal violations, and partisan politics. The $10 million misappropriation not only threatens Governor DeSantis's reputation but also raises critical questions about transparency, accountability, and the ethical use of public funds in political maneuvering.
Listeners are encouraged to stay engaged with ongoing coverage to fully grasp the evolving implications of this scandal on Florida's political landscape and beyond.