Florida officials diverted $10 million health care settlement to DeSantis' wife's charity

The administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis diverted $10 million in settlement money with the state Agency for Health Care Administration into the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity run by his wife Casey DeSantis to reshape welfare assistance, reported the Miami Herald on Tuesday.

Hope Florida, created in 2022, has a mission to reduce lower-income people's reliance on government aid by connecting people who would otherwise need food assistance or subsidized health care with faith-based organizations and related NGOs.

"The unusual injection of cash was part of an undisclosed settlement agreement involving Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration," reported Lawrence Mower and Alexandra Glorioso. "Under Florida law, money from certain settlement agreements must be deposited into a state trust fund or the general revenue fund, where lawmakers can decide how to spend it. It’s not clear whether the law applies because the state is refusing to release the settlement’s details, including the circumstances or parties involved."

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Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the DeSantis administration said “this money was not paid to the state,” and thus it is not covered under the law about settlements.

Nonetheless, Hope Florida is under increasing scrutiny for its legal practices, the report continued: "Last week, staffers working for the Republican-controlled House of Representatives asserted that Hope Florida’s fundraising arm was not complying with state laws governing its oversight, ethics or fundraising."

And meanwhile, when reporters last week visited Hope Florida's headquarters to review its IRS documents, an employee told them the request “will be returned in the order it was received” and shooed them away, despite federal law requiring such documents be available immediately upon in-person request.

Casey DeSantis has frequently taken the political spotlight for her behind-the-scenes politics at the governor's mansion and her charitable activities, but has similarly faced questions about what all that money is really doing — particularly from reporting two years ago that $9 million of the money she raised for Hurricane Ian relief, at the time, was sitting unused.