Florida Democratic Senate candidate Angie Nixon criticized Republican Senator Ashley Moody after a grand jury report named Moody in a plan to move $10 million from a Medicaid settlement to the Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit set up by Florida first lady Casey DeSantis. Once a battleground state, Florida has shifted to Republicans over the past decade, and Moody has been seen as the favorite in her race against state Representative Nixon, a democratic socialist who won the party’s primary earlier in August. Moody, the former Florida attorney general, was appointed to her new role after then-Senator Marco Rubio was appointed secretary of state in the Trump administration and now faces an election in November to finish the current term.
CBS Miami published a sealed grand jury report Wednesday from an investigation into the funds. It focuses on the $10 million from a settlement between Florida and Centene, a state vendor for Medicaid. The $10 million was sent to the Hope Florida Foundation, and parts of those funds were later transferred to political groups, according to the report.
It concluded that the funds were “misappropriated.” Still, the jurors concluded that they found “insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally.” The report reads, “Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida. This decision was the original misappropriation, and no witness would take responsibility for making the decision or had any memory of who made it.” The report said jurors heard testimony from former Chief Deputy Attorney General John Guard, who served while Moody was the attorney general. He said he had raised “political concerns about the dedication of $10,000,000 to Hope Florida.” Guard said he shared those concerns with Moody “because he knew the deal would be viewed by the legislature as a constraint on their spending authority.” “His political concerns were resolved by the change to the agreement making the settlement AHCA's agreement rather than the AG's settlement agreement, as the problem would now be AHCA's problem rather than the AG's problem.
He signed the agreement releasing the claims on behalf of the Attorney General's Office, but according to him, it was not his settlement, it was AHCA's settlement,” the report reads. The grand jury report did not suggest Moody knew the funds would later be transferred to political organizations after they were sent to the foundation. The grand jury began its probe in August 2025.
Moody addressed the report in a post on X. She said the settlement agreement was “negotiated by AHCA, a Florida healthcare agency" and “made clear how settlement money would be dispersed, to include funds going to Hope Florida." Her office “was one of multiple agencies that signed the final agreement for execution and release of claims," she said. Attempts to characterize this any other way are disingenuous,” she wrote.
A spokesperson pointed to her post when contacted by Newsweek on Thursday. Governor Ron DeSantis' Communications Director Alex Lanfranconi wrote in a statement to Newsweek, "This baseless smear has been debunked over and over again. In fact, if any confidential grand jury report was leaked to the press, that’s the only crime committed." The administration has faced scrutiny over the $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, whose goal is to help move Florida residents off government aid by connecting them with faith-based or charitable organizations.
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