For months, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has dismissed the Hope Florida scandal as a “hoax,” maintaining that “nobody did anything wrong.” Yet at the same time, state agencies have quietly shelled out thousands of dollars to high-powered law firms that were hired to keep an investigation of the saga out of public view.
State purchasing records reviewed by The Florida Trib show a flurry of payments to the private law firms hired to represent public officials scrutinized by a Leon County grand jury, which investigated the diversion of $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement into the nonprofit behind first lady Casey DeSantis’ signature welfare initiative.
Recently released court records reveal how state officials represented by private attorneys fought the grand jury findings for months in closed court proceedings that were barred from public view by state law and judicial orders. Meanwhile, public records show the firms hired to represent the officials racked up hefty legal bills, with some lawyers charging the state $800 an hour.
The use of public funds to pay attorney’s fees for public employees called before a grand jury is barred by a longstanding opinion that is still available on the website of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier – who was one of the central subjects of the Hope Florida grand jury.
This week, a higher court sided with the state officials and issued a damning rebuke of the grand jury and its report, which the court found was “careless in its grammar, mistaken in its law, and unfaithful to its own record.”
The fight to keep the report confidential
An opinion released this week by a state appeals court slammed the findings by the Hope Florida grand jury and ordered its report to be expunged, stating the investigative body acted outside its authority by identifying and impugning public officials while failing to criminally indict – or exonerate – anyone.
“A grand jury that declares the law broken yet returns no indictment acts outside ‘the lawful ambit of grand jury authority’ and is on that account ‘unlawful’,” reads a portion of the opinion released Wednesday by Florida’s First District Court of Appeal.
Speaking at a news conference in Miami on Thursday, DeSantis applauded the opinion as “probably the biggest judicial smackdown that I have ever seen in my entire career as an elected official.”
“There was no misappropriation,” DeSantis said. “That’s a lie. That’s a hoax.”
The Leon County grand jury had found that key DeSantis officials “misappropriated” $10 million from the Medicaid settlement “as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities,” according to a copy of the report first obtained by CBS 4 Miami journalist Jim DeFede. The $10 million was quietly diverted to the Hope Florida Foundation before being passed through a string of nonprofits and political committees, including the Republican Party of Florida, to ultimately oppose a ballot initiative aimed at legalizing recreational marijuana in the state.
Despite finding the $10 million was misappropriated, the grand jury said there was “insufficient evidence” to charge anyone criminally – because no one would admit to orchestrating the scheme.
DeSantis dismissed the findings as baseless and blasted the leak of the grand jury report, saying “we will hold them accountable accordingly.”
“There’s been one crime committed, and it’s the people that leaked the report illegally,” DeSantis said, adding “whoever leaked this report needs to be prosecuted.”
$800-an-hour attorneys
Under state law, people named in grand jury reports have the right to challenge the findings and petition the court for redactions, and the reports remain confidential while those legal appeals play out.
The appeals court opinion ordering the Hope Florida grand jury report to be erased also revealed the names of the private attorneys and firms hired to represent state officials named in the report, including Uthmeier, the then-chief of staff to DeSantis; Katie Strickland, then-deputy chief of staff to the governor; Jason Weida, then-secretary of the Agency for Health Care Administration; and Andrew Sheeran, AHCA’s then-general counsel. AHCA, which oversees the state’s Medicaid program, was the agency that inked the settlement that diverted the funds.
Collectively, the law firms hired to represent the state officials have taken in more than $444,000 in state funds since the Hope Florida grand jury began its investigation in August of 2025, a review of state contracts shows. While the court records identified the public officials and their hired law firms, the documents in the state contract database did not name the firms’ individual clients. However, the only contracts executed between the relevant state agencies and the named firms were all inked beginning in October 2025, when the grand jury convened to hear witness testimony, with payments continuing up to this week, when the appeals court released its opinion.
The law firms and state agencies in this story did not respond to requests for comment from The Trib.
The legal services of one of the firms hired included the work of partners who bill their clients at $875 an hour. That firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, has netted nearly $200,000 since last October.
State contracts show the firm Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart has charged AHCA more than $137,000 to date for legal services that included representing the agency “in matter pertaining to Medicaid from October 3, 2025, through October 9, 2025.” The billing rate for the firm’s partners is listed at $850 an hour.
Court records show that Uthmeier, who was later tapped by DeSantis to become the state’s top lawyer, relied on the legal counsel of attorney Christopher Kise, who previously represented President Donald Trump related to the then-former president’s 37-count criminal indictment for mishandling classified documents. Since inking a deal with the governor’s office in October of 2025, Kise’s firm, Continental PLLC, has received more than $111,000, according to the state’s contract database.
The recently released court records show the private attorneys had successfully argued for a confidentiality order while the appeal played out, an order the court issued on Aug. 25, 2026, but they weren’t able to stop the grand jury report from ultimately finding its way to the public.
The very next day, CBS 4 published an unredacted copy of the report – a leak, Uthmeier said Thursday, that “law enforcement is looking at.”
Kate Payne is The Florida Trib’s state government reporter. She can be reached at kate.payne@floridatrib.org.
This article first appeared on The Florida Trib and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
