Alexander Vindman overstates what is known about Ashley Moody’s role in Hope Florida scandal

As Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman seeks to unseat Republican Sen. Ashley Moody in Florida’s U.S. Senate race, he pointed to her role in a scandal when she served as the state’s attorney general. 

“BREAKING: Florida Senator Ashley Moody under FIRE for transferring $10 million in taxpayer money meant for children’s health care to a campaign fund,” Vindman, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, wrote July 27 on X.

Vindman’s post followed CBS News Miami’s report scrutinizing Moody’s role in the 2024 Hope Florida scandal. It involved Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration diverting $10 million from a Medicaid settlement to a foundation connected to DeSantis’ wife, which then sent the money to a political action committee chaired by DeSantis’ then-chief of staff, James Uthmeier. 

The PAC paid for ads and sent money to other political groups to defeat Amendment 3, which sought to legalize recreational marijuana in Florida.

Centene Corp., Florida’s largest Medicaid contractor, agreed in 2024 to pay $67 million after it was accused of overbilling the state’s Medicaid program for prescription drugs. 

At the time, Moody was Florida’s attorney general and her office authorized the settlement. The agreement sent $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation with no guardrails about how the money could be used. Moody’s deputy attorney general, John Guard, said she approved the agreement before he signed it. 

When contacted for comment, Albert Fujii, a Vindman campaign spokesperson, said Moody’s  deputy attorney general “confirmed multiple times that Moody expressly signed off on the deal.”

Cameron Gambini, Moody’s campaign communications director, said Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration, not Moody’s office, negotiated and settled the agreement. 

Aubrey Jewett, a University of Central Florida political science professor, said although Moody didn’t sign the agreement, she is responsible for her office’s actions.

Centene Corp., “insisted the (attorney general) be involved in the settlement because they were concerned about the unusual aspects of the deal and wanted to make sure they were legally protected,” Jewett said. “(Moody) was the chief legal officer for the state of Florida at the time, and if she had raised an objection, the deal would not have happened.”

Law experts said Moody didn’t take legal action after the money ended up in PAC accounts. 

What happened with the $10 million Medicaid settlement? 

Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration negotiated the state’s agreement with Centene, including the provision that $10 million would be donated to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charitable nonprofit created in 2023. The foundation serves as the fundraising arm for the state’s Hope Florida welfare initiative launched by Casey DeSantis in 2021.

The Agency for Health Care Administration received the settlement payment from Centene in late September 2024 and sent $10 million to the foundation. By October 2024, the Hope Florida Foundation sent $5 million apiece to two nonprofits.

Within days, the nonprofits wired a total of $8.5 million to Uthmeier’s Keep Florida Clean PAC, which was created to fight the 2024 recreational marijuana ballot initiative. Keep Florida Clean later sent millions of dollars to the Republican Party of Florida and the Florida Freedom Fund, another DeSantis-aligned PAC that Uthmeier chaired at the time.

Medicaid money is intended for healthcare, primarily for children, pregnant women and disabled low-income people. Medicaid settlement funds must be placed in a state trust fund, according to Florida law, with a portion owed to the federal government.

But it’s not unheard of in settlements for some money to be diverted to nonprofits that could help the people harmed by the action that led to the settlement. “The logic is that these groups can then use the money to help the harmed class in the future through education or direct aid,” Jewett said.

Hope Florida Foundation’s case was atypical. The organization had no contract with the Agency for Health Care Administration, no record of delivering Medicaid services and wasn’t meeting reporting requirements for its nonprofit status, experts said. 

Under Florida law, if a state agency reaches a settlement and donates some of it to a nonprofit, the donation is considered public funds. A nonprofit cannot receive the money without a formal written agreement or contract with the agency.

Michael Morley, a Florida State University law professor, said legal opinions have found that public funds can be provided to nonprofits “only if, among other things, the payments can be reasonably expected to primarily further a ‘clearly identified and concrete public purpose.’”

Morley said the settlement language — “Hope Florida, through the Hope Florida Foundation, Inc., serves a mission that is important to the policy goals of the State of Florida” — is vague and likely wouldn’t be sufficient to clearly identify the public purpose for the donation.

What was Moody’s role?

Moody’s title appears in the final agreement, although the extent of her involvement is not clear in available documentation.

Centene’s lawyers insisted during negotiations that Moody’s office or Florida’s Inspector General’s office be listed in the settlement agreement, according to records obtained by the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald. 

Guard, then Moody’s chief deputy attorney general, attempted to remove references to her during the drafting process, records showed.

Florida Democrats have recently called on Moody to request the release of a sealed grand jury investigation that looked into how the $10 million ended up in the committees’ accounts. Gambini said Moody “had no role in any grand jury proceedings and would certainly have no issue with the public release of any report.”

The DeSantis administration has not denied that $10 million was donated but says it wasn’t public money. In 2025, a spokesperson for the Florida attorney general’s office, now headed by Uthmeier, told reporters that donations to Hope Florida “are not state funds” under Florida law.

Moody’s campaign pointed PolitiFact to an August 2025 Politico story that found the $67 million Medicaid settlement was more than three times the actual loss the state incurred when it was overbilled. 

The DeSantis administration said the $10 million was an extra, private donation Centene included because the company didn’t want to pay a higher penalty in Florida as it was negotiating with other states.  

But Morley said the $10 million would likely be deemed public funds, since the settlement explicitly states it was part of Centene’s agreement to pay the $67 million “as directed by (the Agency for Health Care Administration),” rather than an independent transaction. 

Florida officials confirmed the state paid the federal government its portion of the settlement based on the full $67 million. (The federal government covers about 57% of Florida’s Medicaid costs.) Legal experts told us that casts doubt on the characterization that the settlement was actually $57 million.

Our ruling

Vindman said Moody transferred “$10 million in taxpayer money meant for children’s health care to a campaign fund.”

Moody’s office approved an agreement that diverted Medicaid settlement money to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charitable nonprofit connected to DeSantis’ wife. Within days, the foundation sent the funds to other nonprofits, which in turn transferred the money to a DeSantis-aligned PAC that spent millions to defeat ballot initiatives the governor campaigned against in 2024.

Moody did not impose guardrails on how the settlement funds could be spent once it was transferred to the Hope Florida Foundation, and took no legal action after money went to PACs. 

There are questions about Moody’s involvement and her awareness of how the $10 million would be spent. She has not answered those questions. But based on available information, Vindman’s comment does not reflect what the documentation shows. Moody and her office did not literally transfer the money to a campaign fund. 

His statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.

CORRECTION, Aug. 13: Casey DeSantis spearheaded the Hope Florida Foundation. A previous version of the story inaccurately described her role.