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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WFLA) — Eyebrows continue to raise over Hope Florida and its funding arm as reports of subpoenas and grand jury proceedings come to the surface. Details remain behind closed doors as state lawmakers consider what to do next.
Hope Florida, a program aiming to help folks get off government assistance, has faced scrutiny this past year over a mysterious money trail that started with a Medicaid settlement and ended with a political action committee.
“This is the sort of swamp-like behavior that people hate, and this is the sort of thing that makes people really cynical about politics,” said State Rep. Fentrice Driskell (D-Tampa).
The Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald initially broke the news of a criminal investigation into the matter back in May.
8 On Your Side followed up with Leon County State Attorney Jack Campbell, who said, “No, there’s no comment on that at all. Everything that the grand Jury does is, in fact, confidential.”
Last legislative session, state Rep. Alex Andrade (R-Pensacola) led a House committee probe into the matter, and when that abruptly ended, he handed all the information he had over to prosecutors.
“If they are not going to be good stewards of the taxpayer dollar, we really have to step up our goal in supervision and direction of the executive to make sure we’re at least protecting the taxpayer dollar, if Governor DeSantis doesn’t care about it,” said Andrade.
DeSantis, however, has said there was no basis to conduct an investigation, and it was all politically motivated.
“Just understand what happened. He took documents and he dropped them in a prosecutor’s office. That is not an organic investigation. That’s a manufactured political operation,” said DeSantis.
State lawmakers now say there are legislative guardrails they can put into place to make sure this never happens again, but the question remains if they’ll take that step.