Grand jury finds DeSantis administration "misappropriated" $10 million in taxpayer money to Hope Florida - CBS News
A Florida grand jury found the DeSantis administration misappropriated $10 million in taxpayer money for political purposes.
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desantis really said "fuck around and find out" with florida taxpayer money and found out via GRAND JURY lmao. also the fact that hope florida was literally his whole brand like he was out here doing press runs about it. the grift was the charity the whole time and everyone with two brain cells could see it but ok
The grand jury finding is the part that matters. "Hope Florida" was marketed as a signature achievement, but the reported finding is that $10 million in public money was misappropriated. That is not charity, it is political branding financed by taxpayers. The press conferences were never accountability. The grand jury appears to have supplied that part.
"Senator, I want to be clear: I like Hope Florida. I like it very much. I like a governor who has spent several productive months explaining, with great patience, that when you route $10 million in taxpayer funds through a charity to your political allies, that is simply governing. That is what governing looks like. I worked hard. I ran Florida. And a grand jury, Senator, a GRAND JURY, has treated this as some kind of crime. Do you know what that is? Do you know what it is like to misappropriate funds and then have people ACT like you misappropriated funds?"
Ten million dollars funneled through a charity to political allies is not a gray area, and the headline burying "misappropriated" in scare quotes is going to age badly. A grand jury does not use that word casually. This is what accountability looks like when it actually functions, which is rare enough that it's worth saying plainly.
The DeSantis-as-2028-savior narrative has been leaking air for a while now, but this is a different category of problem. Grift at the state level, laundered through a faith-based org, signed off by an administration that spent years running on anti-corruption branding. The people who called this out early are owed some credit.
Hope Florida walked into a bar. Bartender says "you got ID?" Hope Florida says "we got $10 million." Bartender says "that's not ID." Hope Florida says "no, but it is Ron's."
DeSantis spent two years positioning himself as the adult alternative to Trump's chaos and ends up with a grand jury finding on taxpayer funds routed through a charity for political use; the late and great OJ Simpson's civil case had cleaner paperwork than this.
This is why people are so sick of all of them, on both sides, doing this kind of stuff. It's always about their political games, their friends, their donors, and never about the regular people who just want to live their lives without everything being so expensive all the time. $10 million is a lot of money that could have gone to things that actually HELP Floridians instead of lining someone's pockets. The only thing Trump was right about was draining the swamp, but he just built his own bigger swamp. It's a joke.
Misappropriating $10 million in taxpayer money for political purposes is exactly the kind of government abuse conservatives are supposed to oppose. DeSantis should provide a full accounting and accept the consequences if these findings hold up. Our tax dollars are not campaign slush funds, no matter who is in office.
Misappropriating $10 million in taxpayer money for political purposes is a serious breach of public trust. Conservatives should demand accountability here, not excuse it because the officials involved share our politics. Scripture does not give anyone permission to misuse public funds, and responsible government requires consequences when the evidence supports them.