Tallahassee – Chamber’s legislators end their investigation into the Hope Florida Foundation of Governor Ron Desantis without having heard the testimonies of the lawyer or the leaders of the organization of two groups which obtained $ 5 million in subsidies from the charity.
Representative Alex Andrade, the Republican of Pensacola, who directed the investigation, said Thursday that he believed that the prosecutor General of Florida James Uthmeier and the lawyer for the charity, Jeff Aaron, committed criminal acts when they left $ 10 million of a Medicaid regulation on the Foundation.
The Foundation gave money to two other non -profit organizations, which then gave $ 8.5 million to a political committee controlled by uthmeier.
But Andrade said that his committee would not be those who are pursuing them. The legislative session should end next week.
“Although I was firmly convinced that James Uthmeier and Jeff Aaron embarked on a conspiracy to commit money laundering and fraud in wire, and that several parties played a role in the abusive use of 10 million dollars in Medicaid funds, we, as legislators, will not be those who will take ultimate charge decisions”, said Andrade to the legislators on Thursday.
“I believe that our work on this subject as such as a subcommittee will be concluded,” he added.
The 10 million dollars came from State entrepreneur Medicaid Centene in the context of a legal regulation of $ 67 million for overhauling for prescription drugs. State officials “ordered” the company to donate money to the Hope Florida Foundation.
Over the next three weeks, the foundation’s board of directors held a secret meeting to allocate $ 5 million to a 501 (C) (4) (4) supervised by the CEO of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Mark Wilson, and the president of the Council granted an additional $ 5 million to Save Our Society, based in Saint Petersburg. Groups do not have to disclose their donors.
These two groups then sent almost all the money to a political committee supervised by Uthmeier, who was then the chief of staff of the governor. The Committee was created to defeat Amendment 3, the failed voting initiative which tried to legalize recreational marijuana.
Text messages have shown that Uthmeier said to the head of the safeguard of our drug society, Amy Ronshausen, to ask for money.
“There is no doubt that these were Medicaid funds led by the chief of staff to the governor through secret and clandestine actions to his own political committee,” Andrade told legislators on Thursday.
Andrade said earlier this month that he was going to make an assignment to Uthmeier, but had retained the threat the next day. He still has many requests for recordings, including text messages and call newspapers, unanswered with Desantis agencies.
“The Governor’s office wants this to become a show to distract real problems,” said Andrade in a text message thereafter. “I know what I should know as a legislator, and it is at the FBI and the Doj (Ministry of Justice) to worry about the fight against public corruption.”
He added that “the next session, I will work on politics corrections to approach obvious public corruption exposed by James Uthmeier.”
Aaron responded by threatening to file a defamation trial and a complaint with the state bar against Andrade, who is a lawyer. The uthmeier spokesperson described the declarations of “defamatory”.
“These ridiculous accusations are false and are not based on a judicial conclusion or a proof file,” said Uthmeier spokesman Jeremy Redfern in a statement.
“The representative must keep in mind that he is a member of the Florida bar and must join professional and ethical canons,” added Redfern. “And these cannons generally discourage the wild and defamatory accusations which he launched against the Attorney General.”
Andrade replied the two by refusing to withdraw his statements.
“I will not be threatened or intimidated in silence by James Uthmeier,” he said in a statement. “I have the obligation to call and fight corruption, even of him.”
Wilson and Ronshausen said that they would testify before the committee on Thursday, but both fell back a few minutes before the start, said Andrade. Aaron first declared that he could attend a hearing on Friday, but he too fell.
Everyone has cited legal or confidentiality problems.
Aaron wrote Andrade who did not all hope that the members of the Board of Directors of the Florida Foundation had given up their lawyer-client privilege.
Wilson wrote to Andrade who “investigates” further on the involvement of his organization in the use of money to combat the legalization of recreational marijuana “would undermine the rights of the foundation association, undergoing the organization and frightening its conduct protected by the Constitution”.
Ronshausen wrote that she wanted to “preserve all the privileges in the name” of his organization, “legally or other”.
“Doing it is even more necessary now than, the only time I have been asked to speak of” the file “with a member of this committee, I was assured that he would remain confidential,” Ronshausen said in his email at 7:47 am in Andrade.
Andrade told journalists after the committee that the parental organization of Save Our Society of drugs – Drug Free America – “feels induced by Jeff Aaron and James Uthmeier”.
“They have activated their insurance policy. They are concerned about responsibility. They take measures to rectify this, and they have already provided documents in response to our request for documents,” said Andrade.
Andrade could convene a special committee to force Ronshausen and Wilson to testify, but he said that the file has already shown that the $ 10 million had been channeled in the political committee of uthmeier to fight against amendment 3. He spent several minutes on Thursday reciting the scandal calendar.
“I gave a summary earlier, it’s quite succinct and saved by facts,” said Andrade. “I will leave the rest of the investigation at the FBI and the Ministry of Justice.”
Representative Debra Tendrich, a Democrat in Lake Worth who sits on the Committee, said that she hoped to ask money on money, as it told Wilson to ask for $ 5 million.
Tendrich, who directs her own non -profit organization, noted that the subsidy had never been announced, and she said that she wondered why Wilson’s organization had written on her subsidy request that she “would not voluntarily reveal” that she had received money. The two are very unusual for non -profit organizations.
She said taxpayers deserved to have answers on what was done with money.
“Not to introduce themselves, that implies them that they had reprehensible acts in there,” said Tendrich.
