TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida charity created by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration didn’t keep meeting minutes, had no budget or bylaws, didn’t file its tax returns and asked few questions before steering $10 million in Medicaid money to two dark money groups, the board’s chairperson told a House committee on Tuesday.

The Hope Florida Foundation — created to support first lady Casey DeSantis’ top initiative — doesn’t seem to have obeyed any of the requirements in state law governing its ethics, oversight or governance, lawmakers found.

“In recent weeks, the public reporting has made evident that mistakes were made,” said the board’s chairperson, Joshua Hay, the CEO of a company that does tens of millions of dollars in business with the state. “There are lapses in reporting procedures.”

The state-created charity has had three meetings since it was created in 2023 but only recorded the minutes from one: the October meeting in which it accepted a $10 million donation by Centene, the state’s largest Medicaid contractor.

Centene said it was “directed” by Florida officials in a legal settlement to donate the money after it notified regulators it had overbilled the state.

The $10 million was by far the largest donation in Hope Florida Foundation’s history, Hay said. Within days, the foundation received a request from a dark money group affiliated with the Florida Chamber of Commerce requesting a $5 million grant. The group is considered a “dark money” organization because it’s a 501(c)(4) nonprofit and does not have to disclose its donors.

Hay said he thought the money would go to a “public awareness campaign” to help Hope Florida, an initiative created by Casey DeSantis to remove Floridians from government assistance. The grant was approved during a 20-minute meeting that was never publicized.

In the days after the meeting, a second dark money organization, St. Petersburg-based Save Our Society from Drugs, also requested and received $5 million through a similar grant. Hay said the transactions were cleared by the charity’s lawyer, Jeff Aaron.

“I got assurances through Jeff Aaron that, and also with all the other attestations made in the proposals, that there was comfort that it was aboveboard,” Hay told lawmakers.

Both groups that got grants later sent money to a political committee called Keep Florida Clean that’s controlled by James Uthmeier, Ron DeSantis’ then-chief of staff who is now the state’s attorney general. Uthmeier’s committee then sent millions to the Republican Party of Florida, which campaigned against last year’s recreational pot ballot initiative. DeSantis’ Florida Freedom Fund, also controlled by Uthmeier, received $1.1 million from Keep Florida Clean.

Rep. Alex Andrade, the Pensacola Republican who has been investigating the charity, said Monday that Uthmeier contacted both dark-money groups and told them to apply for the $5 million grants.

“This is looking more and more like a conspiracy to use Medicaid money to pay for campaign activity,” Andrade said after Tuesday’s hearing. “If I’m the U.S. attorney for the Northern District (of Florida), I’d be very concerned about that.”

He said Uthmeier should “give back the money and explain yourself.”

While Andrade said Monday he would issue a subpoena to Uthmeier for his text messages and call logs, by Tuesday he said he would first seek those records voluntarily.

Uthmeier said in a news conference Monday that the charity had done “nothing wrong.”

”It made its own decision to give generous support to other not-for-profits that ... already work with the entity and share that same mission, helping moms, helping families, protecting our kids,” he said.

As House members grilled the organization’s leadership, the governor and the first lady were 200 miles away in Andrade’s district, doubling down on their support for Hope Florida and slamming the Republican lawmakers scrutinizing it.

DeSantis did not comment on any of the mistakes that were acknowledged during the House committee. Instead, he attacked what he characterized as a “cabal” in Florida House leadership for “manufacturing smears” about the first lady’s initiative.

At one point, the governor suggested Republican lawmakers are inspecting the program for political reasons because the first lady is considering a run for governor in 2026.

“A lot of people feel threatened by the first lady. Let’s just be clear about that,” the governor said, saying that Casey DeSantis “runs circles around people.”

Andrade’s investigation into Hope Florida and its state-created charity has captivated lawmakers and lobbyists during this year’s legislative session. They packed Tuesday’s committee hearing, sometimes chuckling or gasping at the answers given by Hay, Department of Children and Families Secretary Taylor Hatch and the new head of Hope Florida, Erik Dellenback. Dellenback started in January and previously served as DeSantis’ liaison for Faith & Community, a position he still has.

Neither Hatch nor Hay said they knew where the $10 million went after it was sent to the two dark-money groups.

Andrade asked Hatch whether a “political committee is the best method of helping families achieve economic self-sufficiency,” the stated goal of Hope Florida.

“My understanding is those two organizations, again, from what I recently read, are focused on helping to support families from a recovery perspective and access to care,” Hatch responded. “I have no reason to believe that funds went beyond that.”

Rep. Debra Tendrich, a Lake Worth Democrat who runs her own charity, noted that the grant process for the $10 million was never made public, making it impossible for other organizations to apply.

She noted that the charity had no requirements to report how the money was used. She pointed out that one of the grants explicitly stated that the foundation’s donation wouldn’t be publicly disclosed.

“Especially with Hope Florida doing such great work, you would think that we would want a press release, make it public, and share this great contribution,” Tendrich said.

“I can’t say why it was not publicized,” Hay said. “I relied on the advice of counsel.”

The foundation’s board members include executives and lobbyists who do business with state agencies. They include a lobbyist for Walgreens and an executive vice president for CDR Maguire, the disaster management firm that has received hundreds of millions of dollars in state contracts over the years. The foundation has not required its board members to sign statements avoiding conflicts of interest.

Hay’s company, Indelible Solutions, has received mostly no-bid emergency contracts from DeSantis’ agencies worth about $75 million since he joined the board in 2023, according to the state’s contracting website. One of those contracts, for $22,400, was to assist the Hope Florida program.

Hay said the board has scheduled a Thursday meeting to approve its tax returns and remedy its other shortfalls, including signing conflict of interest statements. The board has held three meetings since its inception, and none of them were open to the public, in violation of the state’s open meeting laws.

“I’m frankly astonished,” said Rep. Allison Tant, a Democrat from Tallahassee. “I’m trying to wrap my head around how this happened and how we prevent it from happening again.”

Hay said that Tallahassee attorney Mohammad Jazil was helping the foundation organize its records.

Andrade said that concerned him because Jazil also works for the Uthmeier political committee that received the $10 million.

Andrade said he planned on holding another hearing next week to hear testimony from Aaron and the leaders of the two groups that received the grant money.

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