FCGA asks Leon County Court to explain why rulings in the Hope Florida Grand Jury Case are secret

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Center for Government Accountability (FLCGA), publisher of the Florida Trident, filed a motion today asking the Leon County Circuit Court to clarify the legal basis for withholding its own orders in the proceeding over the Hope Florida grand jury presentment.

The motion, filed by FLCGA and its executive director, Michael Barfield, raises two issues. First, it asks the Court to ensure that FLCGA receives notice when any final order is entered in the case, even if no party appeals. The motion seeks clarification of the Court’s July 8 order, which states FLCGA is to be notified only if someone else files an appeal. If no one appeals, the 30-day window to seek appellate review runs out, and FLCGA, which is barred from seeing “orders rendered,” never learns the order exists. As the motion puts it, “A right of review that expires before its holder can learn of the ruling to be reviewed is not a right; it is its appearance.”

Second, the motion argues that no Florida statute makes the Court’s orders confidential. Section F.S. 905.28 shields “a report or presentment of the grand jury.” It “says nothing of the court’s order on a motion to repress or expunge.” When the Legislature wants court orders kept secret, the motion notes, it says so expressly, as it has for the Baker Act and guardianship orders. Exemptions from Florida’s public records laws are narrowly construed, and courts may not enlarge them, a principle the Second District Court of Appeal reaffirmed last week in FLCGA’s own public records appeal in the Christian Ziegler matter. Florida appellate courts have reviewed orders on motions to repress grand jury presentments as public judicial acts for decades.

The motion asks the Court to state whether a separate sealing order exists. If none does, FLCGA asks that the Clerk release the Court’s rulings, redacted to omit any passage that reproduces the presentment itself. If one does, FLCGA asks to see it and to challenge it, as the Court authorized in March. “What Rule 2.420 does not permit,” the motion states, “is a third possibility: that the Court’s orders be withheld from public inspection without any order determining them confidential, without findings, and without notice.”

“The grand jury did its work. A judge has ruled on it. The public is entitled to know what the judge decided and why,” Barfield said. “The presentment may be confidential under the statute. The judge’s order is not. We are asking the Court to say which of its rulings are sealed, under what authority, and to give us the notice we need to exercise the right it already granted us.”

FLCGA was granted limited intervention in the case on March 25, 2026, “to test the correctness of the trial court’s closure order.” The grand jury’s report, filed under seal in January, examined what it determined was a misappropriation of $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement through the Hope Florida Foundation to political action committees (PACs) that opposed the 2024 marijuana legalization amendment.

The grand jury found that Attorney General James Uthmeier, then the governor's chief of staff, was "in a position of authority" directing the money after it reached Hope Florida; $8.5 million of it went to a PAC he chaired.

The grand jury also found that then-Attorney General Ashley Moody, now a U.S. senator, authorized her chief deputy to sign the settlement after he told her he had reservations about its legality.

The grand jury’s report became public on August 26 when CBS News Miami reported on a copy it had obtained. The motion argues that the release of the report does not moot the case: the question of what the public may lawfully inspect, and by what findings, remains for the Court to answer.

FLCGA is represented by CEO Barbara A. Petersen and General Counsel Robert Craig Waters. Barfield appears pro se.

The motion is available here.

This article first appeared on Florida Trident and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.