Worrell links possible removal to review of Hope Florida money trail

The story surrounding the grand jury's findings on the Hope Florida Foundation took another turn last week when Orlando-area State Attorney Monique Worrell, a Democrat, held a news conference to say she had heard Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier were planning to remove her from office, just as DeSantis had several years earlier.

This time, she said she believed she knew why they were out to get her. She claimed it was because she had instructed her staff to begin reviewing the diversion of $10 million from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation, money that eventually was used for political purposes.

In an interview with CBS News Miami, she again said she believed they were planning to remove her to stop her from looking into Hope Florida.

"I can only believe that the motivation is the fact that I have said that I will look into how the Hope Florida scandal impacted this community," she said, noting that some of the money diverted into a political action committee overseen by Uthmeier was used to buy TV ads in the Orlando area as part of the governor's campaign to oppose the ballot initiative to legalize marijuana. "I've said that we will look into what happened with Hope Florida here in central Florida to see if there are any criminal charges that are warranted."

"The state attorney's office typically does not investigate criminal offenses," she told CBS Miami's Jim DeFede. "That is the job of law enforcement. A case like this is very unique, however, because if what the [grand jury] report proposes to say, we have very deep governmental corruption that's taking place. And in cases like that, you don't know how deep that corruption goes. So, I do have to be very careful about, you know, what I say with regards to the potential for criminal charges. It's something that I would classify at this point as a review, something that we're looking into."

She has said she has not ruled out empaneling another grand jury to examine the evidence.

It is impossible to know whether there was a plan to remove Worrell and, even if there was, whether it had anything to do with her potentially investigating Hope Florida. But it does go back to my earlier point: This issue is not going away anytime soon.

Uthmeier said he had no idea whether there were plans to remove Worrell.

Worrell's comments come as the public continues to wonder why no one is being held accountable for diverting $10 million in taxpayer money into the governor's political agenda.

The grand jury said it could not bring criminal charges because no one would take responsibility for what it described as "a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities."

But that finding has brought new criticism of Jack Campbell, the man who led the grand jury in Tallahassee. His handling of the case has sparked confusion and frustration among former prosecutors interviewed by CBS News Miami.

"I have to tell you honestly, I read this report again last night, it's really outrageous," said Sam Rabin, a former state and federal prosecutor and a long-time criminal defense attorney. "I mean, this is nothing more than a `sweep this whole thing under the rug.' This was not a serious effort to get to the bottom of this."

"This grand jury concluded that the money was stolen," Rabin said. "They used the word misappropriated, but that's another way of saying the money was stolen. Once they have identified that a crime occurred, they had an obligation to pursue that and find the people that were culpable, that were responsible. And they completely abdicated that responsibility."

Bruce Udolf, the former head of the public corruption unit in the U.S. attorney's office in Miami, agreed.

"Any prosecutor, worth their salt, would not walk away from this case with just a grand jury recommendation that we have insufficient evidence to proceed," Udolf said. "The only excuse for saying we have insufficient evidence, is to do a thorough investigation. And this, sad to say, this investigation was not thorough by any means."

Campbell empaneled the grand jury last year after Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade forwarded the findings of a pair of state House hearings that first uncovered the $10 million diversion into the Hope Florida Foundation. Campbell, a Democrat, did not respond to a request for comment.

"Jack Campbell's a good guy and he takes his job seriously," said Dave Aronberg, the former state attorney for Palm Beach County. "He's not partisan. And so, when he's being called out for being a Democratic partisan hack, that's just not who he is.

"He's also cautious," Aronberg said. "And when you go after prominent state elected officials, you got to make sure you have the goods, not gray area. You got to make sure you have it clearly. And the grand jury did not believe so."

Nevertheless, Aronberg said that, based on his reading of the grand jury report, he did believe crimes had occurred.

"Oh, yeah," Aronberg said. "For those who ordered the transfer of taxpayer funds to this organization, they could face first-degree felonies of grand theft, official misconduct. Those are serious crimes."

In their report, grand jurors noted that key witnesses who appeared before them said they could not remember what happened or who was responsible. Rabin said that is not unusual.

"In every grand jury investigation, people clam up," Rabin said. "People decide they don't want to talk because it could incriminate them. So essentially the grand jury in this case said, well, nobody's really willing to talk to us, so we can't get to the bottom of this. If that were the test, there would never be any indictments."

Both David Jolly, who is running for governor against Byron Donalds, and Jose Javier Rodriguez, who is running for attorney general against James Uthmeier, said that if elected, they would launch a new investigation into the diversion.

Both DeSantis and Uthmeier continue to say they did nothing wrong.