MIAMI — After a grand jury report found that Florida misappropriated $10 million in taxpayer money, the DeSantis administration is arguing that the anonymous leak of the report was the only crime committed.

And that reporters asking about its contents may be breaking the law.

“Let’s do a little exercise, here. Pull out your phone,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier told a reporter Thursday who asked for comment on the report, which had been sealed for months before CBS Miami reported on it Wednesday.

Leaking a grand jury report is a first-degree misdemeanor.

Uthmeier, who refused to discuss the report beyond calling it a politically motivated hoax, told the reporter to look up a Florida statute banning criminal solicitation.

“Are you trying to solicit a crime here in violation of the law?” Uthmeier asked, smiling. “I did not think so.”

The report found that $10 million from a Medicaid settlement was funneled through the DeSantis-aligned charity, Hope Florida, to two nonprofits and ultimately sent to a political committee fighting Amendment 3, a proposal to legalize marijuana.

The report did not find enough evidence to bring criminal charges for anyone involved, which includes some of the highest echelons of Florida’s political system: a current U.S. senator, the attorney general, DeSantis’ chief of staff, and an appellate judge.

Those officials moved into these elevated positions in the months following the Herald/Times’ reporting on the scandal engulfing the embattled charity.

The DeSantis administration, meanwhile, has bitterly rebuked all accusations of wrongdoing, maintaining that the investigation has been politically motivated and a “debunked hoax.”

They’ve maintained that the $10 million gifted to Hope Florida by Medicaid contractor Centene as part of a $67 million legal settlement was a “bonus,” not Medicaid dollars — despite the grand jury report finding that all of the money belonged to taxpayers.

Although Gov. Ron DeSantis, at an unrelated news event in Lake City, agreed with Uthmeier that leaking the report was the only crime committed in the Hope Florida saga, he took the most offense to the media tying the scandal to his wife, Casey DeSantis.

Florida’s first lady for years was the face of the organization, touting it as one of her key initiatives.

Gov. DeSantis on Thursday demanded the press take down articles and images using her picture, accusing the press of “smearing ... good people.”

“I think the people that were behind the smear, in the political arena, were disgraceful,” he said. “We’ve got cancer in the Legislature — some of these people are bad actors.”

The charity was created to connect needy families to churches and other community groups to help move them off of government assistance.

Since the grand jury report was issued in January, Casey DeSantis has not promoted Hope Florida.

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