Nonprofit leader said she was wrongly pressured to testify in Hope Florida scandal

The head of a nonprofit that received a grant from the Hope Florida Foundation says she was pressured to testify to lawmakers.

Amy Ronshausen, Executive Director of Save Our Society From Drugs, sent a letter to Speaker Daniel Perez, saying that House Health Care Budget Subcommittee Chair Alex Andrade brought up pending funding requests when she was pushed to testify. She also said the Pensacola Republican wasn’t honest about how the information gleaned would be used.

Her letter discusses a telephone conversation she had with Andrade and lobbyist RJ Myers.

“Mr. Myers was pressured by Chairman Andrade to make me appear for the telephonic meeting. At the time, the 501 (c) (3) I also represent, Drug Free America Foundation, Inc. (DFAF), had an appropriations request pending before Chairman Andrade,” she wrote.

“Chairman Andrade brought up the pending budget request when persuading my lobbyist to make me take the meeting. Chairman Andrade further threatened to subpoena me if I failed to cooperate. SOS has important First Amendment rights and associational privileges I needed to protect, but I conducted the call with Chairman Andrade under duress due to the fear that DFAF would lose their funding pending before the Chairman and I would be subject to subpoena.”

Andrade disputed the description of events.

“Nothing she said in that letter happened,” he told Florida Politics.

Ronshausen was among the witnesses who did not appear at a final subcommittee hearing on an alleged spending scandal on Thursday. The hearing marked the last House meeting scheduled during Session on the alleged funneling of $10 million in Medicaid settlement money to the Hope Florida Foundation, then to two anti-drug nonprofits and ultimately to a political committee that fought a marijuana initiative on the November ballot last year.

In addition to using an appropriations request to pressure testimony, Ronshausen wrote that Andrade was dishonest about how the gathered information would be used.

“When the call began, Chairman Andrade said he simply needed to prepare a timeline, and that nothing shared during the call would ever leave the room and everything would remain strictly confidential and would not be presented to the Subcommittee,” she said. “Again, I participated in the call under extreme duress and based on a justifiable reliance on the promises of confidentiality by Chairman Andrade. Unfortunately, soon after the call, information I shared with Chairman Andrade appeared in media reports. Everything I had been promised by the Chairman with regard to confidentiality had been false.”

Andrade has pointed to written messages between Ronshausen and James Uthmeier, then Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Chief of Staff and now the Florida Attorney General, as evidence of potential money laundering and fraud.

But Ronshausen said Andrade has mischaracterized the information.

“Equally disturbing is that since the time of the call, Chairman Andrade has stated that James Uthmeier ‘OK’d’ my use of SOS funds received from a grant from Hope Florida for a campaign to oppose the passage of Amendment 3,” she said.

“These statements are patently false. I told Chairman Andrade the truth, which is the exact opposite of what Chairman Andrade is now telling the public. At no time has James Uthmeier directed me or SOS on how to use funds received from an entirely appropriate grant from Hope Florida. It is regrettable that these false statements are being made by a public official and being reported by the press.”