Florida Trident

Florida taxpayers paid a second law firm $111,387.50 to represent an unidentified person in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office amid a grand jury investigation into $10 million diverted from the public treasury to Hope Florida that ended up in political committees.

Florida taxpayers on the hook for more than a half-million in legal fees for Hope Florida probe

Advocates for cancer patients and cancer survivors have joined Florida medical associations in objecting to a revived Florida Department of Health plan to strike four longstanding vaccine mandates that the advocates say are safe and life-saving.

Hidden files show Wyoming entity was backing Jim DeNiro and Kristina Sargent before it incorporated.

An anonymous Wyoming corporation is spending to unseat two Sarasota commissioners. Its beneficiaries are obvious. Its funders are not.

For decades the answer to inexpensive, safe housing for older retired Floridians was found in mobile home communities. Yet with Florida’s growth and an increasing and longer-living senior population, for many, that once sure answer is wrong.

Lieutenant Arturo Gonzalez, who led the Fort Myers Police Department’s special enforcement division, abruptly retired this week after allegations he was caught on city surveillance video in an affectionate moment with a human resources employee earlier this month, the Florida Trident confirmed.

The federal corruption investigation against him was terminated last November, but Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno faces a new inquiry into some of the same allegations — this time by the Florida Ethics Commission. Editor's note: Watch WGCU's Southwest Florida In Focus tonight for a special interview with Florida Trident's Bob Norman on the Carmine Marceno case.

Leon County Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh issued an order Wednesday granting the Florida Center for Government Accountability and its publication, the Florida Trident, a limited right to intervene in court proceedings related to a secret grand jury presentment in the ongoing Hope Florida investigation.The ruling marks a significant step in the effort to bring transparency to a process that has so far unfolded almost entirely outside of public view.

A grand jury investigating the diversion of millions of dollars in public funds to the Hope Florida Foundation has produced a presentment that remains confidential while a legal challenge plays out, the Florida Trident has learned through official responses to public records requests.