WASHINGTON — That’s one way to fact-check your critics.
Democratic Florida Senate hopeful Angie Nixon insisted Wednesday she doesn’t want to abolish prisons — because she would like to see her Republican rival, Sen. Ashley Moody, thrown behind bars.
Nixon, a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America — which has pushed for eliminating prisons — made the bonkers claim during a CNN interview while Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) sat stone-faced next to her.
“They are spreading, like, a lot of disinformation and lies on commercials about me, of saying things like, I want to abolish prisons and I want to defund the police,” Nixon told “The Arena” host Kasie Hunt.
“Why would I want to do that when I want her [Moody] locked up and punished in jail for what she has done?”
Nixon is the first DSA member to win a major party nomination in a competitive Senate race. Ironically, the DSA’s platform calls for abolishing the upper chamber of Congress, which some scholars argue isn’t even possible.
When pressed by Hunt to say why she wants Moody thrown behind bars, Nixon cited the Hope Florida scandal, in which a grand jury found the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis misappropriated $10 million from a 2024 Medicaid fraud settlement worth $67 million between the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) and Missouri-based health care firm Centene Corporation.
The $10 million was given to the Hope Florida Foundation, founded by state first lady Casey DeSantis, and routed to two political action committees set up to oppose a 2024 ballot measure legalizing cannabis for use by adults age 21 and older.
The grand jury implicated Moody, Florida’s then-attorney general who had signed off on the settlement; her successor James Uthmeier, DeSantis’ then-chief of staff; and then-AHCA Secretary Jason Weida, the governor’s current chief of staff.
After the grand jury report was leaked to CBS News this past August, a Sunshine State appellate court ordered it expunged, finding that the panel exceeded its authority by making claims of wrongdoing without handing up actual indictments.
Nixon decried the state appeals court decision Wednesday as “corruption through and through.”
“Moody has been a rubber stamp to Donald Trump and when he decided to cut Medicaid here in the state,” she added. “I will be calling for a full-on investigation as it relates to what Ashley Moody and them have done.”
Nixon upset the Democratic establishment’s pick for the nomination, Trump impeachment star witness Alexander Vindman, in the August primary.
Moody leads Nixon by seven percentage points, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average.
Nixon’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
