Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has been under serious fire over the widespread corruption and fraud in his state.
Attorney General Keith Ellison has now also been included after some rather dismissive comments about the fraud.
They are both now under a brighter light after one of the fraudsters has come forward, claiming they both knew what was taking place.
A mere two months into Walz’s term, Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles reviews a claim that massive fraud in the childcare industry was taking place.
The report he was investigating claimed that as much as $100 million was being funneled from Minnesota to a Somali terror group overseas.
In April 2020, Twin Cities nonprofits Feeding Our Future and Partners in Quality Care (also known as Partners in Nutrition) significantly increased meal sponsorship, taking advantage of the USDA program. The program jumped from less than $4 million per year to more than 10x that in 2020, and nearly $200 million in 2021, yet nobody seemed to notice or even check for fraud at the time.
When the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) became suspicious, Feeding Our Future sued to have its funds released on the basis of racial discrimination, and the funds were eventually released. This just snowballed from there to the situation we have today.
Enter Attorney General Keith Ellison, who is now pushing back against the federal government investigating the fraud in the state.
When asked if his office had done enough to go after fraudsters in the state, he responded, "Of course, we've done enough — and we're doing more every single day. This is a political matter. This is not a serious thing.”
He continued, “And I tell you one reason why you know, because I introduced a bill last session to increase our Medicaid fraud unit and to increase certain procedural mechanisms to be more effective in prosecuting fraud. I couldn't get any Republican support for that. What they want is an issue. They don't want to solve fraud.”
Estimates of fraud within the state are now as high as $9 billion, yet Ellison claims they have done enough. The state was alerted to the fraud in 2019, and yet dozens of companies have been able to set up solely to grab as much taxpayer money as possible, and it all happened on Walz’s watch.
Aimee Bock, the former head of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, is now pointing the finger at Walz and Ellison, saying they knew what was taking place and did nothing to stop it.
She stated, "I honestly believe Keith Ellison and Gov. Walz need to be held accountable. There needs to be an investigation done. If they weren't aware, that's concerning.”
She continued, "I have to believe that the governor's office and Keith Ellison's office were aware of this. They've said they were involved in helping the FBI. They've said they were made aware, but apparently I'm scary, so they couldn't do anything.”
Ellison’s office has already responded, calling Bock a “liar,” but I would not be so quick to dismiss her claim. What raised the red flag for me was the initial lawsuit that panicked the MDE into releasing funding, even though the organization was expanding nearly 50-fold. There has to be internal communications on this, and I believe that will tell the true story about how interested state leadership was in exposing this fraud.
