Just when Minnesota Democrats thought the fraud issue would go away, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform dropped a bombshell report on Monday detailing how Gov. Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison were aware of the rampant fraud and did nothing to stop it.
A significant portion of the report focuses on the Feeding Our Future scandal in which a Minnesota-based nonprofit exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to con the federal government out of millions of dollars. They claimed they were using the money to provide meals for children and others. In reality, they pocketed the cash.
The report revealed that top officials in the Walz administration and Ellison’s office were given clear warnings about fraud in multiple programs as early as 2019 and 2020. “Senior officials in Governor Walz’s office and Attorney General Ellison’s office were aware of credible, systemic fraud concerns in social services programs as early as 2019 within the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) and by April 2020 within the state Department of Education (MDE), despite later public statements by Governor Walz suggesting otherwise,” the report noted.
BREAKING: We just released a BOMBSHELL report exposing how Governor Tim Walz and AG Keith Ellison fueled Minnesota's fraud explosion.
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) June 8, 2026
$9 billion in Medicaid lost. $300 million in federal child nutrition funds were placed at serious risk.
Read the report and key takeaways 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/Srh819XTDh
Walz and Ellison had the authority to cut off payments to fraudulent operations, but they allowed taxpayer funds to continue flowing to these entities even after the red flags emerged in the Feeding Our Future case.
The report highlights how the Department of Education continued paying Feeding Our Future and other fraudsters out of fear of political repercussions. The social services provider community in the state wields tremendous political influence that could have been leveraged against the Walz administration. Indeed, his team was more concerned about getting ahead of media reports about the fraud than actually addressing the problem.
Providers accused state workers of racism when they tried to check for fraud in child care and other programs. The fear of being called racist prompted officials to look the other way even though they had evidence that the money wasn’t going to its stated purpose.
BREAKING: A BOMBSHELL House Oversight report just dropped confirming Gov. Tim Walz and AG Keith Ellison KNEW about rampant Minnesota fraud for 6 YEARS — but wanted to keep votes, so didn't target the Somalis
— RightLine (@RightLineNews) June 8, 2026
pic.twitter.com/Yth0XeFw0X
Even more egregious is how Walz’s administration treated whistleblowers sounding the alarm on the fraud. A Minnesota Department of Education official who first contacted the FBI about Feeding Our Future told investigators that her superiors pressured her to stop looking into fraud “at every turn” and that she got her “hand slapped” for continuing to investigate, according to the committee.
She wasn’t the only one.
The report says dozens of staff in the human services department reported being warned not to speak up about the issue or they would be called racist and harm the government’s reputation. Some were yanked into meetings with bosses. Others were excluded from work meetings about the fraud problems they identified. Many said they feared reporting fraud to the Homeland Security Office of Inspector General because the agency would contact the Commissioner or HR, who would retaliate against the workers.
The report says Walz’s team spent money on monitoring employees and hiring outside help to silence critics instead of actually fixing the fraud.
Rampant fraud in Minnesota gained national attention last year after it was revealed that billions of dollars in taxpayer money was given to bad actors who used it for their own purposes. In many cases, those running these scams purchased luxury products and services. In others, they even sent money to a radical Islamic terrorist group operating in Somalia.
The Trump administration moved quickly to deal with the issue, creating a new fraud enforcement division inside the Justice Department to root out scams like these. It has also withheld federal funds from Minnesota and is seeking to do so with other blue states that allow this type of abuse.
So, there you have it. The report confirms much of what most already suspected. The Walz administration didn’t care that fraudsters were stealing money and using it for their own purposes. Instead, their priority was making sure the public did not find out about it while also protecting their reputation. It didn’t do them much good in this case, did it?
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