Tipsheet

Did Minnesota AG Keith Ellison Help Somali Non-Profits Defraud State Taxpayers?

Amy Curtis
Amy Curtis  |  December 02, 2025 11:30 AM

Yesterday, Townhall reported that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was not only aware of the massive fraud taking place in his state — fraud that not only bilked Minnesota taxpayers of billions, but led to the death of at least one vulnerable Minnesota man and helped to fund Islamic terrorism in Somalia — but he was punishing whistleblowers who reported on the fraud.

But the rot and corruption didn't stop there. It now appears that Minnesota's Attorney General Keith Ellison not only helped Somali non-profit groups continue to get funding, despite the numerous red flags popping up, but that he allegedly received campaign donations after doing so.

We'll start with audio that reportedly shows Ellison promising to help Somali groups in exchange for campaign donations.

Here's more from the American Experiment:

Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s Attorney General, can clearly be heard pledging his support to individuals who would soon become his family’s campaign donors and later Feeding Our Future criminal defendants.

His recorded statements flatly contradict his contemporaneous public statements and raise uncomfortable questions about the intersection between political fundraising and constituent services.

American Experiment has exclusively obtained the complete 54-minute, 44-second audio file of a private December 2021 meeting between state Attorney General (AG) Keith Ellison and key figures in the Feeding Our Future scandal.

As I wrote last week, the audio file was named as Exhibit 710 on the evidence list presented to the court by Aimee Bock’s defense attorney, Kenneth Udoibok. The recording was not offered into evidence during the six-week trial that concluded last month, with Bock’s conviction on all seven counts she faced. A timeline of relevant events can be found here.

The audio is almost an hour long, but according to American Experiment, here are some salient points:

  • At 8:59, Ellison says he is "in the middle of the battle with the agencies now."
  • At 9:07, Ellison says, "[Governor Tim] Walz agrees with me that this piddly, stupid stuff running small people out of business is terrible."
  • At 9:50, Ellison "agrees with the proposition that there is state agency discrimination against East African businesses."
  • At 44:26, Ellison tells the audience, "Of course, I'm here to help."
  • At 45:00, Ellison says, "Let's go fight these people."

This meeting took place in early December 2021. According to American Experiment, on December 20, Ellison reportedly received $10,000 in campaign donations, including from donors Gandi Mohamed, Defendant No. 69 in the Feeding Our Future scandal, and the brother of Irkam Mohamed, Defendant No. 63 in the Feeding Our Future scandal. Ellison also received contributions from an unnamed Donor #2, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing. That same day, American Experiment reports that Ellison's son, Minneapolis city council member Jeremiah Ellison, also accepted campaign donations from Gandi and an unnamed Donor #2. Jeremiah Ellison reportedly also took donations from Salid Said, Ikram Mohamed, Ikram's husband, and Gandi's wife as well as four others later indicted in the Feeding Our Future case.

Republican Tom Tiffany, who is running to replace outgoing Wisconsin Democratic Governor Tony Evers, called out this video and said he would "never let our state fall victim to Third World-style corruption."

In a separate thread, Fox News contributor Paul Mauro laid out a similar timeline that backs up the claims that Ellison took campaign contributions after meeting with members of the Somali community about the Feeding Our Future program.

Ellison allegedly vowed to pressure state agencies to resume payments to Feeding Our Future.

Here's more from County Highway:

Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, is Minnesota’s highest law enforcement officer. In December of 2021, business leaders in the Twin Cities Somali community met with Ellison in his office in Saint Paul. Bill Glahn, a fellow at the conservative Twin Cities-based Center of the American Experiment and the former deputy commissioner of commerce for Republican governor Tim Pawlenty, obtained and published a recording of the meeting earlier this year. Its contents reveal how different the actual workings of Minnesota’s government are from what the citizens of any fair and generous and functioning society would probably like to believe.

Ellison’s guests were concerned that government moneys for a Minneapolis nonprofit called Feeding Our Future (FOF) might be in jeopardy. In late 2020, the nonprofit had sued the state, claiming the Minnesota Department of Education had been discriminatory in delaying and in many cases denying funding to a Somali-run group affiliated with FOF. Organizations working through FOF claimed to be providing tens of thousands of meals a day as part of a federally funded but state-administered COVID-era food-relief program. With even a little investigative initiative, Ellison’s office could easily have proven that Feeding Our Future was a $250 million fraud against taxpayers. Many of the nonprofits collecting state reimbursements under the FOF umbrella simply didn’t exist, and even those with some basis in physical reality invoiced the state for implausible numbers of meals. By December of 2021, Feeding Our Future had actually won its case in state court, with a judge determining several months earlier that the state had no basis to impede the flow of money to the group. But the ruling didn’t actually require the state to resume all payments. In December, Somali groups and FOF still complained that funding wasn’t coming in quickly enough. 

As The New York Times reported, Democrats in Minnesota were so concerned about being perceived as racist that they were driven to turn a blind eye to this fraud and corruption, too. But it appears that those accusations were only part of the problem. It seems high-ranking Democrats like Tim Walz and Keith Ellison were aware of and aiding the fraud and — in the case of Tim Walz — reportedly punishing whistleblowers who spoke out.

We have just begun to scratch the surface of this scandal, it seems, and it's only going to get worse for Walz and Ellison from here.