Tim Walz’s administration is actively stonewalling a congressional probe into welfare fraud, the House Education and Workforce Committee said in a Monday letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Minnesota governor’s staff has not turned over documents the committee subpoenaed for in September 2024 concerning fraud amid a scandal over Feeding Our Future (FOF), a Somali-led nonprofit that defrauded the government of $300 million in COVID-19 relief funds meant for needy children, Republican committee chair Tim Walberg of Michigan wrote in the letter. Lawmakers seek information to determine whether the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) is properly protecting taxpayer-funded federal nutrition programs from fraud.
Walz’s administration responded to the House committee’s 2024 subpoena with incomplete documents that excluded text messages between the governor and his staff, and the committee is now also asking for records of communications related to his handling of congressional requests, Walberg wrote.
Walz’s office did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
“Reporting over the last five to 10 years and the criminal trials of FOF personnel and others continue to raise grave concerns about whether the [nutrition] programs have adequate safeguards in place against fraud, waste, and abuse,” the letter says. “Related questions exist of whether Minnesota and MDE have exercised sufficient oversight of food service sponsors and providers.”
Officials charged nearly 80 defendants in the FOF scandal, producing more than 50 convictions so far, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in December. The nonprofit’s leader, Somali-born naturalized U.S. citizen Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, was sentenced to 28 years in prison in August.
President Donald Trump has cracked down on immigration from Somalia and paused federal health and agriculture funding for Minnesota over widespread welfare fraud. Walz said in December that while his welfare regime “attracts criminals,” Trump is using the scandal to “demonize” Minnesota’s Somalis.
“Those people are going to jail,” Walz said of fraudsters. “We’re doing everything we can.”
The governor dropped his reelection campaign in January and announced he will not seek public office again.
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