House Oversight accuses Keith Ellison of contradicting fraud accounts

The Republican majority on the House Oversight Committee accused Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison of repeatedly contradicting public accounts of Minnesota’s massive Feeding Our Future fraud scandal. The 205-page report was published on Monday.

The scandal, which thrust the Land of 10,000 Lakes into the national spotlight, set off a chain of journalistic and congressional investigations that exposed a broader web of waste, fraud and abuse; These include allegations that members of the Somali community in Minnesota used social services to funnel millions of dollars to unqualified recipients, including terrorist groups in the Mogadishu area.

Report It describes several instances in which investigators say they were aware of fraud concerns earlier than Ellison and Gov. Tim Walz publicly acknowledged.

“Despite claims to the contrary made to the media, the governor and attorney general knew of fraud in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and Summer Meals Service Program (SFSP) as early as April 2020,” the committee found. he said.

HOME SURVEILLANCE REPORT CLAIMS WALZ ADMINISTRATION IGNORED FRAUD WARNINGS WHILE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WERE LOST

“The Governor and attorney general knew of fraud in the Child Care Assistance Program and the Non-Emergency Medical Transportation program as early as spring 2019. The Governor and Attorney General also became aware of fraud in 13 additional high-risk Medicaid programs at various times during their tenure and failed to take action.”

Interviews with education, human services and administration office officials led investigators to conclude that Ellison was aware of fraud concerns years before they became public.

Those interviews showed that Ellison was aware of fraud in state-run “high-risk Medicaid programs” as early as 2019, and linked that timeline to more than $300 million in fraud in the Feeding Our Future scam, and that federal prosecutors estimate fraud involving high-risk Medicaid programs could be as high as $9 billion.

MAJOR MEDICAID FRAUD PROJECT PUT MINNESOTA’S FEDERAL FUNDS AT RISK — AND THE CONSEQUENCES COULD GET FURTHER

The committee said it could not determine whether Ellison’s claim to protect Minnesota taxpayers amounted to “incompetence, willful blindness, or worse.”

Ellison’s office harshly pushed back on Republicans’ findings, saying the report was “filled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations to politicize the issue of fraud.”

In one example, the committee described Ellison issuing a press release in September 2022 that “misrepresented the timeline” of his office’s knowledge of improper allegations made by Feeding Our Future (FOF) and threatened that the nonprofit would file a lawsuit against the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE).

Ellison claimed that he stepped in during “Fall 2020” to advise and support MDE against the legal threat from FOF. But the committee found that MDE confronted FOF in April 2020, leaving what the committee described as months of delay by Democrats.

MDE Deputy Commissioner Daron Korte told the committee that it wasn’t until the following year that his agency declared a “serious deficiency” in FOF’s compliance with federal program rules and issued a stop payment order against them.

Korte said MDE has always had the authority to do so, but is reinstating payments and hedging out of fear of being taken to court.

The report found that Ellison and Walz demonstrated knowledge of the alleged fraud much earlier than they admitted or disclosed it.

MINNESOTA DHS Whistleblower Detailed ‘smear campaign’ AFTER REPORTING FRAUD CONCERNS TO GOVERNMENT

“[They] He claimed he knew little about the widespread fraud occurring in Minnesota until potentially billions of dollars were out the door, and believed the child care fraud, which occurred before the start of their term in 2019, had been solved by the time they took office, the report said.

The committee accused Ellison of slowly controlling FOF and other concerns, citing the former congressman as expecting the federal government to do his job on his behalf instead.

Despite knowledge of the situation in the spring of 2020, their corrective actions did not come until two years later, when news of the FBI’s pandemic fraud investigation emerged, they wrote.

During the trial of FOF leader Aimee Bock, the defense introduced Exhibit 710, which contains nearly an hour of recordings of AG Ellison’s meeting with several defendants in the 2021 case.

They included Salim Said, who owned a defunct Somali restaurant and was convicted of 20 felonies, and others, including Shakur Abdinur Abdisalam, who pleaded guilty in March to defrauding the federal government of millions of dollars.

According to the report, Ellison told a reporter that he was preparing to meet with his friend Mohamed Omar, the imam of the Dar al-Farooq mosque in Bloomington, Minnesota, and was surprised that the other attendees were there when he arrived.

SOUNDS OF ELLISON MEETING WITH CONVINCED FRAUDERS ARE EMERGING AS ATTORNEY CLAIMS WALZ AND AG SHARE THE BLAME

But the committee argued that Ellison contradicted that statement during the hearing when he told Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., that the group had come to him and was “looking for solutions to difficult problems.”[ies] With bureaucracy.”

Ellison told Luna that he investigated what he was told and then worked with the feds to prosecute the suspects, counting 57 people convicted of crimes.

“They were not what they claimed to be,” Ellison said.

The report found that some people at the meeting “promised political and financial support to the Somali community” if Ellison intervened over allegations they were being racially profiled or discriminated against by government agencies.

Ellison said he would help “fight these people.”

When Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., confronted Walz about the exchange during a hearing, the governor said it was the first he’d heard of it and that he “wouldn’t speculate” on it.

GREGG JARRETT: IF WALZ Is Charged In MINNESOTA FRAUD Scandal, His Best Defense Is Incompetence

The committee also found that when asked about prosecutorial authority, Ellison said he had jurisdiction over Medicaid fraud investigations but said other criminal cases should be referred to district attorneys.

The panel argued that this was a glaring omission in previous testimony before the Senate, when Ellison said non-Medicaid criminal cases could also be referred to him by the governor’s office.

Ellison spokesman Brian Evans told Fox News Digital that the House would be better served “by helping Minnesota protect tax dollars and go after fraudsters.”

“The record is clear that Attorney General Ellison fought fraud wherever and whenever possible,” Evans said.

“In districts where Attorney General Ellison has the authority to prosecute, he has charged and convicted more than 340 Medicaid fraudsters. In fact, Attorney General Ellison’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit regularly ranks as one of the most effective Medicaid fraud-fighting units in the country.”

Republican Lawmaker Announces Walz Act After Billions of Dollars Lost in Minnesota Fraud Scandal

As for the sections of jurisdiction mentioned in the report, Evans said Ellison protects Minnesota from frivolous lawsuits from those trying to conceal schemes when he doesn’t have sufficient authority to go after fraudsters.

His office said Ellison had recently moved to St. While he noted that he has introduced legislation to expand the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in St. Paul, he added that the House report did not properly distinguish between officials from the AG’s office and other agencies.

Ellison’s office said they have sole authority to prosecute Medicaid fraud and that other welfare fraud is the purview of counties or the feds.

In a separate statement to Fox News, Walz spokesman Teddy Tschann said the report showed the committee had “re-stated” it “over and over again” to prove it was “nothing but a joke.”[ing] Their attention is distracted from endless wars, gas prices, ICE and [President Donald Trump’s alleged] insider trading.”

The House report noted that both Walz and Ellison were given the opportunity to explain their actions at the March 2026 hearing, but failed to provide what the committee deemed adequate responses.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD FOX NEWS APPLICATION

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., was so alarmed by the investigation’s findings that he sent a letter Monday to Vice President J.D. Vance (in his capacity as head of Ohio’s White House Task Force to eliminate fraud) urging him to conduct his own comprehensive review of Minnesota’s social service programs.

Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report.