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High-ranking Minnesota officials, including Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, knew about the fraud happening in their state and failed to do anything to stop it, according to a report released yesterday by the House Oversight Committee.
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From Just the News:
“Testimony obtained by the Committee reveals that Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison were aware of widespread fraud in social service programs, lied about their knowledge of the fraud, and retaliated against employees who dared to raise concerns,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said in a statement.
“Instead of protecting vulnerable Americans, they handed over billions in taxpayer dollars to fraudsters and threw their own state employees under the bus,” Comer added.
The committee launched an investigation in December into allegations of fraud in Minnesota’s public benefits programs after fresh evidence of daycare fraud in the state’s federally-funded childcare benefits program surfaced that month.
After news of the widespread fraud in Minnesota broke, Governor Walz claimed that his administration worked hard to root it out. However, after speaking to nine former and current Minnesota state officials, the Oversight Committee determined this was not the case.
For example, Governor Walz previously claimed that he first heard about the fraud perpetrated by the nonprofit Feeding Our Future in November of 2020. An official with the state’s Department of Education, however, confirmed that complaints about the organization came in as early as 2018, and tat both the Governor and the Attorney General would have been informed of these concerns by April 2020.
Both Governor Walz and Attorney General Ellison testified before the committee yesterday. Meanwhile, as federal officials work to hold Minnesota accountable for its fraud, the state has been fighting back, suing the federal government for blocking Medicaid funding to the state over concerns of fraud.
From The Epoch Times:
Minnesota filed a lawsuit on March 2 to block the federal government from withholding $243 million in Medicaid funds, saying the freeze could lead to potential cuts in medical services for low-income individuals.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last month temporarily deferred $259 million in Medicaid funds to Minnesota over alleged fraud in the state’s program, according to the court filing.
The lawsuit, filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and the state’s Human Services Department, asked the court to block the withholding of $243 million of those funds that were tied to 14 services the government identified as “high-risk” and subject to “noncompliance action.”
It is shocking that, even after all this fraud has been exposed, the response of the state’s Attorney General is not to apologize or prosecute, but rather to fight against the federal government’s commonsense precautions.
Let’s pray for a complete and total end to the fraud in Minnesota, and let’s pray that those who enabled this fraud would be held accountable!
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(Excerpts from Just the News and The Epoch Times. Photo Credit: Photograph by Travellers & Tinkers – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=170350557)
