 "Was Minnesota fund used by terrorist group? Probe launched into Tim Walz’s $1 bn scheme")
A US House committee and the Treasury Department have launched separate investigations into allegations that more than $1 billion was siphoned from Minnesota’s pandemic-era food aid and other state programmes, with some of the money allegedly ending up with Al Shabaab, a Somalia-based terrorist group.
House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer told the New York Post that his panel would investigate what he described as Governor Tim Walz’s failure to protect taxpayer funds. Comer claimed that Minnesota had been warned of large-scale fraud and alleged that “criminals, including Somali terrorists” stole nearly $1 billion while children suffered.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a parallel federal probe on Monday, stating on X that investigators were examining claims that, under what he called mismanagement by the Biden administration and Governor Walz, state tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist group.
Prosecutions, whistleblower claims and political fallout
The inquiries follow federal prosecutions linked to the Feeding Our Future scandal, in which US authorities say 78 people, many of Somali origin, were charged with diverting federal and state food programme funds for personal spending between 2020 and 2022. The Department of Justice has so far secured convictions against 59 defendants. A whistleblower group claiming to represent Minnesota Department of Human Services staff alleged on X that Walz was “100 per cent responsible” for ignoring warnings and said whistleblowers faced “monitoring, threats, repression”. The account was suspended on Monday.
A June 2024 audit by Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor found that the state’s Department of Education had created opportunities for fraud and exercised inadequate oversight in its payments to Feeding Our Future. A recent Manhattan Institute report cited by Fox News stated that federal counterterrorism sources had confirmed that “millions of dollars in stolen funds were sent back to Somalia”, where Al Shabaab allegedly received a portion. Those details form a central part of the Treasury probe.
Walz’s office told Fox News Digital that the governor welcomed an investigation should any link be found between Minnesota tax dollars and Al Shabaab. Walz, now seeking a third term, has said he attempted to halt payments to Feeding Our Future in November 2020 but was limited by litigation. He later said he tried again in 2021 and blamed a Minnesota district judge for allowing payments to continue. Judge John Guthmann rejected that account, stating that payments were “made voluntarily” by the state.
Quick Reads
View AllWalz has maintained that he took responsibility for ensuring people were prosecuted, while criticising Donald Trump, telling NBC’s Meet the Press: “My God, there’s a big difference between fraud and corruption. And corruption is something he knows about.” Trump subsequently called Minnesota “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” following recent disclosures.
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