OAN Staff Lillian Mann
6:05 PM – Monday, June 8, 2026
According to a Republican-led congressional oversight report, senior Minnesota officials — including Governor Tim Walz — failed for years to respond to warnings about fraud in the state’s social services programs, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in confirmed or suspected losses, exposing billions more to potential misuse.
Governor Walz (D-Minn.) and state Attorney General Keith Ellison reportedly were aware of the fraud “much earlier than they led the public to believe” — and allowed whistleblowers who flagged it to suffer retaliation, according to a 205-page staff report released Monday by the House Oversight Committee (HOC).
The Walz administration allegedly “retaliated against employees who tried to raise concerns, going to great lengths to keep them quiet, including intimidation through regular check-ins with high-level agency officials and threats of military surveillance,” the report revealed.
More than 30 whistleblowers spoke with the panel during its investigation, including several who alleged they were threatened with “military surveillance” by Emmanuel Nwala, a deputy assistant commissioner at a behavioral health agency.
“I wanted to reach out to my colleagues that I did intelligence research with in the Army and give them the IP addresses and the email addresses to track specific location but was asked by upper leadership to hold off as they are doing their own thing on it,” Nwala wrote in an email.
Furthermore, the administration reportedly had the authority to halt payments to high-risk entities receiving federal nutrition and Medicaid funds but “repeatedly failed to act” despite internal warnings, according to the report.
The committee also found that Minnesota is estimated to have lost roughly $300 million in federal nutrition funds intended to feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic, while as much as $9 billion in Medicaid billings may have been fraudulent — an estimate cited by a federal prosecutor but disputed by officials in the Walz administration.
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 110 individuals in connection with a series of fraud schemes in Minnesota. Many of those charged in the Feeding Our Future case were members of the state’s Somali immigrant community.
However, Governor Walz’s office and Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor officials have fiercely pushed back against the report, calling it a highly partisan, election-year stunt. Walz’s office publicly dismissed the HOC as “a joke,” arguing that the report heavily distorts facts for political messaging.
Nonetheless, Walz was allegedly aware of concerns surrounding the now-defunct Feeding Our Future nonprofit as early as 2020, the report said. The organization allegedly operated a network of fraudulent meal sites, yet funding continued to flow to the group for nearly two more years.
Following the release of this report, the HOC advanced ten bipartisan anti-fraud reform bills aimed at ending the “pay-and-chase” model of government spending — where the government cuts checks first and investigates fraud later, in response to the fraud scheme.
“The fraudsters pledged the Somali community’s political and financial support to Ellison if he were to intervene on their behalf,” the report reads. “Ellison said he would help ‘fight these people.’”
The report further states that Attorney General Keith Ellison met in December 2021 with individuals linked to the Feeding Our Future operation who were later convicted of fraud. An audio recording obtained by the committee allegedly captured the group arguing that the Minnesota Department of Education’s decision to withhold payments amounted to racial discrimination.
According to court records and investigators, some convicted participants used stolen funds to finance luxury purchases. State officials have also examined whether a portion of the money was transferred overseas, including to individuals or entities in Somalia and the Middle East with potential ties to terrorist organizations.
“Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison are responsible for one of the most stunning oversight failures this Committee has ever examined,” HOC Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement. “It is now clear the Walz Administration chose to protect the system rather than protect the taxpayer.”
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