Republicans on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce issued a subpoena to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and the state’s Education Commissioner related to an alleged $250 million pandemic fraud scheme perpetuated by a nonprofit providing school meals to underprivileged children.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the committee’s chair, announced the latest probe into the Democratic vice presidential nominee as congressional Republicans continue to mine the governor’s past decade in Minnesota politics for scandals.
The COVID fraud scandal the House committee is currently probing was first uncovered in 2022, when the Justice Department indicted a total of 70 people for what Attorney General Merrick Garland called “the largest pandemic relief fraud scheme charged to date.” The defendants were charged with counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, and bribery.
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The defendants were involved with a now-defunct nonprofit called Feeding Our Future, which worked with the state’s Department of Education to disburse federal funds for school meals. According to the Justice Department, Feeding Our Future went from disbursing $3.4 million in 2019 to over $200 million in 2020.
According to a federal indictment, employees of the nonprofit created lists of fake children they claimed they served meals to using a website called “www.listofrandomnames.com.” They then submitted these names for reimbursement from the state.
This money was diverted back into the pockets of individuals who organized the scheme, who spent it on “luxury vehicles, residential and commercial real estate in Minnesota as well as property in Ohio and Kentucky, real estate in Kenya and Turkey, and to fund international travel,” according to the Justice Department.
In June, five of the defendants were found guilty after the first trial related to the scheme. One of those defendants, Abdimajid Nur, pleaded guilty in July for trying to bribe a juror with $120,000.
A state auditor’s report found the Department of Education failed to act on the warning signs of fraud and was “ill-prepared” to deal with the massive scheme.
The subpoena issued by House Republicans seems to point to this auditor's report, with Rep. Foxx writing in a subpoena on Wednesday that “the documents we have received to date indicate the actions taken by you and other executive officers were insufficient to address the massive fraud.”
“Statements in the press by you and your representatives indicate that you and other executive officers were involved, or had knowledge of, MDE’s (Minnesota Department of Education) administration of the FCNP (Federal Child Nutrition Program) and responsibilities and actions regarding the massive fraud,” Foxx wrote.
However, Walz has previously defended his administration’s conduct during the scandal.
“There’s not a single state employee that was implicated in doing anything that was illegal. They simply didn’t do as much due diligence as they should’ve,” Walz told the Star-Tribune earlier this year.
