Gov. Walz at Center of Billion-Dollar Heist

A question has been hanging over the people of Minnesota: Where did the billions go?

That’s not hyperbole. That’s not political spin. That’s the reality now after the U.S. Treasury Department just exposed a $1 BILLION scheme in Minnesota to defraud the state, including money meant for hungry kids.

Now the DOJ wants to find out just how much Minnesota Governor Tim Walz knew about this scam. The Treasury Department and the House Oversight Committee have launched investigations to determine whether Walz should face criminal charges.

As reported by The Hill:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday said the Trump administration is investigating claims that tax money from Minnesota went to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab, which is based in Somalia.

Bessent, in a post on social platform X, said he ordered the probe after finding the North Star State’s tax funds went to Al-Shabaab “under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz.”

“Thanks to the leadership of @POTUS @realDonaldTrump, we are acting fast to ensure Americans’ taxes are not funding acts of global terror,” the Treasury chief wrote. “We will share our findings as our investigation continues.”

The report also claims that one of the fraud cases involved misusing pandemic relief funds meant for kids, stating:

Among these large-scale fraud cases is a $250 million scheme involving the nonprofit group Feeding Our Future. This case led to five people being convicted in 2024 after they were found guilty of misusing funds that were meant to feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Minnesota has been dealing with two overlapping crises: major Medicaid fraud allegations and a sprawling COVID-relief fraud scheme. The most notorious case involves a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future, an organization entrusted with federal dollars meant to help families during the pandemic. Instead, prosecutors say over a billion dollars in relief funding was siphoned off through fake documents, fake meal sites, and fake rosters of children who never received a single meal.

Now we’ve learned the story may be even darker. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department is investigating whether some of those taxpayer dollars – filtered through fraud, kickbacks, and illicit remittances – ultimately ended up in the hands of a known terrorist organization operating in Somalia called Al-Shabaab.

But what’s fueling this fire isn’t conservative messaging or the Trump Administration’s pressure. It’s whistleblowers who aren’t conservative activists – they’re bureaucrats and social service workers – who say they tried to raise alarms for years and were ignored, dismissed, or even retaliated against. And Governor Tim Walz is at the center of this storm.

An entire X account run by these state employees has been publishing internal warnings they say were sent directly to the governor’s office. These are people who work inside the system, want their state to succeed, and are now publicly proclaiming that no one listened when they tried to stop what they saw as widespread fraud.

How did this happen on such a massive scale without anyone noticing? We’re not talking about a random scammer exploiting COVID programs. This was clearly a coordinated, sustained, multi-year fraud inside a tightly knit community, in a state with a known pattern of remittances flowing overseas, including into Somalia, where Al-Shabaab skims money flowing through certain channels. Even if individuals sending money home had no intention of supporting terrorism, the terrorist organization’s involvement in Somalia’s financial landscape means U.S. tax dollars may have been indirectly enriching them.

What makes this even more astonishing is Governor Walz’s response. While appearing on Meet the Press this Sunday, Walz was asked whether he takes responsibility for failing to stop the fraud, and rather than give a well-thought-out, cohesive answer, he offered up a fresh dish of word salad, reminiscent of his former running mate:

I take responsibility for putting people in jail. Governors don’t get to just talk theoretically; we have to solve problems. And I will note, it’s not just Somalis. Minnesota is a generous state, Minnesota is a prosperous state, a well-run state. We’re AAA bond rated. But that attracts criminals. Those people are going to jail. We’re doing everything we can. But to demonize an entire community on the actions of a few? It’s lazy.

That’s not an answer. That’s not accountability. That’s not what taxpayers who pay these leaders’ salaries deserve. Leadership isn’t about blaming prosperity for the wrongdoing of others. It’s about admitting when systems break down and fixing them.

This isn’t a political story. It’s a stewardship story. It’s about trust – trust in our government, trust in oversight, trust in the systems that are supposed to protect taxpayer dollars from funding fraud and terror. If Gov. Walz or any other elected official had knowledge of this – or worse, was involved – they need to be held accountable. And if billions vanished once, we need to know where else it may have happened. Particularly when it was sent to a country ranked second in the world for violence and terrorism against Christians.

Today’s Sekulow broadcast included more discussion of the Treasury Department and the House Oversight Committee’s investigations into Gov. Walz. We also discussed today’s special elections and were joined by Matt Van Epps, Republican candidate for Tennessee’s 7th congressional district, to discuss this critical race and to encourage voters to get out to the polls.

Watch the full broadcast below: