Christopher Rufo Says California Fraud Is Stealing Taxpayer Money on a Scale That Makes Minnesota Look Like 'Child's Play'
The fraud scandal that resulted in billions being stolen from American taxpayers in Minnesota is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to fraud on a national scale, a conservative author and activist said in a podcast released Wednesday.
And while revelations about Minnesota’s scandal ended the political career of Gov. Tim Walz, another Democratic governor making national headlines is far worse, the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo said.
“The scale of it in the state of California is just another level entirely,” he said, according to the New York Post. In fact, he said, it makes Minnesota’s massive fraud look like “child’s play.”
Rufo was speaking on “Pod Force One,” a podcast hosted by New York Post columnist Miranda Devine.
Minnesota’s fraud has been largely centered in the state’s large Somali community. But in Newsom’s California, the potential for theft has attracted a global element.
“Individuals from all walks of life, all nationalities, even all parts of the country have recognized that the California government is essentially open to business for fraud schemes,” Rufo said, according to the New York Post report.
“But there is also this ethnic, ethno-political element,” Rufo said, according to the newspaper. “And you see certain populations, for example, the Armenians in Southern California, that seem to be perpetrating fraud at scale.
“One police detective I talked to said Romanians, Armenians, Nigerians, there are certain kind of sub-populations or national populations that have been caught over and over and over ripping off the state government.”
Rufo has an established track record of uncovering misuse of public funds.
In 2023, his revelations about a Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston allegedly falsifying Medicaid records to fund sex-change surgeries and hormone treatments for children sparked an investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that eventually forced a settlement.
Last year, in the wake of the fires that devastated Los Angeles, he publicized Los Angeles Fire Department internal documents that showed how the department’s commitment to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” pushed disaster recovery to the bottom of the department’s priorities.
Earlier this month, in a report in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, he blew the whistle on California spending $189 million in taxpayer money on computer tablets that the state’s prisoners are using to view pornography — and worse.
“In this exclusive City Journal investigation, we contacted dozens of death-row inmates, who told us that prisoners in the state system use such devices to watch pornography and have explicit sexual conversations,” Rufo wrote with co-author Haley Strack. “Some prisoners, according to a former high-ranking California corrections official, use their tablets to groom minors. Though the state has claimed to regulate explicit content, the inmates told us that users can easily evade detection.”
In the “Pod Force One” interview, he said California had become a “big fat target” for criminals during Newsom’s years in power, the New York Post reported.
“They come to the United States, they come to California in particular, and one insider told us the thing about California is this, you’re most likely to not get caught, and if you get caught you’re most likely to not face charges, and if you do face charges and get convicted, you’re most likely to not serve much, if any time at all,” he said.
“And so, it’s a means, motive and opportunity. It’s a classic story of criminal conduct, and that’s why I think you see it happening in California at such scale.”
With Newsom term-limited out of another run for California governor when his tenure ends in 2027, he’s widely viewed as a potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
If Rufo’s allegations gather steam, the comparisons to the Walz administration in Minnesota aren’t going to be helping Newsom’s campaign at all.
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