Op-Ed: Why Walz Is to Blame for the Minnesota Fraud
It is fair to say that until Kamala Harris chose her running mate in 2024, the vast majority of Americans had never heard of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Known during the campaign for little more than his weak-kneed response to the George Floyd riots of 2020 and for exaggerations about his National Guard service and military rank, he was an ever-grinning, ever-clapping cheerleader for Kamala’s word salads.
However, in light of Minnesota’s “industrial-scale” social services fraud, likely involving billions in tax dollars funneled away from those most in need to those lining their pockets for vacations, jewelry, property, and luxury vehicles, Walz is fast becoming known for something else — as a shockingly incompetent governor asleep at the wheel since his election in 2018.
That massive amounts of money earmarked for programs supporting children and the poor were criminally stolen, with little or no adequate supervision by the Walz administration, is beyond doubt. As a result, legitimate initiatives, including Medicaid, housing assistance, autism services, and childcare assistance programs were denied the funds to which they were entitled.
However, also troubling are assertions that Minnesota welfare fraud money was siphoned to terrorist groups, including ISIS, in Somalia and elsewhere.
In fact, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has stated that because allegations suggest that “fraudulently obtained funds… were sent overseas to support terrorist organizations,” such a claim is serious enough to justify congressional investigation.
But because Minnesota’s boondoggle bonanza was hatched in a blue state, overseen by a passively inept, asleep-at-the-wheel progressive governor, and involved a large Somali population, the somnambulating legacy media has often downplayed or even ignored the scandal.
That has been so, even though much of the funding came from initiatives created to support the neediest in that community, often children, and from similar programs for other immigrant communities as well.
But even more concerning, the Minnesota social safety net swindle described by former governor Tim Pawlenty as likely revealing the “largest amount of public fraud in the history of our country” is anything but a recent phenomenon.
With documented cases of social service scams dating back to 2015 and with warnings even earlier, federal prosecutors have described Minnesota’s fraud problem as “not small,” “not isolated,” and “staggering.” And supporting those characterizations, the Minnesota Star Tribune disclosed that Minnesota has been dealing with a fraud crisis in its Medicaid and related social service programs “for more than a decade.”
Yet even so, some politically motivated media outlets have ignored the scope of the crisis. Accordingly, since mid-December, when federal prosecutors revealed that fraud in Minnesota welfare programs could exceed $9 billion, CNN and MSNBC have failed their viewers by giving the story scant attention. And even more shockingly, there was not a single mention of the scandal on either network or on their websites through at least Christmas.
During that period, the only indirect mention of wrongdoing was on MSNBC, when on Dec. 18, their moderator played the race card by stating that President Donald Trump “unleashed” an “attack” on Somalis over fraud claims. And Walz woke up long enough to join in attacking Trump for “demonizing an entire population.”
So, overlooking allegations of widespread welfare fraud prompting enormous expense to American taxpayers, the president’s critics branded him racist for justifiably linking some Somalis to the scandal. That predictable smear occurred even though, as of Jan. 1, that group accounted for nearly 90 percent of scandal-related welfare fraud arrests in Minnesota.
Overall, U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson has claimed that grifters may have stolen “half or more” of the $18 billion in federal funds provided to Minnesota social services since 2018. Yet seemingly unconcerned whether the public’s money has been used for its original intent or even legally, Walz claimed that federal prosecutors were only “speculating” about the scope of the fraud for “sensationalism.”
But in the end, Walz has been right about a few things. That is, during the 2024 vice presidential debate, he was pressed on his lies about being in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In damage control, he acknowledged that he “misspoke” and that he sometimes gets “caught up in the rhetoric.”
But Walz, predictably not seeking another failed term as governor, also admitted to being a “knucklehead at times.” So, given his asleep-at-the-wheel response to Minnesota’s ongoing welfare scandal, and his inflammatory comments regarding the current ICE protests, the thousands of constituents signing his resignation petition would surely judge that admission as his most honest claim of all.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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