Minnesota’s top Democrat is now facing federal investigation and criminal charges for his mismanagement of widespread fraud. According to a bombshell report released by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Monday, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), who was the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee in 2024, has been complicit in the rampant abuse of government-funded welfare programs and benefits, even punishing whistleblowers who attempted to report the mass defrauding of taxpayer dollars.

Walz and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) not only “repeatedly failed to act” to halt the fraud once they became aware of it, according to the House report, but actively continued fraudulent or suspicious organization and programs and “retaliated against employees who tried to raise concerns, going to great lengths to keep them quiet…” The House report clarified, “As a result, billions of American taxpayer dollars were potentially paid to fraudulent actors. These fraudulently obtained funds likely funded international terrorist networks among other bad actors, while vulnerable populations were harmed and whistleblowers were ignored, sidelined, and retaliated against.”

The report continued, “Testimony and documents obtained to date establish a consistent pattern: fraud warnings were elevated to the most senior levels of the Minnesota state government, meaningful corrective action was delayed or avoided, and payments continued long after credible signs of fraud emerged.”

Contrary to claims made by both Walz and Ellison, the pair knew of widespread fraud in the state’s Child Care Assistance Program and Non-Emergency Medical Transportation program as early as the spring of 2019, and knew of fraud affecting the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) as early as April 2020. Walz and Ellison were also both alerted to fraud impacting at least 13 other state-run, Medicaid-related programs over the years, but continually refused to take action. In some cases, Minnesota’s state government had actually prosecuted or investigated organizations and individuals that the Walz administration later allowed to defraud numerous government programs.

As the rampant fraud infecting Minnesota began to come to public knowledge in 2025, the Walz administration contacted federal prosecutors, seemingly in an effort to seek assistance. “The Walz Administration knew that fraud in [Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS)] programs was out of control and asked DOJ for help in August 2025 to cover their tracks. DHS confirmed they had to terminate Medicaid programs because of pervasive fraud,” the report noted. One of the individuals that Walz and his advisors met with was former acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, who had played a pivotal role in prosecuting fraud in Minnesota in years prior. After seeking Thompson’s expertise and insight, however, the Walz administration publicly mocked and rejected Thompson’s claims regarding the scale of the fraud and its preventability.

“[T]he totality of evidence suggests that this was Governor Walz’s office reaching out for help because they knew how much fraud was in the HSS program, that the Walz Administration let the fraud fester to where it couldn’t be hidden, and that the Trump Administration now knew it too,” the House report stated. “If the State of Minnesota had the fraud situation under control as they’ve claimed, then there would not have been a need to reach out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for ‘advice.’” Furthermore, the report found, “The Walz Administration was more concerned about getting ahead of media reports about fraud than rooting out actual fraud to protect taxpayer dollars.”

To participate in federal welfare programs, like the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) child nutrition program, Minnesota’s state government signed state waivers attesting that state agencies would thoroughly vet applicants for government reimbursements and “ensure program integrity measures were in place to detect and prevent fraud.” Instead, the Walz administration failed to implement fraud detection and prevention measures, did not investigate “clear signs of fraud,” and simply allowed organizations seeking government funding to self-attest that they were not defrauding the government. According to the House report, “The Walz Administration and AG Ellison left open clear vulnerabilities to fraudulent activities and frequently failed to scrutinize suspicious activities.”

Fraudulent “nonprofit” organizations weren’t the only ones taking advantage of Minnesota’s lax requirements. Multiple for-profit organizations and restaurant businesses participated in Minnesota-administered nutrition programs, funded by federal taxpayer dollars via the USDA. Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) Assistant Commissioner Daron Korte admitted that the state agency did not do its due diligence in protecting these programs. Never once did the state government attempt to clarify whether or not for-profit organizations and restaurants were allowed to participate in the USDA-funded program, and Minnesota’s administration of the program allowed for “bundled meals,” significantly increasing the number of meals that fraudulent organizations could claim to have served to children, but there was “nobody there observing” on behalf of the state to verify the accuracy of the claims. Korte reported “that MDE would still approve reimbursements for implausibly large requests, including from sites highly concentrated within an area or all sharing an address, clear red flags for fraud.” MDE did not physically monitor food delivery sites, Korte testified, but instead typically conducted cursory reviews via video calls.

One of the reasons that state agencies refused to implement safeguards or fraud prevention measures was due to fear of being labeled racist. The organization Feeding Our Future, which is still at the center of a massive fraud scandal involving hundreds of millions of dollars, actually threatened to sue the Walz administration for early attempts at oversight, alleging racial discrimination. Rather than dismiss those claims as outrageous and fight in court, Walz and Ellison simply backed away from any oversight, investigation, or prosecution of potential or likely fraud.

The Walz administration “was accused of racism from the social services provider community when they tried to address fraud early in Governor Walz’s tenure,” the House report noted. State government agencies were terrified of being publicly labeled “racist” and subsequently “made decisions based on what was politically advantageous, not what would safeguard taxpayer dollars.” Specifically, Somali immigrants, a sizable portion of the population of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, were quick to allege racial discrimination when confronted with fraud prevention measures or even the slightest bit of government oversight.

In multiple cases, state agency leaders claimed that they did not realize that they were equipped with the legal authority to terminate funding to fraudulent organizations, while others attempted to erroneously shift blame to USDA regulations. “DHS could unilaterally place a stop-payment on providers based on a credible allegation of fraud. However, DHS failed to act for years after receiving credible allegations of fraud,” the House report found. “Governor Walz’s hand-picked DHS Commissioner, Jodi Harpstead, who served from 2019-2025, did not feel she was qualified to take on fraud; these programs were increasingly defrauded during her tenure.” Ellison has also been accused of failing to impartially enforce Minnesota laws due to his personal relationships with an alarming number of individuals affiliated with and involved in fraud in Minnesota.

The Walz administration further failed to discipline those responsible for permitting or facilitating fraud, but actively persecuted whistleblowers who attempted to raise concerns over the mass defrauding of government welfare programs and benefits. “Governor Walz claimed that he fired state officials for their handling of fraud concerns. However, neither Governor Walz nor his Chief of Staff could specifically say who they fired,” the House report found. When questioned, Walz’s longtime Chief of Staff Chris Schmitter “could not recall whether the Governor had fired an agency commissioner for their handling of reported fraud concerns.” Schmitter testified that he was “struggling” with understanding the use of the term “firing,” adding, “We absolutely had commissioners leave, sometimes that was for performance. That is true. Or chose not to reappoint them.” Walz himself could not name a single state employee who was fired for mishandling fraud allegations, although he asserted that several officials “stepped away” from their positions over the years.

State employees who voiced their concerns over the rampant theft of taxpayer dollars via fraud, on the other hand, were treated harshly. One whistleblower testified that she was repeatedly pressured by superiors to stop investigating alleged fraud because it “will appear as if she was targeting certain groups,” meaning Somali immigrants. Dozens of other whistleblowers testified that they were instructed not to report fraud because it would give the appearance of being “racist” or “Islamophobic.” Some whistleblowers testified that Walz himself approved the hiring of outside human resources firms, investigators, and lawyers to surveil and report on whistleblowers, a project that cost the state millions of dollars. Whistleblowers were accused of “creating a very difficult work environment” and were regularly assigned “handlers” who would conduct “check-in” meetings with whistleblowers, ask about their communications, and remove them from meetings where programs targeted for fraud were being discussed. Harpstead even hosted an agency-wide meeting and warned DHS employees that they “would be punished if they reported concerns about fraud…”

According to the House report, whistleblowers “also alleged that because they chose to report fraud, DHS investigators took photos of their cars, homes, monitored their computers and phones, and sought to gain personal information about which schools their kids attended. They also alleged that DHS would refuse promotion opportunities for individuals who reported fraud.” An anonymous hotline for employees to report fraud was initially established but was later “deanonymized” in order to identify whistleblowers.

In response, whistleblowers created an anonymous email address to report fraud to state leadership, who blocked the email address. Notably, Harpstead testified that state investigators who received reports of fraud from state employees did not bring her those reports, but instead turned them over to agency human resources divisions. She also confirmed that Walz administration officials discussed the concerns raised by employees regarding fraud, but never “bother[ed] to look into the source of these complaints.”

“The Committee’s findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of Minnesota’s governance and oversight of federal funds. The failure to act decisively in the face of known fraud allowed criminal schemes to flourish and diverted resources away from eligible recipients: the vulnerable populations these programs were intended to serve,” the report stipulated. The oversight committee’s Republican members called on the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch a full-scale criminal investigation.

Shortly after the House report’s publication, Vice President J.D. Vance, whose job could have gone to Walz had he and President Donald Trump lost the 2024 election, announced that, as head of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, he is referring Walz and Ellison to the DOJ for criminal investigation and prosecution. “Minnesota state officials are not above the law, and if they facilitated fraud, lied under oath about what they knew, or harassed and intim[id]ated whistleblowers, they must face justice,” Vance said in a social media post Monday. “I’ve referred these allegations to DOJ’s new Fraud Division for criminal investigation.”

In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald of the DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, Vance wrote, “These allegations raise several issues that the National Fraud Enforcement Division must immediately investigate,” including questions of how much Walz and his administration knew of the fraud and when they knew it, whether or not Walz lied under oath or in public statements regarding his knowledge of the fraud, whether or not Walz and his administration retaliated against whistleblowers, and whether or not federal criminal or civil laws were violated.

“If state officials in Minnesota or anywhere else in the country facilitated fraud or looked the other way while this theft was happening,” Vance wrote, “if they actively prevented state and federal officials from stopping and bringing fraudsters to justice, or if they intimidated and harassed whistleblowers who courageously tried to shine a light on this problem, they must be held accountable.”