Rep. Jim Jordan grilled Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz Wednesday on his alleged misstatements about why his administration resumed funding to the $250 million Feeding Our Future scam — arguing Walz allowed the fraud to continue because he was afraid of upsetting Somali-American voters.
Jordan (R-Ohio) said that Walz falsely claimed that a court required the April 2021 resumption of funding to the faux charity despite mounting fraud concerns — citing a rare statement from Minnesota’s court system contradicting the Democrat.
“March 30, 2021, the payments are stopped, and over a month later, the payments are restarted. Why didn’t you tell the truth about why you restarted the payments?” Jordan asked Walz at a House Oversight Committee hearing.
“Why didn’t tell the truth about why you restarted the payments? Payment stopped because there were concerns… then they restarted the month later. What was the reason for restarting the payments?”
Walz replied, “My understanding was the the agency believed that the court had required them to make those payments.”
“The court did something that I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it. They issued a statement saying you were wrong,” Jordan retorted.
The Republican read from the court’s 2022 statement titled “correcting media reports and statements by Governor Tim Walz concerning orders issued by the court.”
That statement said that “Walz told the media that… Judge [John] Guthmann ordered payments to continue in April 2021. That is also false.”
“Guthmann never issued an order requiring the MN Department of Education to resume food reimbursement payments to FOF. The Department of Education voluntarily resumed payments and informed the court that FOF resolved the ‘serious deficiencies’ that prompted it to suspend payments temporarily.”
Jordan pressed Walz: “So I want to know, why didn’t you tell the truth?”
“Congressman, the attorneys at the Department of Education interpreted that differently,” Walz insisted.
Jordan then asserted that the true reason was that Walz was afraid of upsetting the Somali-American community, citing a Somali fraud investigator, Kayseh Magan, in the state attorney general’s office.
“Mr. Magan is a Somali-American and a fraud investigator… in the Attorney General’s Office. Here’s what he said: ‘There was a perception that forcefully tackling this issue might cause political backlash among the Somali community, which is a core voting bloc.’”
Later in the hearing, Walz admitted he became aware of fraud concerns about Feeding Our Future in “late 2020.”
“I think by late 2020 we started to see the irregularities. They were flagged,” Walz said.
Federal prosecutors have indicted 79 people since 2022 in connection to the fraud.