A powerful US House committee and the treasury department have opened parallel investigations into allegations that more than $1 billion was siphoned from Minnesota’s pandemic-era food aid and other state programs – with some of the money allegedly ending up with Al-Shabaab.House oversight committee chairman James Comer told The New York Post that his panel “will conduct a thorough investigation into Governor Walz’s failure to safeguard taxpayer dollars,” adding: “Minnesota governor Tim Walz was warned about massive fraud… yet he failed to act.” He also alleged that “criminals – including Somali terrorists – stole nearly $1 billion from the program while children suffered.” Treasury secretary Scott Bessent announced a separate federal probe on Monday, writing on X that investigators were examining claims that “under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden administration and governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans’ tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab.”The investigations follow federal prosecutions linked to the Feeding Our Future scandal, which US authorities say involved 78 people – many of Somali origin – accused of diverting federal and state food programme funds into personal spending on cars, travel and real estate between 2020 and 2022. The DOJ has convicted 59 defendants so far. A whistleblower group claiming to represent Minnesota department of human services employees alleged on X that Walz was “100 per cent responsible” for ignoring early warnings and that whistleblowers faced “monitoring, threats, repression.” The account was suspended on Monday. A June 2024 audit by Minnesota’s office of the legislative auditor found that the state department of education had “created opportunities for fraud” and maintained “inadequate oversight” during its payments to Feeding Our Future. A recent Manhattan Institute report cited by Fox News claimed federal counterterrorism sources had confirmed that “millions of dollars in stolen funds were sent back to Somalia,” where Al-Shabaab allegedly received a portion. Those details form a key focus of the Treasury probe.Walz’s office told Fox News Digital the governor welcomed an investigation “should a connection be found between Minnesota tax dollars and Al-Shabaab.” Walz, who is seeking a third term, has said he tried to halt payments to Feeding Our Future as early as November 2020 but was constrained by litigation. He later told media outlets he attempted to stop the fraud in 2021 but blamed a Minnesota district judge for allowing payments to continue. Judge John Guthmann rejected that account, saying payments were “made voluntarily” by the state. Walz has insisted he took “responsibility for putting people in jail,” while criticising Donald Trump, saying on NBC’s Meet the Press: “My God, there’s a big difference between fraud and corruption. And corruption is something he knows about.”Trump, meanwhile, called Minnesota “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity” after recent disclosures.
