The House Education and Workforce Committee subpoenaed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday for records related to a $250 million COVID-19 relief fraud scheme that occurred on his watch.
Walz, 60, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, was ordered to hand over any documents about the scandal, which involved pandemic relief funds being distributed via “the Minnesota Department of Education’s (MDE) administration of federal child nutrition programs (FCNP).”
Rather than nourishing hungry children, however, the money funded lavish lifestyles — including fancy cars and real estate holdings as far away as Turkey and Kenya — for the operators of a fraudulent Minneapolis-based nonprofit, Feeding Our Future.
State agencies were tasked with administering the funds and then submitting reimbursement claims to the USDA.
“The Committee must now compel the production of responsive documents that will show the extent of the actions taken by you and your administration relating to MDE’s administration of the FCNP and the extent of your responsibilities and actions addressing the massive fraud that resulted in the abuse of taxpayer dollars intended for hungry children,” Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said in a letter accompanying the subpoena.
NBC News first reported on the subpoena to Walz, as well as those issued to the Minnesota Department of Education and the USDA.
At least 70 people were initially charged for their involvement in the “depraved and brazen” gambit, as one prosecutor put it, between April 2020 and January 2022, when the FBI conducted raids of the fake nonprofit.
Only five have since been convicted in what has since been called the “largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the nation.”
According to a June audit by the Minnesota legislature, MDE “created opportunities for fraud” and maintained “inadequate oversight” during the roughly two-year period it was shelling out the money.
The department also “failed to act on warning signs known to the department prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and prior to the start of the alleged fraud” by Feeding Our Future.
Walz admitted to the Minnesota Reformer that he knew of the suspicious activity by the nonprofit as early as November 2020, when MDE first moved to halt the payments.
However, the governor allowed the payments to continue after Feeding Our Future sued the department, alleging racial discrimination.
Around the time of the first federal indictments in September 2022, Walz told media outlets he had tried to put a stop to the fraud in April 2021 — and blamed a Minnesota judge for ordering the funds to continue flowing.
Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann responded by taking the rare step of issuing a statement to the press to correct the “inaccurate statements by the Governor.”
“The Department of Education voluntarily resumed payments and informed the court that FOF resolved the ‘serious deficiencies’ that prompted it to suspend payments temporarily,” Guthmann said. “All of the MN Department of Education food reimbursement payments to FOF were made voluntarily, without any court order.”
In July 2021, Walz presented another fraudster with an “Outstanding Refugee Award” — despite her participation in the same food scheme under another nonprofit that raked in taxpayer funding.
“Statements in the press by you and your representatives indicate that you and other executive officers were involved, or had knowledge of, MDE’s administration of the FCNP and responsibilities and actions regarding the massive fraud,” Foxx wrote in her letter to Walz.
The committee has been “unable to obtain substantive responsive materials in the many voluntary requests made in this matter” over the last 10 months, Foxx added, and will also subpoena the US Department of Agriculture and its inspector general’s office for further documentation.
The records are due by Sept. 18.
Reps for Walz’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
